Image of the Crestwood Bowl
The kitsch of Route 66 has given way to contemporary convenience in this charming south city suburb.
By Martha K. Baker
Crestwood has no downtown, but it does have Route 66, a.k.a. Missouri State Highway 366. Part of national lore—but known locally as Watson Road—the highway steadies and supports the city. Residents have watched the community grow in the last 20 years from a little town lined with drive-ins, miniature-golf courses, and motels into a zoom-y city boasting big-box stores along its business corridor.
Like many suburban cities born after World War II, the city grew from farms to malls, from farmhouses to subdivisions. Crestwood, which incorporated in 1947, swiftly developed services for its citizens—garbage disposal, snow removal, recreation—that render it a civilized and desirable place to live.
“If there’s a heavy snowfall, police officers and firefighters will stop by your house to see if you’re all right,” says Matt Green, a Latin teacher who has lived in Crestwood for 38 years.
For 30 of those years, Green served as chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission. He remembers a time, 20 years ago, when representatives of the Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant chain appeared before the commission and were asked, “Do you plan to have video games?” When they answered, “Yeah,” Green says, city officials echoed the River City burghers in The Music Man: “We don’t want your kind here.”
“Crestwood’s not that conservative anymore,” Green adds.
Crestwood’s ethnicity shifted early on, from Belgian to German, and remains overwhelmingly white (95.7 percent). Made up of 5,111 households, the city is bounded by Kirkwood and Oakland on the north and Sunset Hills to the southwest. “The location’s great,” boasts Green. “The highways are handy, and we can walk to Crestwood Plaza, to Kohl’s and to our favorite summer place, the Crestwood Swim Club.”
For Green, “walk” is a figurative term: He uses a wheelchair. “Crestwood is well known for being accessible,” he says, referring to curb cuts, ramps, and wide doorways, which he championed from 1984 on. Westfield Shoppingtown Crestwood offers ample parking for people with disabilities as well.
For more than 50 years, Crestwood has benefited from the sales taxes harvested at the mall, which everyone still calls Crestwood Plaza. Ellen Dailey, the city’s economic-development czarina, says that the recent additions of Kohl’s, Sam’s Club and Gordmans mean the city is not putting all of its economic eggs in one basket. She says city planners also intend to take advantage of Highway 366’s state designation as a scenic byway: “We are now eligible to apply for grants to improve access to Watson Road and to beautify the streetscape along it.”
Plans for Crestwood’s future balance with celebrations of its past. Ross Wagner, a local historian, says the town boasts some of the oldest buildings in south St. Louis County, including the Thomas Sappington House, which was built around 1808. The house is now part of a complex that includes a library of Americana (kind of a Midwestern nod to Winterthur Museum) and a teahouse, where fruited chicken salad is the signature dish.
Crestwood may not have a town square, but it has a history and a future, and its main street forms a strong backbone. “We live three blocks from Route 66,” says Green, “which was the route from Chicago to L.A. We had a young visitor from England, and she said her father had told her all about it.”
