Intern Learned How To Be A City Dweller

The following is a guest post from Brandon Sampson, my research intern this semester – SP:

Cities reflect their builders and inhabitants. In a way cities are like living organisms, constantly growing, dying, and changing. This past semester working with Steve, I have started to learn how to be a city dweller. This might seem like a rather silly statement. If you live in an urban area, you live in an urban area. But one of the many things Steve has taught me is that, living within a city area is similar to being in a relationship with someone.

It takes:

1. Commitment: We humans throughout our time on this planet have been shaped and helped shape the environments we have chosen to inhabit. For us to be in a healthy relationship with our chosen cities we have to take care of it. This means constructing environments that are conducive to human interaction and growth. City dwellers have to be committed to the urban space, so the city evolves in ways that help the community grow.
2. Listening: The cities have a language of their own. A dweller has to pay attention to the language of the urban environment. Everyone once and awhile, an urbanite needs to stop, ask, and think “What is the city telling me?” If people pay attention, they can know if something is helping their communities grow or shrink. Perhaps it can be as simple as a street diet to allow more pedestrian-friendly walkways, or as big as examining the ways a city segregates populations from each other.
3. Time: Cities can be as authentic as we want them to be. We can allow companies and government policies run how cities develop, or we urbanites can be active in the process and help guide policies in ways that are conducive to the surrounding community. Also it takes learning. Proper city development has become a lost art among Americans, as a century of bad city development has manipulated how we think a city should be. Steve throughout the semester has given me the chance to read books that reveal how we can learn from our mistakes and begin the steady and slow process of helping construct healthy environments.
4. A little bit of love: All living things need a little bit of lovin’. Cities are no different. This means the physical city and those that live inside them. Remembering the little things, such as a sidewalk that needs repaving or a ramp that needs to be replaced. These little and big things help connect people together. Allowing diverse communities to coexist and work and play with each other is essential to a livable urban space.

But above all, the single most important lesson I’ve learned from interning with Steve about urban environments is how to see everything in the city as interconnected. He has done this by giving me the resources to learn and explore the policies, history, and process a city has to undergo to function and expand. And what is the most important part of this is interconnectness is that it is possible for anyone to learn the things I learned.

— Brandon Sampson

Brandon, a suburban Tulsa native, is an undergrad at Saint Louis University. He’ll be studying in Budapest in Spring 2014.

Lindell & Euclid: Worth the Wait

In April 2006 it looked like Opus Development would be moving forward on a high-rise condo tower at the NE corner of Lindell & Euclid. They’d revised the base and been granted a variance to permit the height. However, the project was abandoned even before the economy crashed.

Now Opus is back with a new proposal for the corner, Ald. Lyda Krewson tweeted on December 6th “Lindell Residences proposed for Lindell/Euclid – 217 first class apts.” with this pic attached:

Back in 2006 the historic code required heights to be relative to other buildings. The language, like many of our historic codes, was poorly written. Today the Central West End’s form-based code isn’t wishy-washy: maximum of 12 stories at this location.

The new form-based code and the mixed-use project one block south with apartments over a Whole Foods likely renewed interest in this conner. Ok, it is apartments instead of $300k condos. No big deal, when I rented an efficiency in The President 2 doors to the east in 1990 an A.G. Edwards VP rented the large apartment next door! Rental apartments aren’t a bad thing at all.

While a tall tower makes the skyline more interesting, the latest proposal will have a bigger positive impact. The decision to go underground with most of the parking makes the base more appropriate.

I’m glad the 26-story building proposed in 2006 didn’t happen, the new proposal was worth the wait.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Will Your Household Have a Christmas Tree? If So, What Type?

When my boyfriend moved in with me in February he said he’ll wanted to put up Christmas decorations, including a tree.  I’m atheist and he’s agnostic, but Christmas is one of his favorite holidays. It was a long way off so I agreed.

A Christmas tree in a non-Christian home? Sure, a recent study even showed that Christmas trees appear in some Jewish households too:

About a third of Jews (32%) say they had a Christmas tree in their home last year, including 27% of Jews by religion and 51% of Jews of no religion. Erecting a Christmas tree is especially common among Jews who are married to non-Jews; 71% of this group says they put up a tree last year.

Compared with younger Jews, those 65 and older are somewhat less likely to have had a Christmas tree last year. And relatively few Orthodox Jews, including just 1% of Ultra-Orthodox Jews, say there was a Christmas tree in their home last year. (Pew Research)

By ’73 or ’74 we stopped using the aluminum tree, we got a new green artificial tree from Montgomery Ward or Sears. We never had a cut tree. My maternal grandparents were very religious Mennonites, but they never had a tree of any kind. Probably deemed too flashy.

For budget reasons we got a very small white artificial tree for this year, adorned with four South Park ornaments I had. We also decorated our front door.  For next year I’m not crazy about a cut tree — what he’s used to. Why should a tree have to die just to hold lights & ornaments for a few weeks?

Next year I’d like to do a live Christmas tree, I just need to figure out where it’ll get planted after we’re done with it. Can it get planted in a city park?

The poll question this week asks if your household will have a tree and, if so, what type? The poll is in the right sidebar, results will be published on Wednesday December 25th.

— Steve Patterson

2005 Locust Street: Photographic Inventor Miles Ainscough Seed Died A Century Ago

Just a few blocks west of my loft, a St. Louisan died 100 years ago. I enjoy these things because they send me on a chase looking for information and places to photograph.

Here’s what caught my attention back in February:

Manufacturer of the first x-ray plates Miles Ainscough Seed

Born February 24, 1843

Died December 14, 1913 [Note: Seed’s memorial on Find-A-Grave says he died ten days earlier, on December 4, 1013.]

Residence: The M.A. Seed Dry Plate Company worked from the building at 2005 Locust

Born in Preston, England, Miles Ainscough Seed came to St. Louis in 1865 to search out better scientific opportunities, and he began working in a photographic gallery. He worked in his spare time simplifying and the process for producing photographic negatives. He formed the M.A. Seed Dry Plate Company in St. Louis in 1882, and began to manufacture his new photographic dry plates and film. Among other innovations such a positive celluloid films and lantern slides, Seed produced the first dry plate sensitive enough to be used for x-rays and astronomical images. His company was extremely lucrative, and in 1902 he sold it to the Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, New York. (STL250 on Facebook)

Ok, so maybe he died 100 years and 10 days ago. I did find some research on him but it uses Find-A-Grave as a reference on the date of death.  I’ll need to look up the death certificate to know for sure.

I did find information on the Miles A. Seed Carriage House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places around 1986:

The carriage house dates to the ownership of the property by Miles A. Seed, who acquired it in 1887 and retained ownership until 1910. Born in England in 1842, Seed began a career as a portrait photographer in St. Louis after the Civil War. By the early 1870s he began manufacturing photographic supplies, and in 1883 he incorporated the Miles A. Seed Dry Plate Company specifically to be located in the village of Woodland. Woodland was a train stop that gave its name to a diffuse community later to become the City of Jennings. It was an attractive location for the fabrication of photographic plates because of its clean air and pure water. The success of Seed Dry Plate caused the whole community to prosper. In its field the company rivaled George Eastman of Rochester, New York, and by 1902 the threat of ruinous competition with him led Seed Dry Plate to sell out. In 1913 operations were moved to Rochester, but by then Miles Seed had moved on to new endeavors in Westchester County, New York. (PDF)

Sadly the Queen Anne carriage house was razed sometime between 1986 and 2002.

— Steve Patterson

Page Avenue Extension (Route 364) Opened Ten Years Ago Today

For years it was just a controversial highway proposal, but a decade ago phase one of the Page Ave. Extension (aka I- Route 364) opened, connecting the Westport area of St. Louis County to St. Charles County.  Years before the opening I participated in efforts to derail the project, including attempting to pursuede St. Louis County voters to reject a land swap allowing the road project to cut through Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park. Originally planned in 1969, construction began in 1997.

Before construction could begin a land swap had to take place to permit the selected route through the south edge of the park:

Opponents say the extension not only will destroy the park but also will add a fourth bridge to hasten the exodus of the middle class from St. Louis and aging St. Louis County suburbs to the greener pastures of St. Charles, Lincoln and Warren counties.

“If it goes through, it’s the turning point for the downslide of St. Louis County,” said state Rep. Joan Bray, D-University City, who helped a group called Taxpayers Against Page Freeway gather more than 40,000 signatures to put the referendum before voters.

Bray said the money slated for the project would be better spent to upgrade existing roads and to expand MetroLink. (source)

Voters, unfortunately, 60% approved the measure in November 1998. Highway advocates spent $800,000 vs $160,00 from the opposition (source).

Many factors are at play in the population decline of St. Louis County and increase in St. Charles County but I have no doubt I-Route 364 played a role.  Ground was broken on the third and final phase on May 22, 2013.

— Steve Patterson