A Critical Look at St. Louis’ Martin Luther King Drive
Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. day and I’ve spent a good bit of time this weekend looking at the St. Louis street bearing his name. Sunday I took a nice ride on my scooter the full length of MLK in both directions. Yesterday, I went back in the car to get a few more pictures. I learned something new — last year I kept saying “Boulevard” but turns out to be a “Drive” instead. Either way it is about six miles of depressing ruins with the occasion signs of hope.
From the St. Louis Library Street Index:
MARTIN LUTHER KING DRIVE (E-W). (Official designation is DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING DRIVE.) Following the route of the early trail from St. Louis to St. Charles, this street was officially named St. Charles Rock Road in 1865 and renamed Easton Avenue in 1881 to honor Rufus Easton, an early St. Louis postmaster [1805]. It received its present name following the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. King won a Nobel Prize in 1964 for his work to gain full civil rights for black Americans.
Easton Avenue, and part of Franklin Avenue, were renamed in 1972. At the time this once busy major shopping street would have been mostly intact although showing signs of neglect and decline:
“Between 1950 and 1970 the Ville’s population declined by nearly 40%. With such a drop due to “Black Flight”, the Ville businesses struggled.” [source]
It is important to note the city was heavily overcrowded at its peak. This should not be confused with density. Overcrowding had to do with the number of people per unit while density is the population per square mile. We had great density to support mass transit and local stores but an insufficient number of units per square mile. Taller buildings, such as the multi-story walk ups common in New York would have given us enough units to avoid being overcrowded.
Lacking enough units means some population drop was probably a good thing, helping ease overcrowding. However, we compounded the problem by tearing down many buildings for highways and low-density housing projects. But by 1970 the drop in population would have been noticeable through vacant houses and storefronts. The crumbling buildings and vacant lots we see today are a product of the 1980s and later.
I can’t think of a more significant street in the African-American community in 1972 than Easton Avenue. Natural Bridge never had the nice pedestrian scale of Easton Avenue and Delmar was significantly residential. Even today you can tell that Easton Avenue was the street in North St. Louis.
The #32 Wellston Streetcar line began running in 1901, helping connect much of North St. Louis with downtown. It ran from the Wellston Loop at the City Limits along Easton to Franklin and then to 3rd street. The Wellston Loop, built around 1911, served as a hub for four other streetcar lines. While many streetcar lines were replaced with buses in the 1940s or 1950s, the Wellston Line continued in service until July 28, 1963. The book Streets & Streetcars of St. Louis; A Sentimental Journey has some great photographs of this line taken in the final month of operations. While perhaps not thriving the street remained a busy commercial corridor.
I’m not a fan of buses and much prefer streetcars but one wonders if it was purposeful that while much of the city got air conditioned buses that it took extra time for the largely African-American community to also get air conditioned public transportation. More of that separate but not so equal philosophy of the time?
Experiencing the street today and seeing how vibrant it once was has proven depressing to me. The surrounding area, while it does have some positive signs, is largely stuck in deep poverty. So many forces have led to where we are today: government lending policies that encouraged suburban growth while discouraging renovation of existing properties, white flight followed by middle class black flight, closure of the streetcar line and failed policies of “urban renewal” projects.
Renaming Easton & Franklin to Martin Luther King Drive likely had little effect on the street’s condition —- neither accelerating nor decelerating it’s eventual decline. I can imagine shortly after changing the name that you had some African-Americans taking a renewed interest in the street while “hold out” whites saw it as a signal they were increasingly a minority.
On to the visual tour:
MLK Drive breaks up as it crosses Tucker near the St. Louis-Post Dispatch. MLK Drive picks up again for a block West of the convention center and then again between I-70 and the Mississippi River.
The P-D building is very attractive but the rest of the intersection is a dreadful combination of surfacing parking and a decaying plaza (shown at right in picture).
The prominent corner of MLK Drive and Jefferson features an ugly (newer) warehouse building, a surface parking lot, a non-urban police station and this — an RV park. I guess the folks that drive to St. Louis need a place where they can park their RV and then go explore in their in-tow vehicle but what does this say about the land values?
Last year I showed the building at left. I commented how the street has great buildings such as this one. Sadly, it may not have this one much longer!
[January 2005]
This weekend the same building is looking much worse. More windows are broken out while others are missing altogether. Some of the roof is open exposing the building to the elements. What a shame as this is a stunning building which would make great loft condos.
[January 2006]
As a local church expands their parking lot a building which faces onto MLK Drive crumbles. The building has an interesting facade and looks like it may have been an old theatre.
Another building across the street that I had photographed last year has now been razed.
These crumbling houses are on a side street off MLK Drive. Another house has recently been razed to the left of these. How can someone live in such an area and have much hope for society or their own future?
Sadly many formerly thriving commercial buildings are just left behind.
The 3-story building on the left of this image contains the Harlem Tap Room, an interesting looking bar that I hope to check out soon. This section of MLK Drive is on the south edge of the Ville neighborhood.
The building in the extreme right of the picture and the one out of view to the right were the subject of hearings by the Preservation Board last year where requests for demolition permits were denied. Not much remains of these buildings but at the very least the facades can be saved.
New senior housing is being constructed at MLK Drive and Compton. While not ground breaking architecture it is fairly urban in design and well detailed. This is one of a number of projects in the area
Streetscape improvements on part of the street are good. Basically they’ve “bulbed” out the curb in places to narrow the street and enclose the ends of on-street parking.
Another view of new streetscape improvements along a small portion of MLK Drive. I think it is important to send a message of hope to current residents & business owners as well as those that are prospective residents and/or business owners. My fear is that sidewalks and street lamps is a little too late.
I think the street needs something bigger to stimulate a rebirth. The best bet, in my mind, is to return to a streetcar. Before people tell me all the reasons why we shouldn’t do a streetcar let me just get those out in the open. First up is likely that it can’t be funded for various reasons. We built a dome without a football team, I think we can fund a streetcar. Second will likely be the population density doesn’t justify the expense. Well, it is a “built it and they will come” proposition. This street was once surrounded by dense housing and I think it can be again.
Now I’m not talking about some “tourist” vintage streetcar line. I’m talking a modern version. But I’m also not talking about light rail in the street. I’m talking frequent stop streetcar on rails in the middle of the street. Metro, the bloated public agency that runs our bus and light rail systems, doesn’t like running vehicles in the street. They want massive and costly construction projects that can best be described as over engineered. A modern streetcar can connect this six miles of MLK Drive to each other as well as downtown. This could be the first step in returning to streetcars within the City of St. Louis.
– Steve
Excellent post!
The theater-like building indeed was a theater, the Regal Theatre. It dates to 1931 and closed in 1986. Origianlly, the building had a lovely blue marble oon the lower part of the front elevation; almost all of that material is missing (big surprise). I had no idea that the condition had deteriorated as badly as your photo shows.
More info. on Regal Theatre:
http://cinematreasures.org/theater/6469/
There is also a nice night photo of the Regal in Ghost Town – While St. Louis Sleeps Photographs by Eric Post. Its hard to tell whether the current condition is detrioration or demolition. I took a look via google and the aerial shows the roof still intact, althogh it appears that there were some scrub trees growing out of it. The streetscape improvements certainly are a pleasant suprise for such a depressed area.
Comment on the streetcars – how noisy are they? My perception from visiting cities in Europe like Prague that still have streetcars it that they were quite noisy – much more noticeably so than a bus, for example. It could be that the technology was old, I’m not sure.
Was the “rumble” and the “clanking” associated with streetcars an issue in St. Louis before?
In principle, I agree that they seem to be an attractive and more practical alternative to light rail, for example (though drivers around here are so bad that it could cause all sorts of issues) Just wondering how it would be in practice, as in what residents of the loft district, for example, would think of streetcars down Washington, etc.
[REPLY – Modern streetcars are not noisy like the old ones. – SLP]
“The streetscape improvements certainly are a pleasant suprise for such a depressed area.”
Thank our current system of dividing up the city budget by alderman for making it possible to install infrastructure improvements in all 28 wards of the city.
Did you notice a nearby sign announcing the improvements were made possible by Alderman X?
Both light rail and streetcars can travel within streets. Light rail usually has semi-exclusive right-of-way, where traffic is only mixed at intersections, traveling for the most part in exclusive medians or limited traffic lanes. In contrast, streetcars usually have mixed traffic, or shared lanes with motorized vehicles.
Light rail can travel at faster speeds and make fewer stops, but require streets wide enough to still accommodate both motorized vehicles and light rail trains in separate lanes. On the other hand, streetcars can travel down any street of variable width, yet travel slower and make more stops.
Given the limits of the two technologies, light rail is often used for regional travel, while streetcars can serve more localized travel. For example, the Loop Trolley will serve the smaller Skinker-DeBaliviere and University City Loop area, while MetroLink stops in the area yet connects to the greater region.
Since MLK parallels both the existing MetroLink line to its south and a potential northside extension to its north along Natural Bridge, it may be better to have streetcar service instead on Grand, acting as a feeder line with localized service still connecting to more regional lines of MetroLink.
[REPLY – When I look back at old streetcar maps of St. Louis, in particular, North St. Louis I think it would be great to replace many of those old lines. My approach and thought process is different than yours Brian.
I look at streetcars (slower, more stops) as being a catalyst to rebuild North St. Louis. If we line MLK Drive with a streetcar we can hopefully begin to rebuilt the entire strip with new retail and housing, a quarter to half mile on either side of the street.
By extending the streetcar past the old Wellston Loop out to the Wellston MetroLink stop we’ve got the immediate connection to the regional system.
A North-South streetcar line along both Union and Grand would be helpful as well. The costs to construct these streetcar lines would be far less than the dedicated right of way for MetroLink and would do a better job of making the area desirable.
The number of stops proposed for the Northside MetroLink just isn’t sufficient to rebuilt North city. It will help the area immediately around the stop but that isn’t good enough in my book.
The city needs a modern streetcar system to serve the residents within the city. MetroLink can be the regional solution that gets people from the hinterlands into the employment centers. – SLP]
I’m still skeptical about streetcars given the auto traffic volumes and our overly wide streets.
Streetcar stops were in the middle of the street! In places on Delmar, there were safety islands with Jersey barriers; but in most of the city, you just had to wait in the street. That’s partly what doomed streetcars relative to buses.
What is the solution to this problem? I’m not sure I’d feel safe waiting for a streetcar on Delmar, Grand or Kingshighway even on a safety island with a Jersey barrier.
[REPLY – Our auto volumes are simply not that high. MLK Drive has little traffic. Same is true for many other streets on both the North & South side.
As for the middle of the street stops that was in the past. On side streets you sometimes get the wait island and on narrower streets you simply “bulb” out the curb at the end of the row of on-street parking to create a stop. In the latter example the streetcar runs down the outside lane rather than the inside lane. Portland is a model example. – SLP]
Thanks for this post, Steve. MLK is an important street. I often wonder about its future.
I especially liked this quote:
“These crumbling houses are on a side street off MLK Drive. Another house has recently been razed to the left of these. How can someone live in such an area and have much hope for society or their own future?”
The landscape of the neighborhood where I went to elementary school, Fountain Park, was a lot like this. The area immediately around my school had relatively little demolition, but still, there was a fair amount of vacancy and fire damage, and if you went a few blocks away, it got worse. Starting in kindergarten, five days a week I would travel from my South Side home on a slow, winding bus route that took us all over the place, through Fountain Park, and to school. It was confusing to me to see such an obviously beautiful, solid setting in such a bad state. My young mind of course couldn’t put it into complex architectural or political terms, but on a fundamental level I saw something that looked and felt nice, being destroyed. I saw turreted, fancy buildings that looked like something out of my storybooks, but they had smoke stains above their windows and in some cases trees growing inside. I came to school at Euclid Montessori one morning to see that the house next door, which had been inhabited the previous day, was a charred wreck, and to have my friends tell me that someone firebombed it overnight and that two people died. The building sat that way for roughly a year or so, before someone set fire to it again, reducing it to little more than a wall and a teetering, blackened chimney (causing half our playground to be shut down for a while, until it was demolished). We watched all of this from splintery, rusting playground equipment.
I’m not sure how to explain it, but living in such a depleted landscape does affect you, even when you are very little. As a kid, I spent a lot of time wondering why my surroundings had to be the way that they were, and what they meant. Seeing the disrepair of such pretty buildings often saddened me, and on occasion made me feel outright sick. I wondered, why here and not somewhere else? Why this neighborhood more than that one? Why us little kids, why our neighborhood where we go to school?
I’m reminded of a conversation I had a few months ago with one of the kids I worked with at the Central Library. This kid was a particularly bright young teenager who was interested in architecture, and who knew the entire city like the back of his hand. We were talking about a part of the city near O’ Fallon Park, and I mentioned that I had noticed that windows in vacant buildings there seem to get broken much faster than in other parts of the city I’m familiar with, even though overall the area in question seemed to be in pretty good shape. He said, “because my friends and I throw rocks at them.”
“Why? The buildings will last a lot longer if their windows aren’t broken.”
“There are a lot of buildings up there that are gone. You can see straight through them. So we throw rocks at them.”
…in other words, when it doesnÂ’t seem like others value your surroundings or your architectural heritage, why should you? Even though I disagree with the kid (and I told him so), I can understand why growing up in the physically depleted neighborhoods where he did would not exactly give him a lot of respect for ailing old buildings.
This has been a rambling and somewhat longwinded way of saying, you’re right—living in a collapsing, abused landscape can definitely affect your outlook, even at an early age.
[REPLY – Thank you so much for sharing your story! I can’t imagine being around such poverty during my formative years. No wonder we have so many of the social problems we now have. – SLP]
I’d like to make a few observations on some of the streetcar posts I’m seeing.
To make my case, I’ll use as an example a city which I’ve been too, exclusively used public transportation in, and most importantly still has streetcars in use – San Francisco. Not only are they still using streetcars (both cable-car and electric streetcar form) but some are also actually from St. Louis!
1) Noise – yes, they were pretty loud. But consider the age of the equipment. The newest was surely at least 50 years old, and the oldest over 100! As Steve points out a modern system is much quieter. Besides, which is louder, a 100 year-old cable car, or the 100 SOV’s each with their own tire noise, exhaust, stereos, etc it could potentially replace? I’d also like to add that even the oldest of the cars were still just as comfortable to RIDE as the newer electric buses.
2) You do NOT wait for a streetcar “in the middle of the street”. You stand on the sidewalk like any other bus stop, and when the cable/streetcar stops there you walk out and get on. On much larger artieries (such as Market St.) there were thin islands to wait on, with crosswalks to them and pedestrians only needing to traverse 1-2 lanes of traffic (at controlled intersections). Here in St. Louis larger lines such as down Grand, Kingshighway, or Gravois could easily accomodate either type of stop at various points.
3) Cable & Streetcars operated harmoniously with regular vehicle traffic in shared lanes. No special right-of-way or barriers needed. Also noted was the absense of regular bus lines along the cable-car routes. This tells me that at least along some lines purely streetcar oriented public transport was viable. In other stretches – again, such as Market St. – streetcars operated along side dozens of bus routes. You could take either/or just as easily.
4) streetcars and buses were coordinated very well, and ran right on schedule. We were able to get around to where ever we wanted, when ever we wanted. (Aside from a few tourist mistakes like not knowing where to stand for the particular stop. look for the sign – duh)
Applied to St. Louis, I could see streetcars EASILY replacing a number of “straight line” bus routes. Think Grand, Kingshighway, Hampton, Olive, Page, St. Charles Rock Rd./AKA MLK Dr. etc. They would also serve to connect the poorly-placed (IMHO) Metro-Stink stops with places people actually WANT to go to – ie Grand South Grand, the shopping plazas at Chippewa intersections, Westport, etc. I mean really, what’s with the “Grand” Metro station dumping you off in the middle of a viaduct!?
Streetcars once helped make St. Louis a vibrant, social city. They can again, if given half a chance!
[REPLY – Agreed!!! San Francisco is a great example as is Portland, OR. Modern streetcars are a good way to get from place to place. Not everyone is going to downtown or Clayton. Some might live at one point near MLK and simply need to get to the store 2 miles down the street. Yes, we have buses but they don’t attract new development the way streetcars do.
Thanks for your comments Brian! – SLP]
Sorry, my earlier post wasn’t quite on topic. MLK Drive is a fascinating street, albeit rather desolate along most sections these days.
The streetscape improvements from Jefferson to Grand, although I’d agree may be too little, too late, actually represent cooperation by multiple aldermen! This stretch of MLK (aka State Route D for most of it) is in wards 5, 6, and 19.
According to Mayor Slay’s column in the city employee newsletter Newsgram (from March 2004):
“Dr. Martin Luther King Drive
When I was first elected Mayor, the Aldermanic Black Caucus came to me to discuss the development of Dr. Martin Luther King Drive. As one of the most important east-west corridors in this city, as well as one of the most culturally significant, the Aldermanic Black Caucus wanted to enhance and beautify the area that had long been neglected.
The Caucus wanted to use streetscape enhancements to provide a springboard for economic and commercial development, and to provide construction, technical and consultant employment opportunities, especially for minority individuals and companies.
Today, I want to thank and give credit to the Aldermanic Black Caucus for their vision and leadership in helping to secure more than $1 million to support streetscape enhancements for Dr. Martin Luther King Drive from Grand to Jefferson.
This multi-year project, along with the housing being built near this historic street, will allow St. Louis Development Corporation staff and the aldermen who have Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in their ward to sell the area to business interests in a way that they have not previously had the opportunity to do. We are encouraged that this effort will culminate in a new, revitalized Dr. Martin Luther King Drive, one Dr. King would be proud of.”
[REPLY – This cooperation is good news. I still haven’t seen any plan for the various areas involved so I’m not sure how this is getting done. Any thought process involved besides just replace sidewalks and install retro streetlamps? – SLP]
I’m still not sure of the difference on this (admittedly rather minor) point:
“You do NOT wait for a streetcar ‘in the middle of the street’. You stand on the sidewalk like any other bus stop, and when the cable/streetcar stops there you walk out and get on.”
That would work ok within downtown, but the pictures of old St. Louis streetcars I’ve seen showed people standing in the middle of a street waiting to get on. Granted, they may have just stepped off the curb. And admittedly, there weren’t many cars then.
Anyway, this is a fairly minor point. I do agree streetcars could be a viable form of transit, as they were in the past. I’m just not sure how to implement that realistically.
[REPLY – The point is that this is not 1940. We can do a modern line that meets ADA through either center street stops or curb bulbs. The last thing we need are people imagining haivng to stand unprotected in the middle of a busy street. – SLP]
Will St. Louisans ride streetcars, especially lines that are deemed to run through “bad” neighborhoods. The perception of a streetcar might be more positive than a bus, but at street level and with frequent stops, they’re still not “insulated” from the environment. For instance, if there was a line that ran down Washington/Delman from downtown through Grand Center to the CWE, would people ride it? Same with say something along Gravois, up/down Kingshighway, etc…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again . . . a streetcar is just a bus with steel wheels. More people rode the streetcars prior to 1950 because they had no choice. After WW2, when more people could afford their own automobiles, they voted with their feet, as they do today in ever-increasing numbers. People are willing to pay more, many times a lot more, for a quicker, direct trip, protected from the weather and not shared with other people or “those people”.
Trolleys, old or new, are only slightly better than a well-run bus route. Because they’re cute, nostalgic or different, you might attract a few more folks to try it once or twice (I’ve ridden the “cute” trolleys in Memphis, Tampa, San Francisco and pre-Katrina New Orleans), but it won’t generate daily riders.
The only way to get people out of their cars is to a) make it painful to park, b) painful to drive, and c) offer frequent, ideally “free”, service on clean transit vehicles. It doesn’t matter if it has rubber wheels or steel wheels if it only comes by every half hour – I’m not going to wait!
If there’s money out there to build trolley lines, let’s first try offering more-frequent bus service and see if anyone cares . . .
[REPLY – Right now in much of the city we have bus service only every 30 minutes during peak times. Such intervals are not enough to encourage those that can afford a car to get out of the car. Transit doesn’t need to be free but it does need to be frequent.
You are wrong on the differences between a bus and streetcar. If Metro were to announce improved bus service along the 6+ miles of MLK to 10 minute intervals it would be helpful but it would not spark much development — developers would worry the service would be cut back or rerouted. But if we’d put in a modern streetcar line the permanence of the track and overhead lines would be a strong signal to residents and developers we mean business.
A streetcar line along MLK would not be for tourists. It would be a serious line intended to move people from place to place. I believe strongly that it would spur dense development along the route. – SLP]
I vistited Prague in 2002, and I can only say that the transportation system there was a complete revelation, better than anywhere else in the world that I have been. Prague boasts more streetcar lines than I could count, as well as several underground subway lines, serving the entire city, both the very ancient downtown and the more recently built outskirts. Everyone used the streetcars, you didn’t even have to think about it, plan for it, etc. There was simply a line within a few blocks of wherever you were, and always a car right around the corner. What’s more, there were quality maps of where the lines went, unlike the St. Louis, where using the bus system is impossible if you’re not familiar with the route. A new user has no idea where the busses are going since there aren’t any maps that accompany the bus stops. Even without a map, you can get an idea where a streetcar is just by seeing tracks in the road, and you can always follow those to a stop. I bet putting in a streetcar on Grand or MLK, which are both prime locations, would cost 5%, literally, of what the new Metrolink line is costing, and it would be easier to use. Lets hope someone in St. Louis figures out the easy solution. Here’s a question: What would be better for traffic / economic dev. in St. Louis. A 700 million dollar fancier hwy 40, or 10-15 new street car lines?
I spent a semester “studying” in Prague during college, and agree that the public transportation is terrific – add to that the fact that the city isn’t all that big to begin with. It was really easy to get around the city – about the only time you had to do any planning was to catch one of the “night trams” – which ran less frequently after the normal tram/subways had shut down. The trams weren’t that fast, but they got you where you needed to go.
Paris is the same way, though mostly subway. I think the stat is that no address is Paris is more than a few hundred (maybe 300?) yards from the nearest subway stop.
I’m not a fan of busses either, but I don’t think streetcars would be any better. Frankly, I fail to see the distinction. Both are caught up in regular vehicular traffic, both must obey regular vehicular traffic regulations, and both stop as frequently as their riders want them to. That’s the problem with buses–you get all the frustrations of driving but without its (selfish) pleasures.
I realize that a largely underground transit system is not viable for our region, but if you take a “if you build it they will come” attitude to streetcars, then why not for subways/elevated rail? It seems the most sensible option, and the most forward-thinking.
Claire,
I was very glad that you did the correct thing in scolding the teenager. I recommend the book Fixing Broken Windows : Restoring Order And Reducing Crime In Our Communities by Catherine M. Coles and George L. Kelling (Paperback – Jan 20, 1998) which can be purchased at Amazon at a used book low of $4.24.
This book addresses the very important issue of maintaining our neighborhoods and not allowing disorder (like the teen’s braking windows of very valuable and architecturally significant buildings) from turning into serious crime. I recommend it, and would almost advise informing the youth on the likewise.
It takes citizens like you who value our cities to make the difference.
Thank You,
I agree with Steve and some posters that by building a streetcar businesses will follow.
Plus, it will be easier to build one on Dr. MLK because the road is lightly traveled and has many bare blocks leaving plenty of space for “quality” development. This is an important opportunity in constructing a whole transit village linked to downtown. I only hope that aldermen, the mayor, planning, and development could promote this as a great possibility. However, it may not happen since this area lacks the financial >money to politics> political pull to make it happen. Anybody up for grassroots?
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