STOP

This neat feature alerts drivers in an alley headed north toward Ontario Street between Linden and Euclid avenues in Oak Park, Illinois. Embedded tiles form a sturdy, enduring stop sign.

Kinloch Telephone Company Delmar Exchange

People driving down Delmar Boulevard may not known the history of the building pictured above, which is located at 4400 Delmar (southwest corner of Newstead & Delmar). With its hipped roof, almost Gothic window profiles and prominent entrance, the building may look like a church or social hall of some kind. In fact, currently the building is home to the New Tower Grove Baptist Church. Yet underneath the layer of white paint and the exotic style lies an intriguing but somewhat mundane building.

This building is the Delmar Exchange of the old Kinloch Telephone Company. At the turn of the twentieth century, St. Louis had two major telephone companies: Kinloch and Missouri Bell, which eventually secured a statewide monopoly. Kinloch served the entire city and St. Louis County; the company built four "exchanges" in the city where calls were repeated and switched to local lines. Kinloch survives as the name of a north county municipality near the airport, but little else. Kinloch's last company headquarters stands downtown at the northwest corner of 10th and Locust streets, with its brick and terra cotta covered in a 1950s concrete skin. That building became the Farm and Home Building in the 1950s.



The architect of the repeater and switching building is Isaac Taylor, who also designed the first downtown headquarters on Seventh Street, served as chief architect of the 1904 World's Fair and design numerous important downtown buildings. The building permit for the Delmar building dates to April 14, 1902, with the cost listed as $30,000 and Edward Steininger as contractor. A second major permit issued July 16, 1923 reports $20,000 in repairs with Southwestern Bell as the applicant and Steininger as contractor. The station had been subsumed when Bell purchased Kinloch Telephone Company earlier that year.

Time is Right for Making Changes to New Mississippi River Bridge

On February 28, outgoing Missouri Governor Matt Blunt announced that Illinois and Missouri had reached a final agreement for construction of the new Mississippi River Bridge. While actual construction remains a few years away, the agreement brings back to the forefront concerns about the bridge's impact on the urban fabric of north St. Louis.

While officials long ago shelved a highly destructive initial bridge concept that included a local traffic connector from the bridge to 14th street, the current plan leaves much to be desired. There are many problems

Clearance. The bridge plan still entails clearance of historic buildings and existing business. While the path of the bridge itself is actually one of the least invasive paths possible, the affiliated roadway projects will entail demolition of dozens of buildings. Particularly troubling is the plan to wipe out all of the buildings remaining on the east side of 10th Street north of Hempstead Street. There are many occupied buildings and houses in that stretch. Most important, the part of Old North St. Louis east of I-70 is integral to connecting Old North to the emerging North Broadway corridor.

Bridge planners are more concerned with traffic efficiency than creating infrastructure that respects settlement patterns. While I-70 has some maddening issues related to placing exit ramps in odd spots due to existing buildings, those issues are small concessions to reality. Reality is that cities are what bind people together, and highways are but a means to that bind. Reconfiguring the St. Louis Avenue interchange is economically profligate; the plan entails spending millions on a road project with no economic return. Reconnecting Old North and North Broadway will cost less and maintain an existing building stock with the potential for high real estate values.

A corollary is that the presence of highway noise and pollution lowers real estate values. Why on earth political leaders would want to champion anything that lowers real estate values amid a recession is beyond my comprehension.

Connectivity. The plan still entails closure of north-south streets like 10th Street. Northside residents use these streets to get downtown. Closing the connections will stall pedestrians and add time to drivers' commutes. Closing the connections could isolate Old North from downtown. There is natural synergy between Old North and downtown, but there are physical impediments caused by a belt of vacant land, industrial uses and monolithic public housing complexes. The bridge exploits that belt, and tightens it.

Short-Sightedness. The new bridge does not address the terrible congestion caused by the poor configuration of ramps on the Poplar Street Bridge. Would the bridge even be needed if the Poplar Street's problems were fixed? No.

The bridge plan does not include any allowance for public transit. There is no space on the bridge for a street car line. That's going to seem silly in 25 years when our automobile lifestyle will be in crisis. Oh, well -- at least we can still walk across the bridge then.

Avoidance. The bridge path funnels I-70 traffic out of East St. Louis and away from downtown St. Louis. This path is a boon to people wanting to live in far-off Illinois suburbs like Highland but work in St. Louis or St. Charles counties. Sure, long-distance traffic will be well-served by a new bridge, but so will exurb-to-exurb commuters.

The bridge itself seems every bit a done deal. But are the details cast in concrete? No. There is still space to mitigate the bridge's impact on the urban fabric of the near north side. Since almost every change for the better involves reducing the project cost, changes are not only logical but prudent. In the wake of the agreement, it's time to make the best of the bridge.

Hemmed In

A resident of north St. Louis is heading south to see a friend. He drives south on Florissant Avenue but then remembers that the section of Florissant/13th/Tucker over the old Illinois Termianl Railroad tunnel is closed indefinitely. So he makes a left turn on Cass Avenue, figuring that he can useBroadway to head south and bypass downtown. oops! The bridge over I-70 is closed indefinitely. So he turns around, heads west on Cass and then south on Jefferson. That is fine until he passes I-64. Jefferson is closed.

In the kind of city where north-south connectivity is easy, this driver would not be having so much trouble. But in a city with fewer than a half-dozen north-south streets that actually connect downtown to the city south of it, he's in a bind due to some coincidental road repairs.

There is definitely a spatial dimension to our city's polarization between north and south. I sure hope that Richard Baron is thinking about this fact as he contemplates Chouteau Lake.

East Side Sprawl Connector Stalled

Gateway Connector Lacks Funding - Nicholas J.C. Pistor (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 8)

Apparently, the State of Illinois lacks funding for a $500 million east side highway that would connect Troy and Columbia. Plans aren't dead, though -- and that's a bad thing for the character of the small towns in Illinois that it would "connect."

Proponents of the connector call it a boon to the growing cities of the metro east. Careful scrutiny might show that the cities are losing investment and residents in their core areas while using annexation of placeless sprawl to offset the losses. The road would reward and subsidize an a trend that is slowly killing the small urban areas of the metro east.

Sidewalk Indecision at the Ninth Street Garage

A new game downtown is taking bets on how many times workers on the Ninth Street Garage will tear out and rebuild the sidewalks around the new parking garage. Today crews were seen repaving already-paved sections of the sidewalk on Locust Street along the north elevation. In recent weeks, the crews went through many changes on the Ninth Street side that involved installing a thin strip of granite since buried under a sheen of dust that renders it nearly invisible.

Needless to say, the sidewalks around the garage do not include street trees.

How About a Big Plan for Downtown Circulation?

I certainly don't disagree that the Gateway Mall needs massive reconfiguration. I'm not opposed to drawing more people to the riverfront. I definitely would like to see a better connection between downtown and the Gateway Arch grounds.

However, as someone who uses downtown as a pedestrian up to seven days a week, I can't say that any of those concerns is high on my mind as I walk around. One of my biggest concerns is the traffic flow. With the traffic lights not synchronized, the flow of traffic downtown is ragged -- especially east of Tucker. This creates a somewhat unpredictable environment for pedestrians, and annoyances for drivers. Perhaps the Gateway Foundation or another civic-minded group would like to underwrite a study on synchronizing downtown traffic lights.

Another concern is the prevalence of loading zones and no-parking zones. On some streets, like almost all of Locust east of 9th Street and Washington east of 10th Street, there is no on-street parking at all. No surprise that few street-level uses are found on these stretches, and that pedestrians avoid these speedways. On-street parking would help businesses, slow traffic and create a more welcoming pedestrian environment.

Also of concern is the growing number of signs, benches, outdoor dining areas and other obstructions that impede the public right-of-way. While not devastating, this problem creates hostile spots for pedestrians, who aren't always equally able-bodied. I welcome outdoor dining, but hope that the city thinks circulation on public sidewalks is a higher priority.

Then there are street and alley closures and cut-offs that force people into unnatural travel patterns. Sadly, the Gateway Mall Master Plan actually recommends new street closures. Such closures are the worst thing that could happen downtown right now. Streets are the mechanisms of urban exchange; they create economic opportunities for developers and merchants. More streets are always a good thing for a downtown.

Sidewalks and streets are our rights as citizens of a city. They create the means of traversing the city, moving people as well as goods. The success of downtown hinges on the usability of its streets and sidewalks, which deliver people to the buildings where they live, work or spend money. Big plans for the downtown area need to examine circulation issues. In fact, I would argue that the circulation issues are far more pivotal than the supposed lack of destinations fueling the Gateway Mall and riverfront plans. I think that many of the problems with people not going to certain parts of downtown is more due to poorly-functioning streets as well as a lack of places to live, work and shop (read: functional urban buildings). Fixing some of these problems will yield bigger results than any of the current big plans could.

Chippewa and Kingshighway Getting Slammed

The intersection of Chippewa and Kingshighway -- recently the subject of a streetscape program -- received some coverage from the blogs last week:

Not Pretty (Brick City, June 6)

When I Awakened, I was Mistaken... (A Six Pack of Zima and a Van, June 6)

Breaking the Tamm Avenue Bridge

People watching crews breaking up the Tamm Avenue bridge over Highway 40 just minutes after wreckers exploded the bridge piers. Taken Friday, April 20.

Years Later, Sidewalks Still Dark

In the early 1960s, St. Louis began switching from shorter single- or double-globe street lights to taller "cobra-head" mercury vapor lights. Apparently, the new lights were not well-received by pedestrians. According to "Plaza Square Street Lights Leave Sidewalks in the Dark", an article in the October 23, 1960 issue of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, new lights around the Memorial Plaza area and other parts of the city increased light in the streetways while short-changing sidewalks. The new lights were also at 400 watts, replacing those of 500 watts.

"All agree that under the city's new street-lighting system, streets in residential areas may be somewhat lighter but sidewalks definitely are darker," states the article. Concerns raised by the darker sidewalks included increased danger of holdups and low visibility to motorists of pedestrians stepping into the street.

The article quotes acting St. Louis chief electrical engineer Frank M. Kratoville, who boasted that the new lights directed light straight down onto the street instead casting light into all directions. One of those directions, of course, was the sidewalk. However, Kratoville and others at the time were concerned with making lighting responsive to motorized forms of transportation. Unfortunately, the city's effort ignored the needs of pedestrians at a time where there still was a strong pedestrian culture in the city. Once cannot know how much damage the street light system did to that culture, but years later pedestrian life in the city is greatly diminished.

Almost forty-seven years later, much of this "new" system remains in use in the city. Sidewalks all over remain fairly dark. In some areas, such as on Washington Avenue downtown and Delmar Boulevard near the city limits, recent street lighting has included ample sidewalk illumination. As the city reverses the mistakes of its past, street lighting should be high on the list for improvement.

Median Planters

Before the new Downtown Economic Stimulus Authority rushes to order new median planters for Tucker Boulevard downtown, its members should make an inspection of the results south on Tucker between Chouteau and Lafayette. There, the new median planters do more than serve the needed purpose of slowing traffic. The planters are too tall, blocking the view across the street and reinforcing the divide between the King Louis Square development and LaSalle Park. Being made of concrete, they are starting to get scuffed by cars -- and even without scuffing are bland.

And, while I am sure that downtown plantings would get more care, the median plantings on 14th Street nearby -- more sensibly planted on lower, curb-style medians -- are decidedly shabby and overgrown. It's amazing that in three short years the "beautification" plantings on 14th Street would already be so carelessly untended and the pattern of neglect that plagued the Darst-Webbe project would begin to return. Alas, one cause may be that 14th Street has been narrowed and traffic has been shunted west to the barren Truman Parkway. While broad thoroughfares like Tucker are generally disruptive, narrowed streets with obstacles like 14th Street often become dead spaces due to a lack of traffic. That seems to be what has happened to 14th Street, although it does not excuse the lack of maintenance.

A better idea for both the medians on Tucker and the plantings on 14th Street might be fewer exotic plantings and more native plants, and less elaborate plantings in general. Streets need beautification, but their primary purpose is the movement of people and vehicles. Contrary to city-in-a-garden musings, the street is no landscape. Why not focus instead on the quality of pedestrian experience?

Hopefully improvements on Tucker will be sensitive to the needs of street and sidewalk users, and not showy disruptions.

More Evidence That Street Closures Are Stupid

A friend who lives in the Eden Publishing Building at Chouteau and Dolman streets in Lafayette Square shared the following anecdote. Dolman Street is needlessly closed just south of Chouteau, allowing access to the parking lot behind the Eden building but no through traffic. Last week, landscaping crews came out and planted shrubs in the little grassy area formed between the cul-de-sacs created by the street closure. Since the shrubs went in, a truck that once drove through the street over the closure must be taking a more delicate route. Deep ruts caused by truck tires since have appeared slightly to the right of the shrubs, forming a curve that avoids the new plants.

Park Space Isn't All That BJC Threatens

If BJC gets to lease part of Forest Park, can the city not require them to reopen Euclid Avenue to through traffic? I am very disturbed that the city would contemplate leasing part of a public park to a private entity for new construction, but I am even more upset that the city has already granted BJC de facto ownership of public thoroughfares through their "campus."

The park space issue raises a huge red flag with the voters, who overwhelmingly seem to oppose it. I suppose park space is obvious community space that people generally value. Street space, much more fundamental to building good neighborhoods, is also public space and worthy of defense. Yet few people defend streets against closures, cul-de-sacs and such. In fact, some vocal Forest Park Southeast residents oppose the proposed new BJC lease as vocally as they call for making some culvert-pipe barriers permanent closures with gates or walls.

BJC's rampant expansion is creating a problem far worse than, although reflected in, the proposed lease: the creation of a virtual citadel that will sever connections between the Central West End and Forest Park Southeast (or "The Grove"). This is a terrible thing for FPSE, which is showing miraculous signs of recovery and the resurgence of the Manchester Avenue commercial district. That rebound will suffer if people cannot find FPSE or get to it quickly from other neighborhoods.

If Mayor Francis Slay wants to continue his public-defying embrace of the lease, he ought to demand that BJC provide some thing other than money in return. He needs to make sure that BJC stops closing streets and stops building parking garages that have no street-level retail or office space. Taylor Avenue in particular is a major connector between the CWE and FPSE, yet BJC treats it like their service alley and rush-hour freeway. The worst buildings, garages and lots face Taylor -- yet Metro is relocating the Central West End MetroLink station entrance to Taylor from Euclid.

Save our park, and restore our streets!

Despite Some Flaws, MoDESA is Good for St. Louis

I'm definitely a supporter of the Missouri Downtown [and Rural] Economic Stimulus Act (MoDESA), which permits cities to take up to 50 percent of both state sales taxes and state withholding taxes generated by new development projects. The law gives cities up to 25 years to continue using this share of state taxes, and restricts use to infrastructure needs.

As someone who works downtown and who has been walking the streets of downtown since I was a child, I am excited at the prospect for infrastructure improvements downtown. Beyond Washington Avenue, most downtown streets could use anything from repaving to new sidewalks. All of downtown could stand new street, consistent lighting -- the current distribution of new, fancier lights around new projects gives the appearance that the city doesn't feel that the basics are important for all of downtown. Much of downtown infrastructure has deteriorated past the point of acceptability.

Of course, the city has not had the means to make big repairs. Much of downtown's current infrastructure dates to 1950's-era projects that were built when the city still had a residential population of around 856,000 people. The sort of public works consistency possible with that tax base is a distant memory nowadays, although completely necessary to attract new residents and business owners -- and retain existing ones.

MoDESA is akin to the State Historic Tax Credit in that it levels things financially for older areas of great cultural importance that have special economic troubles that may otherwise be exceedingly difficult to address. Like tax credits, the MoDESA money is not a subsidy but an allowance to apply revenue generated in these areas to improvement projects -- and since it applies to any area in the state that matches certain criteria, it doesn't unfairly benefit cities or small towns. It just gives them some help.

There are political problems with using the money, and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay has already made moves that are suspect. For instance, the first MoDESA project was originally going to be based entirely on projects by the Pyramid Companies, and was revised to include one other project by another developer. However, this proposal will target the desolate Tucker Boulevard streetscape for improvements -- long overdue.

A disappointing move on the Mayor's part is his appointment of the local authority to oversee the MoDESA money. There are nine voting members and two non-voting members, including the mayor. The roster of the mayor's eight appointments consists entirely of longtime political players, five of whom are members of city development boards, one of whom works for St. Louis University, and one of whom is Downtown St. Louis Partnership head Jim Cloar. Most glaring is the absence of a single downtown resident. Isn't this the mayor who mentions downtown residents in every speech about development in the city?

MoDESA, however, is a good thing for the city and state despite the expected flaws in its application.

Bell Telephone

SBC is now AT&T. The merger went through today. Eric Seelig of Pointless Website [ link now defunct] asked on the phone, "What exactly are the legal implications of a monopoly that was broken up, re-forming?" I'm scratching my head on that one, too, and none of the SBC AT&T employees I talked with had much to say about it.

One of them did have something to say about the new logo (unveiled today!), though: "It looks like a whiffle ball."
"Like a whiffle ball?" I asked.
"You know the old logo that looked like the Death Star?"
"Yeah?"
"It looks like that, but like it was drawn by a child. It looks like it was drawn by a child. The letters are all lowercase, and that makes it look even more childish. Nobody likes it. Billion dollar company, and that's the best they can come up with?"

...hm. I wonder when we'll see this brave new design posted atop the massive, gray tower on Pine Street?

Ward 17 Priorities

The 4500 block of McKinley in the Central West End is an especially unappealing place -- running between Taylor and Euclid, it is surrounded by dead space: parking lots, windowless buildings and oversized medical school buildings. It's in the center of the Washington University School of Medicine complex, and it was being repaved today even though it had nary a pothole. The Department of Streets workers even parked a truck in Taylor during rush hour, backing traffic dangerously onto the MetroLink tracks.

Down south on Taylor, from Manchester to Hunt, the street probably has not been repaved in one decade. It barely resembles a street at all, looking more like an one of the ill-maintained roads in the restricted zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, or a street in a forgotten part of East St. Louis. Yet it gets lots of use and runs along blocks of occupied homes. This area has more life to it than that block of McKinley, but it remains neglected.

Reform the Central West End MetroLink station

The Central West End MetroLink station has become the least accessible station in the system. Once upon a time, the station was quite easy to access -- its entrance on Euclid Avenue pt it on an open street, there were a few back paths to the station and all was well. In the twelve years since the station opened, the growth blob of the Barnes-Jewish-Childrens Hospital has engulfed the station with new buildings and a disastrous closing of Euclid between Forest Park and Childrens' Place. The station's visibility has declined and access is not as easy. The only back path remaining is an illegal and unwise walk from the platform to Taylor Avenue, which bypasses ticket machines and validators. This path is no option to disabled persons, either. The main entrance on Euclid is obscured by the street closure, which has created an elbow flow at the Euclid and Childrens Place intersection. This flow has made pedestrian life in this area difficult since people don't come to the same sort of stop at an elbow as they did at a full T intersection. That is, they don't really stop.

Lately, a large half-block section of sidewalk on Euclid immediately south of the station has been closed for six months for construction of a new building. A covered scaffold could have been put in palce during the project's duration but such a pedestrian and transit-friendly gesture is of little interest to BJC planners.

I don't even have to mention ow the mono-use blob development of the hospital has made life pretty boring around the station -- there are no shops, no bathrooms and little visual interest.

What needs to be done to make the station better?

- Re-opening Euclid.

- Creating another station entrance at Taylor.

- Creating some strategic cut-throughs in the enormous and large-scaled hospital complex.

- Placing storefronts in the new hospital building adjacent to the station. (Tenants won't move in, of course, if Euclid remains closed south of Forest Park.)

The situation at the Central West End MetroLink station is proof that density alone doesn't make for an inviting and person-friendly built environment. Access and thoughtful design choices are essential to making a big city work for its residents and visitors.

Talk About a Bridge

The Missouri and Illinois departments of transportation will get the public's ideas about the Mississippi River bridge project at a series of meetings at these locations next month:

Tuesday, Aug. 2
Webster Middle School
2127 North 11th Street
St. Louis
4 to 7 p.m.

Tuesday, Aug. 9
Clyde Jordan Senior Center
6755 State Street
East St. Louis
4 to 7 p.m.

Wednesday, Aug. 10
Venice Recreation Center
305 Broadway
Venice
4 to 7 p.m.

Check out the St. Louis footprint of the bridge on the link above. I'll bet that you didn't realize how, uh, disruptive the bridge will be to the built environment. The good news is that lack of funding will probably doom the huge ugly ramp to 14th Street that would basically wall off the near north side from downtown. There's no way that the renovation efforts in Old North St. Louis and Hyde Park would benefit from the loss of a major street and construction of a suburban monstrosity that would take down more than a few old buildings.

As it is, there's a lot wrong with just the bridge that needs discussion.

Blocking Streets in Gravois Park?

Alderman Craig Schmid of the 20th Ward sent the following e-mail to the Gravois Park listserv outlining proposed changes to the street grid in that area of the city. These changes are the tired and ineffective methods of blocking streets and turning others one-way. In Forest Park Southeast, barriers and one-way streets have created fertile pockets for criminal activity and abandonment -- check out the 4400 blocks of Swan, Norfolk and Vista to see what effect barriers have on a neighborhood. We're fighting to get ours removed!

Feel free to give Alderman Schmid your two cents. He's the only south side alderperson who seems to have genuine progressive inclinations, and usually is reasonable. He may be persuaded.

From: "craig schmid"
Subject: [gravoispark] Proposed barricades and one-way streets to keep non-resident criminals out of area.
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 23:13:28 -0500

> Greetings:
>
> The police major for the South Patrol Division has compiled
> statistics to show that 2/3 of the folks arrested in our area come
> from outside of the neighborhoods. Therefore, he is committed to
> working with the City and neighborhoods to install barricades and
> one-way streets to deal with the easy accessibility of our
> neighborhoods to criminals. These are just proposals (which are in a
> number of wards), but the intent would be to try to put them in place
> by June. Let me know what you think.
>
> BARRICADES:
> Texas south of Arsenal; Juniata east of Minnesota; Nebraska
> north of Juniata; Ohio south of Arsenal; Pennsylvania south of
> Wyoming; Winnebago west of Jefferson; California north of alley to the
> north of Chippewa; Osage west of Broadway; Ohio south of Gasconade;
> Compton between Osage and Gasconade [Marquette Park].
>
> ONE-WAYS:
> Change 36xx Iowa to one-way north (was south); Meramec from
> Broadway to California one-way west; Osage from Virginia to Louisiana
> one-way west; Osage from Virginia to Compton one-way east; Miami from
> Arkansas to Grand one-way west; Osage from Tennessee to Louisiana
> one-way east (neighbor suggests one way west); Osage from Virginia to
> Louisiana one-way west (neighbor suggests one way east from Louisiana
> to Compton); Louisiana 34xx block one-way north (neighbor sugggests
> leaving two-way); 35xx Pennsylvania one-way north (was south); 36xx
> Iowa one-way north (was south); Jefferson one way east from Texas to
> Jefferson.
>
> Thanks.
> Craig
>

A day in the city.

PROGRESS...

There's now a construction fence and construction equipment surrounding the Arcade Building in downtown St. Louis. My teenage years were marked by countless trips to the Arcade and the City Hospital and hours spent pondering the significance of their abandonment. Now, I have turned my attention elsewhere as those who can direct financial attention to these buildings have come onto the scene.

...?

Meanwhile, the recent demolition and de-densification efforts of Sigma-Aldrich along Broadway have destroyed the sidewalk along the east side of Broadway between Cherokee and Potomac. In place of the sidewalk isn't just dirt, but rather large gravel (not even driveway grade) that causes one to stumble frequently. Should I mention that there's a bus stop at the head of Cherokee on this side of the street, and that lots of Sigma-Aldrich employees might take the bus from that stop to get to and from work?