So You Think Southwest City is Boring? 1:10 PM

I've heard it said before by many a St. Louis urbanist: southwest St. Louis, with its tidy rows of gingerbread Tudors and neo-Georgian colonials, is "quaint" at best. It's boring at worst.

Those that desire the red brick ambiance of the city's older innards will not be disappointed by Southwest Garden--a neighborhood that stretches to Hampton Avenue on the west, which is surely an urban-suburban demarcation in the minds of some. (For many, that boundary is anything west of Kingshighway, or even Grand).

Southwest Garden is an incredibly architecturally diverse neighborhood. The eastern section of the neighborhood, east of Kingshighway and south of Vandeventer, is mostly brown brick multi-families with Craftsman or even Spanish Colonial detailing. The subdivisions just west of Kingshighway have some larger homes in the American Foursquare, Romanesque, and Classical Revival styles. There are even two International style houses on Kingshighway itself within the neighborhood. The rest of Southwest Garden is home to frame shotguns that clearly belong to the Hill neighborhood's housing stock; tract houses built in the 1950s; "bungaloids" of the 1920s; and the aforementioned Tudors and Georgians that changed the landscape of St. Louis post-World War I but pre-modernist fever.

I like neighborhoods with a diverse housing stock, and St. Louis has some of the most variation within and between neighborhoods that I've ever witnessed in an American city.

Just a short three blocks from Hampton Avenue--the encroaching suburban ethos is palpable--sits the 5600 block of Reber Place. No, this isn't the part of Reber with the tree-lined median that you'll find just west of Kingshighway. We're talking really close to Hampton, here, folks!

It's my favorite block in the neighborhood. This block rests, humble and demure, allowing "cooler" South Side neighborhoods their unfounded disdain. It's no matter, though; 5600 Reber's quiet confidence is there for those that appreciate it.

Southwest City is not boring. If it is, it certainly doesn't look the part. If you need more than architectural evidence, I'll now point you to the Luminary Arts Center and the TreeHugger installation in Southwest Garden. Oh, and Sandrina's.

Conflicting Goals on Southwest Avenue 6:55 PM

In the October 2009 Communicator Newsletter, the Southwest Garden Neighborhood detailed plans to re-do the streetscape along Vandeventer and Southwest Avenues.

Components of the project include upgrades to the pedestrian signals, crosswalk, and traffic signal timing at the intersection of Kingshighway and Vandeventer, implementation of a road diet along Vandeventer (reducing traffic lanes from 4 to 3, excep at the main intersections), installing new street lights with cut-off fixtures (which will reduce light pollution and increase lighting for the pedestrian), increased plantings of low maintenance ground cover and hardy tree species, reduced curb-cuts, and ADA-compliance.

Sounds great--and very necessary, right?

While I'm unsure of the boundaries of the project, it's nevertheless disheartening to see that a portion of Southwest Avenue may soon lose its urban charm and become less friendly to pedestrians even as another section of the road sees an upgrade.

Favazza's restaurant, located at 5201 Southwest, is seeking demolition permits for two neighborhood commercial/mixed use buildings, at 5209 and 5211-13 Southwest according to the latest preliminary Preservation Board Agenda.

These are the buildings in question:


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The full report is not yet online, so the reasons for the requested demolitions are not yet available (anyone want to call Favazza's and ask?). The best guess is, of course, a nice and spacious adjacent parking lot.

Unless the ultimate proposal is new construction on site, which I doubt, Favazza's plans to tear down two pedestrian-oriented buildings on a stretch of road soon to be improved just doesn't make sense. Again assuming a parking lot is coming, the result will be a less walkable, uglier street.

The Hill and adjacent Southwest Garden are thriving St. Louis neighborhoods. Especially in the case of the former, the record has shown that small, storefront retail with limited parking leads to a more walkable and walked neighborhood. The Hill's commercial rows are interesting--and lively for St. Louis, which is mostly starved of the brisk pedestrian traffic of denser cities in the Northeast.

Tearing down two buildings on a strip with major potential is an all around bad idea. Yet it's even less bearable when you consider the waste of public investment in making roads pedestrian friendly and then removing all the reasons pedestrians would ever want to walk them.

I think to Martin Luther King Blvd. from Jefferson to Grand as an example of a pure waste of money whose improvements only brought more attention to the sorry state of buildings along the stretch. The city and some private owners have worked together to strip most of the refurbished street and its sidewalks of any urban buildings that make walking interesting and comfortable, that give small business owners a chance to invite the pedestrians to the stretch in the first place. See what I mean?


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Here, new streetlights and sidewalks only cast light on the emptiness of the surrounding blocks.

My argument is not that disinvested places or streets with few urban buildings do not deserve to have better sidewalks; it's just that there should be a special effort to justify such investment. In other words, keep these roads as urban-formatted and pedestrian friendly as possible! Keep the remaining buildings in place; assign an urban design overlay zone that is very restrictive with regard to parking lots! Simple as that.

The Preservation Board should deny the ridiculous demolition proposals on Southwest Avenue. You may voice the same opinion at the monthly meeting, to be held:

Monday, November 23, 2009
4 p.m.
1015 Locust
Suite 1200

Please show up and protest bad, if typical land use planning in the City of St. Louis. See to it that our commercial corridors are ripe for reinvestment and pedestrians, not drivers and visual blight.

(My apologies in advance if Favazza's is experimenting with radically amazing new construction on site of these two fine buildings and is not, as I suspect, shooting for a parking lot).

Homegrown Art to Come to Southwest Garden's Streets 12:41 PM

As part of the Southwest Garden Streetscape improvements along Vandeventer and Southwest, local artists Agnieszka Gradzik and Wiktor Szostalo will be providing the Southwest Garden neighborhood with one of their famed TreeHugger art installations.

From the artists:

The Tree Hugger project is an ongoing work of Environmental Art designed to help us re-discover our relationship with nature at a very personal and intimate level. Made from twigs, branches, sticks, vines, and other natural materials, these playful sculptures remind us that we humans are still very much a part of our natural surroundings.

The Southwest Garden's Communicator reports that the neighborhood will be purchasing one (they cost $1,500 each) while seeking donations to provide more throughout the neighborhood.

I am excited to see St. Louis artists' work being featured internationally. I've seen a TreeHugger at Forest Park's Earth Day Festival and found it intriguing and whimsical. It would be even better to see this art on a city street, where it would by default make St. Louisans stop and consider the wonderful effects of trees on their city. Whether it's shade, beautification, energy cost reduction, urban runoff collection, protection of pedestrians on sidewalks, raised property values, cleaner air...trees are heavy on benefits and low on costs.

I'm no tree expert, but the TreeHugger project forces me to ponder the state of St. Louis trees. The trees imported to the soon-to-be-opened Citygarden were relatively large. Yet the typical streetscape project includes trees so small and young that they're easily destroyed by the elements or vandalism. This is especially a problem on some of St. Louis's main streets. Ever see an aerial of the city? You can spot Kingshighway, Gravois, and others by their uninterrupted expanse of gray, contrasted from surrounding verdant residential neighborhoods.

Maybe the TreeHuggers can convince the city to spend the extra amount for more mature street trees that will one day tower over the streetscapes they're meant to improve.

Streetscape Plan for Vandeventer/Southwest 7:28 PM

It's great to see neighborhood organizations taking such a proactive role in physical planning. In this case, the Southwest Garden Neighborhood Association has prepared this document, a streetscape plan for Vandeventer and Southwest Avenues which apparently has gotten funding in the proposed St. Louis Area infrastructure stimulus package.

Here is a preview:

From Miscellaneous Items

I love to see rain gardens included. They're a great way for the city to beautify itself and to mitigate urban runoff at the same time!

(Thanks go to Michael for alerting me to this plan.)

EDIT: Thanks go to Lana for making me realize I linked to the document that was downloaded to my desktop. Link should be fixed!