Readers OK With Cardinals 1966 Move Away From Sportsman’s Park

ABOVE: massive parking garages and a walkway are all that remain from the 60s era Busch II.

Last week readers weighed in on their thoughts on the 1966 relocation of the former Sportsman’s Park.  The single answer with the most responses goes along with my thought the Cardinals should have rebuilt rather than move downtown, but looking at all the answers it is clear readers support the move:

1. A great neighborhood ballpark, the Cardinals should have rebuilt at Dodier & Grand 23 [25%]
2. No opinion 15 [16.3%]
3. No choice but to move: the area was changing fast. 15 [16.3%]
4. Like people would have continued going to North St. Louis for a Cards game 14 [15.22%]
5. No choice but to move: too little parking and the streetcar line was replaced with buses in 1960. 10 [10.87%]
6. Other answer… 9 [9.78%]
7. A good neighborhood ballpark but it was no Wrigley Field 6 [6.52%]

It is the nine other answers provided by readers I find interesting:

1. How is this relevant to anyone?
2. A great ballpark that would’ve helped a great neighborhood evolve.
3. Cards set a popular trend moving downtown, too bad about Hop Alley though.
4. moving was part of a larger plan to destroy the northside
5. Looks like a great ballpark!
6. Best move ever, Busch II was a great stadium.
7. Why not look to the future? Use the space for something great for the city.
8. By buliding the new stadium downtown, really revitalized the downtown area.
9. Gave some definition to downtown – robbing NSTL to make the investment downtown.

Not sure where to start.  Relevant because the decision to relocate removed a source of revenue & jobs from one part of the city and placed it in another part that was bought and cleared via urban renewal.  We can’t undo the past but we can learn from our mistakes.

I don’t believe their was a plan to destroy the north side, that was just a casualty of the times. Busch Stadium II did not “revitalize” downtown, far from it.  A huge area was razed for the stadium, garages and other buildings.  The stadium did not create new development in that part of downtown.  MetroLink and renovations of nearby historic warehouses in Cupples Station a quarter center later helped offset the dead zone created in 1966.

- Steve Patterson

Poll: Thoughts on the former Sportsman’s Park

ABOVE: Grand & St. Louis Ave one block from the former Sportsman's Park

Sportsman’s Park had two addresses: 3623 Dodier St. (Cardinals) & 2911 N Grand Blvd (Browns). Yes, St. Louis’ two major league teams played at the same ballpark on North Grand until the Browns became the Baltimore Orioles in 1954.  The last game at the ballpark was played 45 years ago today, May 8, 1966. That day the Cardinals lost to the San Francisco Giants 10-5 (source).

Many in St. Louis enjoyed games from the Grand Stand for decades, others not as long:

[Dateline: May 4] 1944 – Blacks were allowed to buy grandstand seats for the first time in St. Louis history. St. Louis was the last of the major league clubs to integrate seating. Blacks had been restricted to the bleachers. (Source)

The last to integrate? Hmm, not surprised.

ABOVE: 1909 Sanborn map of Sportsman's Park

I personally feel it was a mistake to relocate what had been renamed Busch Stadium to a razed section of downtown (see Urban Renewal Destroyed St. Louis’ Early Chinatown, Hop Alley). Baseball was first played on this site in 1866! A field does remain as part of the Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club.  I wonder what Grand & St. Louis Ave would be like today if the Cardinals had remained on the site of Sportsman’s Park. Would it be a diverse & bustling neighborhood or would the surrounding neighborhoods have been razed for surface parking?

ABOVE: Sportsman's Park showing flats next to Grand Stand, click image for source

I realize the 1960s were a turbulent decade. The 8th Inning of Ken Burns’ Baseball series looked at this period. It starts with the razing of Ebbets Field, vacant after the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Ballpark after ballpark was razed in this decade as baseball fought for fans, many interested in football.

The poll this week, upper right of blog, is about Sportsman’s Park.

- Steve Patterson

Happy 45th Birthday to the Mansion House Complex

ABOVE: looking north on Memorial Drive from Pine

Forty-five years ago today the three towers of the Mansion House complex on North 4th Street opened, representing the latest in urban planning in an era of Urban Renewal. Unfortunately, the architects didn’t read The Death and Life of Great American Cities by the late Jane Jacobs.

ABOVE: center tower is set back behind fountain

The buildings turn their back side to the Arch. Sure the towers have great views but sidewalk life was destroyed facing east.

ABOVE: looking south from Gentry's Landing (north tower) on the promenade level

A 2nd floor outdoor “promenade” level was designed as a retail area removed from the street, the vision was people could leisurely stroll between all three towers.  Ended up being too removed from regular pedestrians to succeed.

But the buildings have changed and evolved over the last 45 years. One example is at the corner of 4th & Pine, the lobby for the Crowne Plaza hotel.

ABOVE: northeast corner of N 4th & Pine

This modern box is not original to the complex.  No, this corner was vastly different in 1966.  Planners & architects at the time loved the notion of developments trying to incorporate everything.  They knew they had destroyed blocks of authentic (but messy) urban life so they wanted to recreate it, just in an orderly fashion.  So what was on this corner in 1966?

ABOVE: drawing of NE of N 4th & Pine from 1968 Sanborn map, courtesy of Landmarks Association

A filling station! The above Sanborn map from 1968 shows this, with a small structure at the corner. Interesting the drawing labeled Memorial Drive simply as “outer road.”

Thanks to Andrew Weil of Landmarks Association for finding & scanning this Sanborn map.  Also. thanks to architects Fred Powers & Bill Bowersox of Powers Bowersox Associates, who told me of the former gas  station.

- Steve Patterson

Parking Garage Dwarfs Urban Building

Macy's parking garage next to Charlie Gitto's on 6th Street

This view of Charlie Gitto’s with an big parking garage on the left and a surface parking lot on the right exemplifies everything that went wrong with urban planning. On this city block, only one other building dodged the wrecking ball.

- Steve Patterson

Poet Eugene Field Was Born 160 Years Ago, At Start Of Dred Scott Case

Eugene Field’s father filed the lawsuit to win freedom for slave Dred Scott.  Soon after (1850) his wife gave birth to a son, Eugene.  He was born at the family home at 634 South Broadway, now the Eugene Field House & Toy Museum.  Eugene Field went on to write children’s poetry in his short 45-year life.

ABOVE: The Eugene Field House stands alone -- the only structure on the block.

ABOVE: the brick sidewalk & shutters are very authentic

ABOVE: walled garden next to the Eugene Field House

The house has a lush green garden to the north and south (above) surrounded by a brick wall.  Roswell Martin Field was an attorney so it is fitting they would live well.  But looking at the house today gives you a false picture of South Broadway in 1850. But before I go back let’s start with the present conditions.

ABOVE: 634 S. Broadway is shown in the center ("A"). Image: Google Maps

Of course the highways and ramps didn’t exist, nor did the acres of surface parking.  But neither did the lush walled garden you see today!

ABOVE: In 1908 a corner store was to the south and to the north more flats. Image: Sanborn Fire Insurance map via UMSL Digital Library

I don’t know the exact conditions in 1908 but I’d guess not much different.  City records indicate the house was built in 1845 – five years before Eugene Field was born. Very likely the area was all new at the time.  By the time the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map was created in 1908 the house was 63 years old  — equal to a house built in 1947 relative to today.

By 1958 all the other houses in the area had been replaced by industry and I-55 was built to the east.

By 1971 the industrial buildings were gone and highway 40 was now in place.

So much has changed in St. Louis over the decades it is important to peel back the layers to see how the city has evolved  — devolved

- Steve Patterson

Growing Up In Sprawl

Our driveway was three cars wide by three deep, plus room for two more in the garage. We didn’t have sidewalks, when I was older I biked to stores — without a helmet. At times I got glimpses of older neighborhoods.  Our family doctor was located in an older commercial district just south of downtown Oklahoma City, known as Capitol Hill.   As a kid the area was likely in transition downward.  There were vacant department stores and storefronts but there was a clear grid of streets — with sidewalks.

ABOVE: Steve Patterson on the big wheel received on his 5th birthday

My father would occasionally do carpentry work at our doctor’s house.  When he did I always wanted to tag along because our doctor lived in a big old house in the Heritage Hills neighborhood. When I’ve returned to Oklahoma City over the last 20 years I drive through these areas. They weren’t where I spent my childhood, but where I would escape to once I turned 16 and started driving. If a bus system existed I knew nothing of it.

I racked up a lot of miles for a high school kid with a new license, exploring areas that had long been written off or destroyed by Urban Renewal schemes. I preferred the remains of urbanism to the newness where I lived.

I’m curious why I desired a more urban environment? Most of my friends from high school have done as most people did and just locate in newer versions or sprawl further away from the center. Was it the used brick as the veneer on our frame house that got me curious about old brick buildings? The house next door was veneered with a pink brick made of concrete, it looked as bad as it sounds. Was it the fact I’m gay? I hadn’t read any manual on how to be gay.

Why some people have a strong need to break out of suburbia while others are quite happy fascinates me. My two older brothers were about 7 & 16 when they moved into our custom built new home, less than a year before I was born.  They had both experienced older homes before the move to the new home, in the new subdivision, near the new shopping center.  One has traveled the world with the Navy and he appreciates walkable urbanism. My other brother prefers drivable sprawl.

Does the urban gene skip the middle child?

- Steve Patterson

Before the highway cut off downtown from the river

The razing of 40 blocks of St. Louis along the riverfront began on October 10, 1939. There was no plan at that time, a design competition wasn’t held until 1947.  So St. Louis created the biggest surface parking lot on what was the original village.

ABOVE: For two decades the Arch grounds was nothing but a massive parking lot. Image: NPS

Ground breaking for construction of the Arch was held nearly 20 years later, on June 23, 1959.  For 20 years the only reason to connect with this location was to get to your car in a sea of cars.

May 2, 1961 only a boulevard separates downtown from the JNEM site. Image: NPS

Two years after the ground breaking we see that all that had changed was the reduction in the amount of land for surface parking.  By this point the city’s leaders saw this site as a wasteland, nothing we’d ever want easy pedestrian access to.

Future mayor Raymond Tucker was 43 (my current age) when the city razed these blocks.  One of his first duties as mayor would have been the ribbon cutting at the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex.  He was 68 when the depressed highway lanes created a permanent divide between the central business district and what would become the Jefferson Nation Expansion Memorial we know today.  He and others leaders at the time must have thought they were making good decisions for the future of our city.

But to them the site was simply parking.  They worked hard to get the Arch funded and built.  Tucker saw the Arch completed but not the landscaping, he died in 1970. This generation of men had experience with a very different St. Louis than us today.

Thank you to to Tom Bradley & Jennifer Clark of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial for the use of the above images.

- Steve Patterson

Help needed with info on sixty former pedestrian malls

The topic of my capstone (thesis) for my Masters in Urban Planning is the pedestrian mall.  I’ve taken on the ambitious task of documenting every pedestrian mall built in North America between 1959-1984.  So far I have documentation on 135 pedestrian malls created during this 25-year period.  Of those I know the current status of 75.  I believe the 60 that remain on my list have all been removed.  Some of you out there reading this post have knowledge about some of these.

For my purposes a pedestrian mall is a formerly through street that was converted to a pedestrian zone.

I’m looking for the following information:

• Year opened (if not listed below)
• Length (measured in blocks)
• Width of right-of-way (measured in feet)
• Street that was closed for the mall (from street to street)
• Did the mall have fixed canopies
• Year street reopened

Although you are all very knowledgeable, for academic purposes I could use links to sources such as newspaper articles, organization/city websites and such that have the information I seek.

Alphabetical listing by city (mall name, city, state, year opened):

1. Hamilton Mall Allentown Pennsylvania 1973
2. Ann Arbor Michigan
3. Lexington Mall Baltimore Maryland 1974
4. Downtown Mall Centrallia Illinois 1970
5. Neil Street Champaign Illinois
6. City Center Mall Coos Bay Oregon 1969
7. Stoneplace Mall Dallas Texas 1965
8. Vermillion Park Mall Danville Illinois 1967
9. Landmark Mall Decatur Illinois 1970
10. Town Clock Plaza Dubuque Iowa 1971
11. Elgin Illinois
12. Downtown Mall Erie Pennsylvania 1974
13. Fargo North Dakota
14. Franklin Commons Fayetteville North Carolina
15. Las Olas Boulevard Fort Lauderdale Florida
16. St. Clair Mall Frankfort Kentucky 1974
17. Downtown Plaza Freeport Illinois 1968
18. Central Plaza Galveston Texas 1971
19. Downtown Greenville Mall Greenville North Carolina 1975
20. Coffee Street Mall Greenville South Carolina 1975
21. Pratt Street Hartford Connecticut
22. Progress Place Jackson Michigan 1965
23. Downtown Mall Lake Charles Louisiana 1970
24. Milwaukee Wisconsin
25. Courthouse Plaza Monroe North Carolina 1973
26. Walnut Plaza Muncie Indiana 1975
27. Parkway Mall Napa California 1974
28. Downtown Mall New Bedford Massachusetts 1974
29. Captain’s Walk New London Connecticut 1973
30. Plaza Park Mall Oxnard California 1969
31. Main Street Mall Painesville Ohio 1973
32. Worth Avenue Palm Beach Florida
33. Parsons Plaza Parsons Kansas 1971
34. Main Street Mall Paterson New Jersey 1975
35. Chestnut Street Transitway Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1975
36. Maplewood Mall Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1974
37. Pomona Mall Pomona California 1963
38. Centre Street Mall Pottsville Pennsylvania 1977
39. Westchester Mall Providence Rhode Island 1965
40. St. Roch Mall Quebec City Quebec 1974
41. Penn Square Reading Pennsylvania 1975
42. Redlands Mall Redlands California 1977
43. Rock Hill South Carolina
44. Main Street Saint Charles Missouri
45. Wyoming Avenue Mini-Mall Scranton Pennsylvania 1978
46. Plaza 8 Sheboygan Wisconsin 1976
47. Main Street Mall Spartanburg South Carolina 1974
48. Springfield Missouri
49. Old Capitol Plaza Springfield Illinois 1971
50. Mall Germain St. Cloud Minnesota 1972
51. Broadway Plaza Tacoma Washington 1974
52. Franklin Mall Tampa Florida 1974
53. Yonge Street Toronto Ontario
54. Trenton Commons Trenton New Jersey 1974
55. Main Street Mall Vicksburg Mississippi 1970s
56. Gay Street Mall West Chester Pennsylvania
57. Center City Mall Williamsport Pennsylvania 1976
58. Market Street Mall Wilmington Delaware 1976
59. Levee Plaza Winona Minnesota 1969
60. Liberty Place/Gallery Place Washington District of Columbia 1976

Complicating matters is how a pedestrian mall was defined.  A full mall was completely closed to all vehicles except emergency vehicles.  A transit mall, like Denver’s 16th Street, allows transit vehicles.  But then we have the murky waters of the “semi” mall – vehicles are allowed but little to no on-street parking is.

East Park Central East Springfield MO (from Google Street View)

For example it is possible that East Park Central East in Springfield, MO (above, map) was considered to be a semi-mall at the time.  Or Springfield had a completely closed street that was their pedestrian mall?  Given the fact that Lawrence Halprin did the adjacent Park Central Square I’d say they did label the above a mall.

Park Central Square Springfield MO, April 2008

I’ve been here several times.  The most recent was last year.

Me with two of my nieces, April 2008

OK, 59 left. Wait, not so fast.  I found a document (PDF) from the City of Springfield that indicates the original plan was all four streets entering the square would be pedestrian malls and in 1979 they were reopened.  But other evidence suggests traffic was never barred from the Square.  So it is 60 — I’m still unsure how to classify Springfield, MO.

I’ve visited other places on the above list, such as Parsons, KS.

Parsons, KS, July 2009

Parsons, KS had a “full” mall on Main Street and concrete canopies over the sidewalks.  Today they once again have a more traditional street design.  The canopies were partially destroyed by a tornado – I just don’t know the year.

I’ve sent out requests for information on many of the above but only a few have responded.  I got an email back from one town in the Northeast that said their mall remains — a 24 foot wide alley behind their main shopping street where vehicles were banned.  Not sure I get the point of that one.  A car-free alley is better than a street with cars?

It is too early in my research to talk findings or conclusions.  I have been surprised by the number of these malls that remain.  If you have knowledge of these please share in the comments below or email me.  My graduation is 3-weeks from today.

– Steve Patterson

A Vintage Parking Garage

Downtown St. Louis has many parking garages, too many in fact.  Most are as bland as you’d expect a parking garage to be.

The curving exit ramp of the Macy’s garage at 6th & Pine (map link) is anything but bland.

One of the two Kiener Plaza garages are visible from the exit ramp of the Macy’s garage, above.

In this historic image, we see the Macy’s garage in the background as the Kiener garages are built in the foreground.

It is hard to sustain a vibrant downtown with so much real estate used for car storage.  We built garages to accommodate everyone coming downtown but in the process created a downtown less attractive to visitors.

I just hope nobody gets the idea to list one on the National Register of Historic Places.  Wait, the city likes to raze historic buildings so perhaps we should get all of them on the register.  That may be the only way to reduce their numbers.

- Steve Patterson

Pruitt-Igoe’s Foundations Have Not Prevented Development

For less than 20 years 33 towers stood on 57 acres on the city’s near-north side (map).  Pruitt-Igoe was a failure of massive proportions. The reasons are numerous and complex.  The towers were razed over a two-year period starting in 1972.  Since then the site remained (mostly) vacant.

I continually hear people make the false claim the site has remained vacant because of the old foundations that were left in place.  To debunk this often repeated myth I turned to the person that would know best: Martin Braeske.

Braeske, a planner formerly with St. Louis County, was working in the planning office for the St. Louis Public Schools in February 1994 when they broke ground on the Gateway Middle School for Science and Technology to be built on a portion of the former Pruitt-Igoe site.  Braeske, now retired, is an Adjunct Professor at Saint Louis University.  So I emailed my one-time instructor and asked him his thoughts on the foundations preventing site development:

Each tower had a partial basement for boiler and mechanical systems equipment. The ones we found were intact and simple filled in with dirt. We dug them out, punched holes in the bottom to equalize the water table and demolished the walls to about eight feet below the finished ground level. While this did cost a bit, it is not a major deterrent to redevelopment of the site.

The old foundations are not a big deal.  If anything has prevented development of the Pruitt-Igoe site it has been the city’s fragmented politics over the decades.  Late December 1992:

The federal judge overseeing the area’s school desegregation program is giving the St. Louis Housing Authority two weeks to hand over part of the old Pruitt-Igoe tract as the site for a $30 million magnet school.

U.S. District Judge George F. Gunn Jr. noted in his order that the federal court last year had approved the Pruitt-Igoe location as the site for the Gateway School.

In May, the St. Louis School Board filed an application with the Housing Authority to acquire 18 acres at Pruitt-Igoe, a public housing complex demolished in the 1970s.

The authority owns the property and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has a lien on the tract.

The Tenant Affairs Board, which represents public housing tenants, opposed the deal. It contended that under federal law it has the “first right of refusal” in land transactions that affect public housing tenants.

Gunn disagreed, at least regarding the Gateway case. In an order late Wednesday, he said the tenants’ board cannot block the Pruitt-Igoe deal. He pointed out that the site is a “vacant debris-strewn area” that has had no residents for more than 15 years.

He ordered the Housing Authority to disregard the tenant board’s intent to develop the site the School Board wants for Gateway School.
(Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12/25/1992)

The remaining 39 acres are still vacant 15 years after the school opened, becoming an urban forest.  Interest in Pruitt-Igoe remains as strong as ever.  Local filmmakers are hard at work on a documentary on the project.  See their site at Pruitt-Igoe.com (under construction) or follow them on Twitter @PruittIgoe.

Pruitt-Igoe is known around the world.  I recently received this email:

My name is Phil Bosch. I’m an artist based in Holland who is coming this Oktober and November to St. Louis to work on a special video documentary project.  I would like to investigate the memories of former residents of the now defunct Pruitt-Igoe housing complex. For the citizens of St. Louis this place is still an open space in the city, like an inverted monument of a history that seems to be forgotten.

Slowly this housing complex seems to have taken on a mythological status.   My film will be a study on its mythological status on the one side and the realm of experiences of the former residents on the other. The goal of my project is to enter, imaginatively, this huge building complex, even though its physical appearance is no longer there to be seen. While the Pruitt-Igoe no longer exists physically, it still exists in the memory of the former residents. It appears that despite the negative aura of the complex (the death of Modernism, the site’s history of crime and vandalism), there is still a coherent social group in the area who meet regularly. Thus, my goal would be to search for memories of a place where many lives were connected by this architecture that no longer exists.

I would like to document these memories. First of all, I would like to video the site of Pruitt-Igoe, which now has been taken back by nature. Next, I would like to contact people who had lived there or who otherwise have memories of the buildings.

If you can help Mr. Bosch email him.

- Steve Patterson