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Photo by Chris Naffziger
The view looking eastbound towards Forest Park Avenue from the Grand Boulevard overpass.
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Council Plaza.
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Broken street and sidewalk at Forest Park Avenue and Grand Boulevard.
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From "This is Our St. Louis," by Henry Hagen, 1970.
Intersection of Grand, Forest Park Avenue and Highway 40.
There is a relic in St. Louis, a bad mistake from an earlier period of this city’s history. It was constructed under dubious conditions, culling from questionable theories. For decades, this relic has quietly passed the time, this representative of failed policies, weak government, unnoticed by most St. Louisans despite its location the center of the city. It is time for it to go, time for modern St. Louis to destroy what was always a terrible idea from the day it was built.
I’m talking about the intersection of Forest Park Avenue, Grand Boulevard and Highway 40 in Midtown, just south of Saint Louis University’s campus, and surrounding the Council Plaza apartment complex. It is a morass of onramps, decaying overpasses and perhaps one of the most congested areas of the city, with Grand Center traffic from the suburbs converging with the north-south traffic that makes the 70 MetroBus the busiest in the city.
It was not always like it is today. One hundred years ago, the intersection of Forest Park Avenue and Grand Boulevard was certainly bustling, but it was a surprisingly normal neighborhood. The mansions further up Grand and on the side streets of Midtown gave way to humbler, but still reputable townhouses. Forest Park Avenue actually began its westward path towards its eponymous destination at Grand; Handlan’s Park stood where the crumbling underpass that was built in the 1950s and '60s urban renewal now slowly collapses. Alexander Handlan, the father of Lillian Handlan Lemp, owned the private park where several early baseball teams played. Saint Louis University's athletics department apparently shared the field as well. Further south, Market Street, and alternately Manchester Road or Vandeventer, cut diagonally southwest.
I am not under any impression that the area around Forest Park Avenue and Grand Boulevard, the Mill Creek Valley, was perfect. By the 1950s, when urban renewal began, the beautiful Italianate and Second Empire townhouses had fallen on hard times, lacked hot water or even indoor plumbing, and the area had become where St. Louis had forced its African-American population to crowd into a small, segregated area. While I certainly would argue that renovating those houses up to 20th century living standards was the best solution, that past is past, and I cannot resurrect those demolished homes.
But I will criticize the poor decisions of urban planners, who placed their hopes in reviving the City of St. Louis in the hands of the automobile. The heart of St. Louis around Grand Center was altered to create a fertile environment for the automobile, to the detriment of everyone else. First, Market Street became a limited access highway, with Grand Boulevard now passing over the street in a viaduct. North of there, Grand also passed over Forest Park Avenue, now extended to Highway 40; that overpass is now crumbling, and will need to be replaced. Hopefully, the City’s decision to eliminate the overpass at Kingshighway and Forest Park Parkway/Avenue bodes well for the eventual elimination of the Grand overpass.
The spaghetti-like intersection of Forest Park Avenue and Highway 40 is a testament to automobile culture taking priority over everyone less. Look at Google Maps; the sheer amount of wasted space taken up by these ramps and their grassy medians take away valuable tax-generating real estate in the heart of the city. Likewise, the double decker lanes of Highway 40, built later, are dangerous in winter conditions, and they create an inhospitable environment for pedestrians walking on Grand. I shudder to think what it is like for those on foot trying to cross the westbound on-ramp onto Highway 40 from Grand—drivers rarely yield for pedestrians, and the width of the on-ramp entrance is much wider than a single lane, making the distance to cross on foot even more dangerous.
What is the solution? It is simple. The solution to the morass of broken asphalt, crumbling overpasses and roaring traffic requires St. Louis to look to the past design of the neighborhood. I am not claiming that every aspect of St. Louis’s past is worth emulating, but I do know that the built environment was much more equitable for pedestrians. The interstate-like entrance ramps from Forest Park Avenue to Highway 40 should be replaced, removing the huge swaths of dead space, and allowing for a safer pedestrian environment. I feel bad for the residents of the Council Plaza apartment buildings; most are elderly, and they are forced to cross wide streets, with speeding cars threatening them, and sidewalks that are shattered to pieces from wear and tear. Redesigning this area is more than just reviving historic urban planning; it is about providing an equitable built environment for all people, pedestrian and motorist, young and old.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
