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Photographs by Chris Naffziger
Lewis Place Gates.
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Photographs by Chris Naffziger
Abandoned house on Taylor in the Lewis Place neighborhood just north of the Lewis Place gates.
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Photographs by Chris Naffziger
House and storefront at Taylor and Page Avenues.
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Photographs by Chris Naffziger
Infill along Page Avenue at Taylor Avenue.
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Photographs by Chris Naffziger
Charles Elleard's House in the Greater Ville/Ville neighborhood.
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Photographs by Chris Naffziger
Urban prairie in the Greater Ville.
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Photographs by Chris Naffziger
House in the Greater Ville/Ville neighborhood.
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Photographs by Chris Naffziger
The end of Taylor at St. Louis Avenue. Taylor Avenue doglegs and continues further north at St. Louis Avenue.
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Photographs by Chris Naffziger
Elleardsville in 1875. Charles Elleard's house is labeled No. 1 at the top of the page
Ten blocks north on Taylor. As I mentioned in last week’s article on the blighting of Westminster Place, if you want to see how St. Louis treats its citizens, walk up Taylor for ten blocks, which, more or less depending on how you count, puts you at Dr. Martin Luther King Drive. For good measure, though, you should keep going for another five or six blocks until you reach St. Louis Avenue. In that mile and half, you travel through a world of differences as you leave the Central West End and then pass through the Lewis Place and Ville neighborhoods.
The area north of Delmar and south of MLK used to be part of the greater West End (and there’s still a smaller neighborhood north of Delmar with that name). As one elder statesman of St. Louis remarked to me recently, the West End used to stretch all the way from Highway 40 northwest up to the city limits. The mansions that predominate in this area on both sides of Delmar support this claim (The DeWitts used to live on Cabanne Place, for example). The West End was too big, however, and the Central West End was created south of Delmar. The rest of the West End was redlined north of Delmar. This includes Lewis Place, perhaps one of the most famous private streets in American history, but largely forgotten from the collective consciousness of St. Louis.
Where is Lewis Place? Heading north up Taylor Avenue from Westminster Place, past the revitalized Olive Street corridor, you hit Delmar, and then on the left side of the street, the majestic gates of Lewis Place come into view. Laid out in 1890 on the property of John Lewis, the private street was beholden to the restrictive race covenants that dominated St. Louis neighborhoods and even cemeteries. That didn't change until Shelley vs. Kraemer, when the Supreme Court ruled that restrictive covenants were unconstitutional. The Shelleys, an African-American family, purchased a house on the 4600 block of Labadie in the Greater Ville. One of their new neighbors, Louis Kraemer, sued to prevent their ownership of the house. When the decision came down in 1948, it sent shockwaves through America—and opened up the real estate market for African-American families, allowing them to purchase homes in white neighborhoods, including on private streets such as Lewis Place.
In fact, many of the small fiefdoms in the near North County area were founded at this point as a way of legally continuing segregation through more subtle measures. We all know the consequences of those too-small-to-succeed communities today. Overall, much of the Lewis Place neighborhood is a good condition, with a fair amount of new infill having been constructed in the last 30 years. It is walking distance to the business along Euclid Avenue to the south. This is the perfect neighborhood for the careful use of tax abatements, refreshing that last stubborn abandoned house on a block of well-preserved homes. But abandonment is creeping in; it needs help to hold on.
The story north of Lewis Place is not so happy. Passing over MLK Drive, the former Easton/St. Charles Rock Road, large swaths of vacant land come into view. You have now arrived in the Ville, where the strong middle class African-American community of St. Louis once lived. Well, technically, you’re heading down the border between the Greater Ville and Ville neighborhoods, split, originally between the former’s primarily white population and the latter’s African American community. I had always wondered why St. Louis’s power brokers had funneled its African American community to this seemingly arbitrary corner of North St. Louis at a time that the entire north side of the city was mostly white.
As I began to research this question, I discovered that the Ville takes its named from Elleardsville, founded by a horticulturalist Charles Elleard way out past the then-city limits in the 1870s. It seems to have grown rapidly, as 1875’s Compton and Dry View of St. Louis shows a small but bustling community lining the blocks along the Rock Road. Originally the community was white; I was even contacted by a descendant of those early inhabitants several years ago. From what can be seen in Compton and Dry, Elleard’s orchards filled other portions of the area, while his house seems to still be standing at Taylor and Aldine.
Because it was out in the exurbs, much of the housing stock was allowed to be built as wood frame buildings, a method not allowed further in the heart of the city. These shotgun wood frames survive around the city, but are nowhere near as sturdy as red brick. By the time Chuck Berry was born in the heart of the Ville in 1926, much of the now African-American neighborhood’s housing stock was 50 years old. Fast forward to 2017, and much of the remaining buildings could be up to 142 years old. It all becomes clear; the Ville was “sacrificed” due to its old and obsolete housing stock. But just because the housing was old did not mean that community was not proud. As First Ward Alderwoman Sharon Tyus remarked during a speech on the floor of the Board of Aldermen on February 3, “The Ville was beautiful.”
But decades of redlining of already extremely old houses helped create what we see today. The common racist narrative in America and St. Louis is that African-Americans raided prosperous white neighborhoods and proceeded to destroy them. That ugly trope needs to be stopped now. White America handed down its already decaying neighborhoods, prevented home improvement loans through redlining, and then sat back and “tut-tutted” as places such as the Ville declined. I hope this information can serve as an introduction and preview to your own travels up Taylor Avenue. St. Louis can never reassert its future if it refuses to acknowledge the facts of its past.
Segregation throughout the United States often prevented African Americans from traveling safely around the country. Published from 1936 to 1966, the Negro Motorist Green Book included carefully compiled lists of safe businesses where African Americans were welcomed. On February 16, Chris Naffziger discusses what the legacy of segregation and the Green Book can teach modern-day St. Louis. Find all the details here.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
