Image of home in Carondelet
In the old Creole village of Carondelet, rehabbers are hitting the jackpot.
By Martha K. Baker
Photograph courtesy of the Carondelet Historical Society
Carondelet is so old that its landscape includes one of the Indian mounds that made St. Louis the Mound City. It’s so old that the lakes in Carondelet Park fill sinkholes where limestone caved in. It’s so old that Vera Rathbone Heberer, who owns the venerable O.W. Rathbone Hardware with her husband, Donald, was first hauled to her grandfather’s store as a baby in a washbasket in the 1930s.
But Carondelet is also so new that the clangs of construction on the Mississippi Bluffs townhouses will sound throughout the neighborhood for another year yet, and the Bellerive Parkway’s neighborhood-watch organization is working on a strategic plan for the future.
In the old days—“old” meaning 1767, when it was founded—Carondelet was nicknamed Vide Poche, meaning “empty pocket.” The French expression referred to the “laziness” of these French villagers—at least when the French living about five miles upriver in St. Louis did the comparing. Or perhaps “Vide Poche” referred to the betting skill of Carondelet Creoles, who sent gamblers home broke.
The Creoles, progeny of French-Spanish parents, lived with Native Americans and free blacks (and a few slaves) in the area, which had started as a French settlement. Carondelet was annexed by the city of St. Louis in 1870, by which time it had become a German enclave. The Italians came in the early 1900s, followed by the Irish. Bosnians and Thais now take their turn at being the newbies.
The area’s willingness to blur—or even honor—the lines of race, creed and culture may partly be a natural consequence of the lay of the land: Carondelet sits at the crotch of the Des Peres and Mississippi rivers, a siting that encouraged industry, which, in turn, demanded laborers.
The waterways define the east and south of Carondelet’s boundaries; the other two lines are fuzzier, but historically, says Ron Bolte, president of the Carondelet Historical Society, Carondelet edges west to Morganford Road and north to Meramec Street. Broadway runs the length of the area. Streets named for states lie perpendicular to avenues named for steel industrialists (Scullin) and poets (Eugene Field netted one street for each of his names).
The housing stock in Carondelet ranges from “scrubby Dutch” to the shotguns along Germania, from workers’ stone rowhouses on Steins Street built in the mid 19th century to splendid 1920s versions of McMansions. “It’s a rehabbers’ paradise,” says Bolte. Michael Curran began work in the neighborhood by rehabbing the Maddox School, on Virginia Avenue, into condominiums priced from $130,000to $250,000 perunit. “There are stillbargains down here,” he says. Now his Curran Redevelopment Corp. is overseeing construction of the Mississippi Bluffs townhouses, rising where the Good Samaritan nursing home once brooded 80 feet above the riverfront. “This is the best development site in the city,” he said. “I may be less than objective, but the views just don’t get better than here at the river.” More than half of the 56 townhouses have been reserved, at prices ranging from $390,000 to $600,000.
Among the 18,000 people in Carondelet, 35 percent are elders, but Curran says that middle-aged couples and young families are moving into his developments.
In addition, homeowners such as Patrice and Robert Petrich are passionately committed to preserving the area’s historic residences. After looking for three years for their dream home, they found a Mission-style bungalow on Bellerive Boulevard in 2003, paid about $180,000 for 3,300 square feet, and then put another $150,000 into rehabbing it. “Property’s still undervalued here,” says Robert, a real estate agent. “Carondelet’s a sleeper neighborhood com-pared to the rest of the city.”
“We live across the street from Woodward School,” adds Patrice. “Watching those kids go home every day makes me feel very much a part of this neighborhood.”
Carondelet—with its history and har-mony and diversity—is Vide Poche no more.
