St. Louis’ 19th century street pattern is a valuable asset getting destroyed little by little
I love the thousands of 19th century buildings in St. Louis. Many have been designated as historic with placement on the National Register of Historic Places. I think I love our 19th century street pattern even more than the structures that fit into the spaces between the streets. But little by little our fine network of public streets is being destroyed.
One of the biggest cases is Delmar in Midtown. Delmar used to run uninterrupted from downtown through the city and out to the suburbs. At Spring St it had a slight jog and the angled street (above) helped facilitate the continuous flow of vehicles (private & mass transit) and pedestrians on Delmar.
Enter Cardinal Ritter College Prep school at 701 N. Spring. Their facility opened in August 2003 permanently erasing Delmar between Vandeventer and Spring.
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A recent article talks about the importance of the street grid and it’s intersections:
It’s a little counterintuitive, but it turns out that having lots of intersections is really important for neighborhood walkability and transit use. (Source)
The graphic from the article is so compelling I thought you should see it:
The three images are the same scale. More streets and intersections means more walkability and fewer cars, reduced pollution, etc. Urban Planners in the early 20th century knew this. Harland Bartholomew and his contemporaries sought to reduce intersections so traffic could flow faster.They wanted wide streets — but fewer of them. Rather than multiple choices of streets to take, on foot or while driving, you were given one — the newly widened roads, and later the freeway.
– Steve Patterson
All the private streets are also a big part of the problem. I live near Union and Pershing. Unfortunately, to walk to Kingshighway, I have to first walk south to Lindell or north to Waterman and then along these streets, instead of directly walking down Pershing – which becomes Portland Place for that stretch between Union and Kingshighway. This approx. doubles the distance from about half a mile to a mile of walking.
Why did you mention Harland Bartholomew when it was Mike McMillan that essentially destroyed those several blocks of City in Midtown?
Bartholomew got the idea of vacating streets started before McMillan was even born.
On the whole I think you are right about not closing so many streets. This is obviously a double edged sword. Looking a few blocks south of your mid-town example is the St. Louis University campus that has closed multiple streets in favor of a much improved pedestrian campus. On the whole I think this choice of street closures was a good one.
In my neighborhood – Shaw -we had multiple street closures with Operation Safe Street in the 80's.This brought the end to many already struggling business in the neighborhood. I think if the streets are to be closed they should be gated so that they can be easily re-opened for neighborhood events. As an example our neighborhood would benefit from the ability of some of these streets being open during the annual Shaw Art Fair.
The SLU campus could have been improved with Pine & Spring remaining open through streets. At the entrances curb bulbs would have slowed traffic. Those that wanted to go faster could take other streets. Closing the streets was not necessary to improve the campus.