Annie Malone helped shape St. Louis

There was a small fire in the Ville neighborhood on this day in 1941.  The fire was intentionally set, but it was not arson.  Before we get to 1941 we must start more than 20 years before.

In 1919 Annie Malone (at age 50) donated the first $10,000 to build a new building for the St. Louis Colored Orphans’ Home.  In 1922 the cornerstone was set in place.  Annie Malone’s Poro College opened in 1917, selling beauty products to black women, had made her wealthy by any standard at the time.

Poro College was a major cultural and employment center in the Ville neighborhood.

“In 1930, the first full year of the Depression, as Annie Malone entered her sixties and moved her headquarters to Chicago, she was financially devastated by a divorce (her second) and, soon thereafter, by two civil lawsuits. The lawsuits (for liability to an employee and a St. Louis newspaper) partially crippled her ability to conduct business, which, a few years later, in 1943, during the middle of World War II, was further ravaged by a lien to the Internal Revenue Service. After fighting the lawsuits for eight years, she lost Poro to the government and other creditors who took control of her business.”

The above gets ahead a bit.  When the mortgage on the orphans’ home was was paid in 1941 a ceremony was held to celebrate the occasion.   Annie Malone, in her early 70s and having the issues described above, came back to St. Louis from Chicago to light the paid note.

Malone was the president of the board of the home for decades.  Five years after the note was paid the board renamed the home after her.

“This home began as the St. Louis Colored Orphans Home in 1888 at 1427 North Twelfth Street. Its site had been purchased for a home for black soldiers after the Civil War. In 1905 it relocated on Natural Bridge Avenue until moving to the present location. An important annual event in the black community is the Annie Malone May Day Parade, a fund raising activity for the Home.” (source)

Here is a short KETC (PBS) video on Annie Malone:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVOOjnbJ-EU

Additional reading on Annie Minerva Turnbo Pope Malone (1869-1957):

• Annie Malone Home (official website)
• http://www.answers.com/topic/annie-malone
• Wikipedia
• Western Historical Manuscript Collection Photo Database
• African American Registry
• Poro College – photo of Administration Building (Chicago)
• Chicago’s new Negroes: modernity, the great migration, & Black urban life
  By Davarian L. Baldwin, p67 for description of the Poro College campus in Chicago.

I’m very impressed with her accomplishments.  Few women born in 1869 became millionaires or lived so long.  Her business was an important element in the segregated city, providing jobs to the neighborhood.  I can’t help but wonder why she moved Poro College to Chicago in 1930.  She had been in St. Louis for 28 years at this point and with a public divorce and fight for control of the business she might have been embarrassed to stay.  But I wonder if the business had outgrown it’s impressive building in the Ville neighborhood?  By 1930 much of the city and the Ville neighborhoods where blacks could live were fully built out.  Finding land to construct a larger building may have been impossible for her.  The description of her Chicago campus and the photo of the administration building (see list above) lead me to believe that although she had strong ties to St. Louis, she realized greater personal opportunities in Chicago.

– Steve Patterson

Hey U.S. Bank, your parking garage is an eyesore!

The St. Louis Centre skybridge across Washington Ave.,   more than a block from the entrance to the convention center, will be gone in a few weeks.  For so long officials have focused on the bridge as a eyesore:

Kitty Ratcliffe, president of the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, has long advocated for the removal of the skybridge, which is located a block away from the entrance to the city’s convention facility, America’s Center.

“The bridge over Washington Avenue makes people think our city is dirty, that it is unsafe and that we don’t really care about our city,” she said. “This is going to change that dramatically. It’s going to make a very different impression.”

Read more: Downtown St. Louis’ biggest eyesore to come down -  St. Louis Business Journal

Yet visible from the convention center is an atrocity that is never mentioned — the 1975 parking garage for U.S. Bank:

Hmm, what does this garage say about our city?  When built  it was then then Mercantile Bank and the convention center was two years from opening and when it did it stopped a block to the north.  In the mid-1990s  the Cervantes Center was renamed and expanded a block to the south and given a prominent entrance aligned with 8th Street.

When visitors leave the convention center they see two buildings across the street — the ugly U.S. Bank garage and the Renaissance Grand hotel.

The hotel is obviously fine but the garage is so out of place.  It needs to go away and be replaced with a structure of similar massing but with say doors and windows.

– Steve Patterson

Poll: Thoughts on the resignation of St. Louis Police Board member Todd Epsten

Last week the state controlled St. Louis police board had a leadership change:

Todd Epsten, the last Board of Police Commissioners member appointed by Governor Matt Blunt, abruptly resigned on Wednesday after he was ousted as president by a Nixon appointee, Bettye Battle-Turner.Epsten said later he believed the board’s three other appointed members acted at Nixon’s request. Nixon appointed all three, and all came on within the last 15 months.

Nixon denied personally asking his appointees to select a new president, but said he would not be surprised if his senior staff had not talked to those three members.

“I thought it moved more quickly than I perhaps thought it would, but I think it got to where it was going to get, and now my focus is on making sure that we get a quality appointment to fill out the board,” Nixon said. It will be his fourth; the board’s fifth member is fellow Democrat Francis Slay, the St. Louis mayor. Slay supported Epsten in Wednesday’s vote.

The three remaining appointed members, Nixon said, share his philosophy that day-to-day operations of the department should be left to chief Dan Isom. He would not directly answer if he thought Epsten micromanaged.

“I mean we’ve all seen stories over the many years of the police board,” he said. “Obviously I’ve been in law enforcement and elective office for many years. I just think my philosophy has been that this is a board that should provide guidance, should provide support.” (Source: St. Louis Public Radio)

The poll this week asks for your thoughts on this matter.  Do you even care? Will it matter on the street? Was Epsten micromanaging as Gov Nixon says?

– Steve Patterson

Chess tables, chairs and umbrellas added to the Old Post Office Plaza

The Old Post Office Plaza opened in April 2009. All last year it was a bit, um, harsh.  Lots of concrete and no relief from the sun.

For 2010 the plaza now sports tables, chairs and large white umbrellas.

I’ve yet to see anyone playing chess at the new tables but in time that should change.
New Planters attached to the railing of the ramp going to the overlook is also a needed touch.  One thing is still missing: bike racks.

– Steve Patterson

Undoing a huge mistake from the 1980s

At 5:10pm Today a wrecking ball will take a swing at the 4-story pedestrian bridge over Washington Ave.  The bridge, and it’s twin across Locust St, were certainly a mistake but the real mistake was the construction of an indoor mall downtown.  The grand scheme to revitalize downtown by razing an entire city block between two large department stores to make a massive 3-block indoor shopping mecca was so amazingly flawed. The large blank walls of the pedestrian bridges  distract from an entire city block razed and the land assembled into a monolithic mall.

“St. Louis Centre, built in 1985 for $95 million, was once the largest enclosed urban shopping center in the country with 120 stores and a food court with 20 restaurants. The mall has deteriorated in recent years and now only a handful of stores remain.” [St. Louis Business Journal 2007]

“In April 1981, [Mayor] Schoemehl hit the office running. He continued the work begun by his predecessor, Jim Conway, on the St. Louis Centre shopping mall downtown and pushed to completion the long-discussed St. Louis Union Station renovation.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch 11/1/1992]

Some would say the city was just responding to the market, that retailers wanted to be in indoor malls so we had to build an indoor mall to attract those retailers.  I don’t believe in chasing every trend in suburbia (malls, houses with front garages, etc) to attract that market.  I believe in working toward the best urban public streets and spaces as possible and people will follow and the retailers will follow the people.

Older urban centers can’t  — and shouldn’t — try to compete with new suburban areas on their terms — large parking lots, huge setbacks, etc.  No, the urban core needs to provide an urban experience.  Suburbia can build all the New Urbanist developments on greenfield sites or even retrofit a “downtown” into an once auto-centric suburb but they can never offer what an older core has to offer.  The core tossing aside what makes it unique to capture a suburban audience is just foolish.

But St. Louis and nearly every other city in America did just that — ignored existing urbanism to chase the suburbanite.  So we can take comfort knowing we were not alone — other cities were just as stupid as we were.

U.S. Bank is sponsoring a big street party tonight as the wrecking ball hits the bridge.  The event is timed for live coverage on the local TV news.  The bridge will take 3 weeks to remove so don’t expect to see down Washington Ave Saturday morning.

But what about the rest of the shuttered mall? Retail will finally face the direction it always should have — the sidewalk.

“When considering the future of vacant and underused space downtown, it is important to consider what I believe to be certain realities. Among these are the following: …. (2) Given the presence of world-class shopping at St. Louis Centre and Union Station, we cannot hope to fill all of the ground floor space downtown with retail shops.”

– Richard Ward in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch March 30, 1989

How times have changed!  The spaces are not full and it will be many years before they are full but building the “largest enclosed urban shopping center in the country” set us back at least a decade if not more.

The upper levels of the mall will be occupied as well — by parked cars, not people.  750 cars I believe! These spaces will help keep some firms located downtown but we really must get a handle on our supply and demand of parking.  To me our allowance of parking spaces is excessive except where it is really needed — on the street in front of sidewalk-level storefronts and restaurants. Those going to work for 8 hours shouldn’t park on the street just as those just hanging out downtown should be able to park on the street near their destination.  Arriving at a street with zero on-street says “good luck parking” whereas arriving at a street with on-street parking spaces — even if full — says “this is a popular area.”

I’m glad we are finally at this point but we still have a long way to go to undo the many mistakes made over the last few decades. The “Bridge Bash” will be held on Washington Ave (7th-9th Streets) from 4pm to 7pm tonight.

– Steve Patterson