Photography by Jennifer Silverberg
The 2010 census found that more than one in 10 Americans had moved within the previous year. Nearly half of the respondents did so because they just wanted a different house or apartment; only 19 percent moved for jobs. Where we choose to settle—or not settle—is a profoundly personal choice.
Perpetual Motion
Brian Cross, who founded the creative firm Elasticity and works there with his wife, Angela, says his parents were the sort “that just kept moving west. I was probably born somewhere around Manchester, and then over the years went from Manchester to Ballwin to Ellisville to Chesterfield to Wildwood,” he says, laughing. He began his career at FleishmanHillard and transferred to different cities for work, including New York, Dallas, and San Francisco, sometimes living in a new city for as little as a year.
He’s lived in several St. Louis neighborhoods: Soulard, St. Louis Hills, the Central West End, and currently, Webster Groves. Once he and his wife started a family, the moves naturally slowed a bit—they spent five years in University City and have lived in their current historic house in Webster Groves for five years. “We like our house, and we like our neighborhood,” he says. “But then you have a mixture of ‘I’m never moving again because I’m lazy.’ Over the years, you accumulate so much stuff that moving is a hassle, and you’re like, ‘Forget it. I don’t want to do it anymore.’”
At the same time, he says, he and his wife weren’t always sure about St. Louis’ economy. They kept one foot in and one out, in case they needed to pick up and move to find jobs or take the business to another city. Happily, he says, the city is rebounding. (Cross and Elasticity managing partner Aaron Perlut are helping in that regard; they are the organizers of Rally Saint Louis.) But Cross says he thinks his early transience was very valuable—especially as a repatriated St. Louisan. “You come back and can see the similarities between the urban neighborhoods,” he says.
“It’s very easy for someone who’s never left St. Louis to regurgitate that housing is cheaper,” he says, adding that he believes that fact is often overstated and not always true. What’s rare and valuable, he points out, “is the neighborhood feel. Some people may not understand Soulard, but when you go live in San Francisco and then you come back, you can see the similarities between the neighborhoods. You get a good sense of what Soulard is. And when you see Cherokee Street revitalizing, you realize that in those neighborhood cores, St. Louis really does have some gems.”
A Renter’s Revelation
Pat Brangle lived in a three-story brick house in the Central West End for 40 years. Then, when her husband became ill, she didn’t want him to have to deal with stairs. The thought of roof repair, waxing the floor, and gutters filled with leaves also overwhelmed her. So nine years ago, she moved to a three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment in the Towne House Apartments, located across from the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis in the Central West End. Apartment living, she says with a laugh, was “a revelation.”
A commercial illustrator, Brangle has an art studio set up in one of the smaller bedrooms, and when she’s in front of her French hydraulic drawing board, she has a sublime view of the city. She says that in St. Louis, unlike on the coasts and in Europe, apartment-dwellers have been perceived as second-class citizens. “I think that’s a shame, because most of us are putting out pretty fair amounts of money, and what we get in return is extra special. It’s community,” she says.
“There are probably 500 people in this building, and in many ways it’s like a small town,” she continues. “I get on the elevator with my little dog—there may be more dogs in this building than people—and it’s likely that I will meet a new person that I’ve never seen, and we will have short but meaningful conversations. I met a woman yesterday from Guam, and she got off before I got a chance to ask about the brown tree snakes that have overrun the island. But the next time I see her, I’m ready to ask her about that.”
Brangle says another common fear of apartments is that renters are putting their fate in someone else’s hands, though good property owners can make that less of a potential problem. And the quality of life in an apartment, she feels, trumps that of homeownership: She doesn’t miss being spooked by creaks and noises, or waking up in the middle of the night with a cold nose (and waiting a week for a new furnace). When her dishwasher quit, she called the management office, and it was replaced within the hour.
The only thing she thought she’d truly misswas her back yard and the birds. But that, too, has worked out fine. “I’m on the second from the top floor, so I get to experience things I’ve never experienced,” she says. “The weather is very exciting up here—especially if there is a tornado warning!” (She even bought several books on meteorology and weather systems, so she could read the clouds.)
Peregrine falcons shelter on her sills. One spring, she watched a pair of courting red-tailed hawks swoop and circle the dome of the Cathedral Basilica. “It was absolutely balletic and beautiful,” she says. “Then, suddenly, they broke away from their dance, and one landed on my balcony railing. I’d never seen a bird of prey up close—the talons are enormous, and it had the most beautiful bright yellow eyes, with a black dot in the center. It knew I was watching it, and it watched me. It was very tired. It sat on my railing for 30 minutes,” she says. “I could swear it was saying, ‘Go get your camera!’
Staying Put
Kathy Maggio has lived on the same block in Kirkwood for her entire life. She was born on Harrison Avenue. Then, when she was 2 years old, her parents moved around the corner to Way Avenue, where she lives today. When she was a child, her godparents lived on one side of her house, and her grandparents lived on the other. As a theater student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, she did a short stint in an apartment before she and her husband, Bob, bought a house next to her father’s.
There are two words that Maggio emphatically uses to describe her experiences on the block: safe and happy. “When we were little, one family had a color TV, and everybody would come over to that house to watch all of the Charlie Brown specials,” she says. “One family had a swimming pool… We were there like every day in the summer, before lunch and after lunch, and we ate lunch together. The older siblings helped the younger siblings. And we never did get out of line or fight too much, because there was always someone’s eyes watching us.”
Her two daughters, ages 17 and 20, are still figuring out whether they will keep the tradition by staying on the block. Maggio says real-estate prices are climbing in Kirkwood, which may be one barrier. But growing up with extended family nearby, her daughters have already absorbed “all the family stories and family rules,” she says.
