A plea for a more walkable—and less car-centric—St. Louis

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Bi-State Development agency, via Wikimedia Commons

St. Louis during a more pedestrian-friendly era: the #32 Wellston streetcar on Hamilton approadhing Enright, 1963

A Tale of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens in 1859, revolutionized the concept of the historical novel, where an author places fictional characters inside the framework of real events. While the novel, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, boasts a plethora of famous characters, such as Charles Darnay or Sidney Carton, the one figure that has long stood out to me was the Marquis St. Evrémonde, the cruel but now largely politically irrelevant nobleman in the court of Louis XVI. The uncle of Darnay, the Marquis holds those of lower social status in contempt, paternalistically legitimizing his abusive behavior by claiming that the peasantry lack the ability to control their own vices.

As usual, while in a hurry to get back to his country chateau, the Marquis orders his driver to whip the horses to a breakneck speed, careening through the streets of Paris as peasants scatter before them. Tragically, one young boy is unable to leap to safety, and the Marquis’ coach runs him over, killing him instantly. The coach stops, and a crowd gathers. Not surprisingly, having heard the Marquis’s social views in a previous chapter, he grows impatient at the peasants’ anger at this preventable death. Finally, in a callow attempt at defusing the tense situation, the Marquis tosses a coin out the window to pay for the boy’s funeral. As the coach begins to roll away from the crowd, the Marquis is infuriated to see the coin come flying back through an open window into his coach. Despite Dickens’s strong Christological themes in most of his stories, he takes a moment to deliver some Old Testament-style justice soon after; the boy’s father, Gaspard, stabs the Marquis to death in his own bed.

I’d been thinking about the Marquis St. Evrémonde a lot lately, as I observe the City of St. Louis move inexorably from being a pedestrian-based city to one where the automobile is considered first, and “peasants” on foot are viewed as an afterthought, even with suspicion. Recently, I was involved in a discussion with a small group of voters and one of the major mayoral candidates. One voter brought up the importance of sustainability, such as the allowance of solar panels on historic properties. But St. Louis was originally designed to be sustainable, I interjected.

Look at the street grid. Blocks tend to be rectangular, and are arranged lengthwise in the direction of downtown, enabling pedestrians to walk the shortest route to either the central city or to mass transit, now decimated, giving them access to the entirety of St. Louis. Major traffic arteries, such as Broadway, Jefferson, and Grand are laid out approximately one mile apart, like ribs on a backbone, with east-west streets such as Lindell serving as vertebrae. Consequently, shoppers not content with the plethora of once-ubiquitous corner stores could easily walk to major commercial districts such as South Grand or Cherokee Street in around 10 minutes. Is anyone surprised that the rebirth of many South Side neighborhoods is occurring near pedestrian and transit-friendly corridors?

I am under no naïve impression that 19th century St. Louis, with its emphasis on the pedestrian as the primary component of a transportation network, was without flaws. Old newspaper stories illustrate that there were still plenty of pedestrian deaths even with only a fraction of fast-moving vehicles on the road. But as I learned from a visit to Rome, and throughout Italy, that even with the advent of the automobile, city planners and society in general can still force the internal combustion engine to play second fiddle to the lowly pedestrian. In one of the most amazing moments of all my travels in Europe, I watched as pedestrians, overflowing on the narrow sidewalks of the Corso, the main north-south artery through the historic core of Rome, take over the streets, not as some defiant act, but for simple practicality. There were so many pedestrians that automobile traffic lanes were commandeered by citizens to keep the throng of people moving up and down the street. What an outrage! And what did the police and few cars driving up the Corso do? Nothing! In at least many parts of Italy, pedestrians and their rights take precedent over other types of vehicles. Taxis crept along at 2 mph, and their drivers respected what Italian society demands from them.

Rome has faced numerous attempts over the centuries to widen its main streets to accommodate larger vehicles, starting famously in the 17th century when coach owners complained of the difficulty of their horses making turns in the city’s narrow streets. Rome’s leaders stood fast, and a walkable, robust, and thriving city remains to this day. But much of St. Louis’s leadership wallows in parochialism, with the tired and intellectually failed belief that there is little to learn from other places in the world. One of the most provincial members of the board of aldermen has been actively attacking Treasurer Tishaura Jones’ business trips to Europe. Heaven forbid our leaders learn from the successes of other cultures around the world.

Back to the Marquis St. Evrémonde: if he were not a fictional character, I would be convinced that he and his family had settled in St. Louis, his descendants tearing up the streets of the city at absurd speeds, judging from the pitiable lack of concern drivers show towards pedestrians in this region. Just this weekend, a woman killed a boy, 10-year-old Brinyn Leachman, and fled the scene of the collision. The Marquis would certainly approve. And much to my dismay, I recently read of the death of a couple in North County, where a driver “lost control” of her vehicle, hopped the curb and struck them. In a sad, ironic twist, the woman killed had been featured in a Post-Dispatch article about low wage workers being forced to walk on roads without sidewalks. The woman who killed the two innocent pedestrians plead down to a single charge, which included a small fine of just over one hundred dollars. The article noted that she had not paid the fine yet, the paltry punishment for killing two people. Even the Marquis St. Evrémonde possessed enough decency to toss a coin out the window.

Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.