“The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the opposite direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up trees, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work…enough for all.” —Le Corbusier
With all the talk of building a soccer stadium in Downtown West on a series of underused highway onramps, I thought it might be interesting to explore the long and winding road that led to this piece of land in its current state. Why is it vacant? Why does the State of Missouri own it? Why is it “not generating any revenue?” I am not going to delve into the stadium debate—I personally think that until Major League Soccer awards the final expansion teams, we should all take a deep breath and relax. Nonetheless, the story of how and why the land west of Union Station on Market Street is now available for the construction of such an edifice offers valuable insight into 20th-century urban planning and transportation trends. In fact, those choices by city planners back in the middle to late decades of the 1900s still affect our region to this day.
The area west of Union Station is traditionally known as the Mill Creek Valley or Chestnut Valley, and by the mid-20th century, it was a thriving African-American neighborhood. The houses and businesses were old, some approaching the century mark, and most were “cold water flats” with privies out back. In the booming post-World War II years, Mill Creek was marked for complete annihilation by City leaders. The demolition of the area was so complete, it earned the nickname “Hiroshima Flats.” Planners such as Harland Bartholomew had grand plans for a series of interstates that would sweep around the city, premised on the forecast that the population of St. Louis would continue to rise. The Daniel Boone Expressway, the future Highway 40/Interstate 64, would eventually gobble up a third of the acreage cleared for the Mill Creek Valley, according to a December 23, 1962, article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Plate 20 from the city's 1947 Comprehensive Plan, showing the planned interstates
It was in the City’s 1947 Comprehensive Plan that Bartholomew first proposed what would become known as the “North-South Distributor,” an interstate that would skirt downtown just west of Union Station; by 1952, he was publicly lobbying for the thoroughfare.
By January 27, 1960, plans for the North-South Distributor had solidified enough that J. Alberici Construction had been awarded a contract to construct a viaduct for Branch Street up near the Mark Twain Expressway, the future Interstate 70. The North-South Distributor would sweep south, just east of St. Louis Place Park, crash through Downtown West, cross Market Street, intersect in massive onramps with the Daniel Boone Expressway, then head southeast to hook up with the Ozark Expressway, Interstate 55. Ever wonder why you can’t connect from I-70 and I-55 to westbound Highway 40? We would have had that westbound connection, but construction halted just after the construction of the huge ramps at 21st Street in Downtown West and at the old City Hospital in Lafayette Square. There was a major problem acquiring funds; the government did not consider the North-South Distributor part of the interstate highway system, so the State of Missouri was on the hook, according to a January 6, 1963, article in the Post.
For the rest of the 1960s, the main impediment to the completion of MO 755 (its highway designation, indicating that it was a spur of Interstate 755) was the lack of funding. The arrival of the 1970s heralded yet another problem: opposition to interstate highways. A March 23, 1971, article in the Post featured the nascent rehabbing going on in Lafayette Square, showcasing a row of houses on 18th Street that would have been demolished if 755 had been constructed between Highway 40 and the Interstate 44/55 interchange. (The destruction south of Lafayette Square for I-44 was beginning at this time, as well.) Shockingly, a giant cloverleaf interchange at Chouteau and 755 was planned at one point, but by 1975, it, too, had been killed as a compromise with the neighborhood’s rehabbers.
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Looking north toward Market Street
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Looking south at 755 at Market Street
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Looking south at 755 from Pine Street
MO 755 is dead now, with the Truman Parkway the compromise built early in this century to connect Lafayette Avenue with downtown. Up north, to the west of Union Station on the land for the proposed soccer stadium, we have a fascinating mix of open land and what I call “superfluous concrete.” City plat maps reveal what was supposed to be built—and why there are such strange shaped parcels of property left behind. There are those giant on-ramps, built when the Daniel Boone Expressway terminated at 21st Street (the elevated lanes to the Poplar Street Bridge were built later, as fewer and fewer St. Louisans remember). North of the desolate on-ramps that few people use, vacant land shows how the proposed interstate hampered development, though of course Schlafly invested in its building in 1991. The area was so desolate for so long that scenes from Escape from New York were filmed in the blocks that were to be demolished for 755. Even worse, that area places a sad, shabby western end onto our imperfect Gateway Mall, anchored at the eastern end by the magnificent Arch.
The terminus of 755 at Market Street, from the St. Louis City plat map
So where does all this leave us? Picking up the pieces. The great era of interstate building is over. The damage to cities wrought by the interstate highway system is still being felt. Harland Bartholomew thought that interstates would help the central city; instead, they helped devastate the community he was trying to invigorate. I can only shudder to think what would have happened to downtown if it were further strangled by yet another interstate on its western flank. Whether or not a soccer stadium is built on the relics of the canceled the North-South Distributor, MO 755, one thing is certain: we can do better than leave that land as-is.
