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Really great set! St. Louis has a lot of problems, but a lack of character ain’t one of ‘em.
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Thanks for the thread!
Jesus. So many cities have made so much progress, I'm not sure I knew we still had this kind of blight in the US. Houses, sure, but big buildings like that? Haven't seen that in a long time. What's the story with this place?' This is a cool building. |
I’ve never explored St. Louis but I’ll be visiting next month and hope to spend some time out exploring if the weather cooperates. These photos have given me some ideas on spots to check out!
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Thanks for the tour. It was especially great seeing the perspectives from the RR.
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One surprise was the mix of architecture more common in the Northeast (red brick rowhouses etc) with the far more French inspired, New Orleans- esque houses, especially around Lafayette & Benton Park. As a place that historically was a bit of a dividing line between the cultures of the North & South it was exciting to see that written in the actual masonry of the city |
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https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...922/cyKOYV.jpg https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...923/6wmDCr.jpg It was intended to be a keystone of a larger "Gateway South" redevelopment project but obviously if that happens now it will be in a very different manner. It had been at least partially abandoned and parts of it (mostly the complex to the west) were already hollowed out by previous fires, so it definitely is a victim of blight but maybe just not as extreme as that single photo would imply - The building with the plane on top is called "City Museum" and it is a "folk art" style "exploratorium" kind of place. Not even sure how to describe it exactly. I didn't have a chance to go but I've heard amazing things about it and the history of it is also worth looking into. - And that rounded building was actually my hotel on the 2nd trip :D I don't remember any other building with rounded facades in STL so it really stood out in a cool way |
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As for architecture, Soulard & Lafayette Park/Square are probably the most historically immersive neighborhoods I've ever been to. Would very, very highly recommend paying those a visit If you need any recs or have any questions before the trip feel free to shoot me a message! |
Great tour!
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I don’t have much experience with St Louis and sadly haven’t been there since 1994(!). Seems like a city that both is a treasure trove but also still struggles a bit. I have two colleagues who went to Wash U who rave about how interesting it is.
Maybe I need a trip for a Cardinals game… Great photos as always. Honest question: is St Louis the most struggling big city in the US? You can find so many thing about other rust belt cities and their metro areas that seem to be righting themselves. Honestly I cannot think of much for STL (admittedly ignorant). |
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The closest comparison from my experience is Detroit, which I've visited twice now and which was clearly much more on the mend than STL. It also suffered from most, if not all of the same issues, but had its downtown mostly intact and so when it started rehabbing its urban core, it could point to that single crown jewel as a sign of progress. St. Louis does have some neighborhoods that have seen very positive growth, especially in Midtown/Central West End. Unfortunately, the growth has been fairly piecemeal rather than a concerted effort in one region, which does not give it the same kind of positive PR to point to. Outside of those areas, other parts are still shrinking and decaying rapidly. During the time I was there(which was only about 3 days total between the two trips) I witnessed 2 buildings on fire in addition to the warehouse that had burnt down a few days earlier. What I've noticed about the Rust Belt in general is that a lot of places have revived their downtowns and seen population growth in the core city even as outer neighborhoods might be shrinking, but that the city as a whole is reaching positive growth. Chicago is still losing population in parts of the South Side but has seen tremendous growth in River North, West Loop etc which makes up for it. Detroit obviously has Corktown and Midtown where development is at a breakneck pace, even while some of the fringe neighborhoods are losing residents still. St. Louis has some very positive things going on in certain places, but whereas Detroit succeeded at making Downtown the core of the larger metro again (even if it has lots of abandoned areas in the immediate vicinity), St. Louis has not been able to do that yet. I really do think STL has a chance at growth again, and it does still have many institutions and economic engines (universities, medical centers, offices, arenas, theatres...) that set it apart from the suburbs and will bring the commuters in, but if it can't revive larger sections of the city into being desirable for new residents rather than just a few new apartments, I do think it will continue to struggle with being just sort of part of its metro rather than the core of it |
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Great set. I'm glad you made it to City Museum. I think in all my travels, that's the one place where I'm most glad I went out of my way to spend time there. Even though I'd seen photos of it before, it was such a trippy, unique experience. I'd go back to St. Louis to explore that more over visiting the Arch again (although that's also plenty trippy in a different way).
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Yeah... welcome to STL, where arsonists and the homeless burn down irreplaceable historic landmarks every other day. Vagrants burned down the Crunden-Martin warehouse complex the day after Thanksgiving, just as it was preparing to undergo rehab into office, retail, and industrial space as part of a billion+ dollar redevelopment of the south riverfront.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/zykIdL.jpg Pretty sure vagrants also set fire to the St. Liborius rectory a few months ago (building on the left below) which had previously been used as a women's shelter. The church itself had been repurposed as a fucking incredible indoor skate park that had received national attention (http://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/op...-liborius.html) but that burned down too, of course. https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/ay43qw.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/7hcJcrBs/Screen...2-15-22-20.png Between the fires; the parasitic, negligent property owners (many of them out-of-state); the weird, unrelenting suburban hatred toward the city (including from the business community); and the backward-as-fuck state of MO, it's a seemingly never-ending uphill battle. And speaking of parasitic property owners, the Church of Scientology has owned this beauty in Lafayette Square for decades now, and they just fucking refuse to do anything with it. https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/1aMStT.jpg Detroit is fortunate to have a business community that is rallying around its downtown, which is where most of Detroit's success has been centered and makes for good PR. Conversely, St. Louis' oblivious business community continues to triple down on suburban office parks like it's 1960 while bitching incessantly about crime even though crime is the lowest it's been in decades. |
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Also, I had originally heard about St. Liborius b/c of the skatepark conversion and that is a massive loss. That was a truly unique landmark and I'm sad that it's gone. When researching history about the city, I saw a quote something like "We don't cry over lost buildings in St. Louis because otherwise our tears would reach the Mississippi and overflow the levies" and sadly that still seems very relevant - And to kind of touch on the city/metro/state divide, it is sad to see the state have an openly antagonistic approach to the city, even as KC has become a darling of urban development in the last few years. The city has the necessary infrastructure and consolidated services to constitute a very solid ROI if investment were done properly which would benefit the state tremendously as well, instead of spreading resources thin across a bunch of low density sprawl like you said I agree that it does seem like an uphill battle though, and I second your frustration. The metro does seem very intentionally disconnected from the city in my experience. I took the train out to Clayton at one point and while the rail system does provide a pretty useful transit backbone for the city/metro, it seems uninterested in providing service anywhere outside of the main East/West corridor, which itself felt very disconnected from the neighborhoods where people actually lived. In a better world, the green line would have started to tie all the pieces back together again, but ffs i hope they AT LEAST build the Rapid bus line to replace it. Its way less of a win, but at least maybe it'll be something. Just out of curiosity, from a (I'm assuming) local, if you could do any few things to spur development in STL what would they be? On that long train trip back I spent some time thinking about it and have a few 'armchair urban planning' takes but I'm curious what someone with more familiarity with the region would prioritize |
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It's seriously one of the coolest things my family has ever done. It makes Disney World seem like the lamest place on earth by comparison. As for st. Louis being the most struggling major city, it seems to me to be mostly a downtown problem. Downtown St. Louis has very real and severe headwinds, but there are some great nabes out in the rest of the city. Anyway, thanks for the tour, great pics!! |
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Anyway, I'm interested to hear your "armchair" takes. Here are 4 of the most badly needed changes in my mind: 1) Go hard on traffic calming (way too many overly-wide thoroughfares throughout the city), zero tolerance for traffic violence, narrow roads all over the place, and aggressively expand pedestrian/cyclist infrastructure. 2) Get serious about levying severe fines on negligent property owners, and streamline the taking of neglected properties through eminent domain. Some progress has been made recently, with increased fines and a couple of prominent eminent domain threats used to spur movement (Railway Exchange and Millennium Hotel). I believe there was some legislation in the past few years making it easier for neighbors to sue negligent owners, which has been used in a couple high-profile cases. But negligent owners are a huge problem throughout the City, and something drastic needs to be done about it. 3) Expand and modernize transit: a N-S light rail line through the meat of the city that sort-of follows the curvature of the river to complements the E-W line and complete the backbone; then more bus routes, increased frequency, and streamlined fare collection to form the connective tissue. and bus rapid transit to serve the suburbs. 4) In additional to office conversions and the occasional new high-rise, the city should make it effortless to build smaller residential (row houses, town houses, X-fams) on the scads of empty lots surrounding downtown to reconnect it to the neighborhoods north and west (sadly the railroad gash to the south will be hard to connect, I think, and the east side of the river is a whole other ordeal). A big part of DT's problem is that it's so disconnected from the surrounding city, and DT residential density isn't high enough to support robust commercial. |
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