Strassenfest Should Have Gone to South City, not Chesterfield! 1:01 AM

This is the wurst news I've heard all week.

St. Louis is spilling over with German heritage--especially the South Side. Most know that the "Scrubby Dutch" for which the South Side neighborhood of Dutchtown was named was actually due to a mispronunciation of the word "Deutsch"--Germans.

From Bevo Mill, to Dutchtown, to Carondelet, to Benton Park West, to Gravois Park, to the Patch...I can think of dozens of locations that might have been more appropriate for a relocated Strassenfest. But loads of parking and "security" is always key, huh?

It's going to be on Chesterfield Parkway West, too? Is there even a space fit for a large community event there?

Boo, I say. What next? Hill Day moves to Arnold?

This is the very precise point at which you know your region has been irrevocably damaged by suburban sprawl: 3:44 PM

"We would also like the St. Louis Symphony to have a summer home here in Chesterfield," said Kathy Higgins, president of Sachs Properties. Cultural resources like the Missouri Botanical Garden, the St. Louis Zoo, as well as public libraries and parks get funded by tax money from all county residents, Sachs said, but the bulk of them are located within St. Louis City.

"We would like to bring at least pieces of those to other places, to Chesterfield," Higgins said.

Ms. Higgins is helping develop a sterile, suburban downtown for Chesterfield.

And she wants to cannibalize St. Louis's historical institutions for her (and other West Countians') driving convenience.

A bold quote if I've ever read one--and, as stated above, a sure sign that St. Louis has some of the world's worst sprawl.

If a suburbanite hypothesizes about handpicking away tourist attractions from the central city, it show a total disconnect between that suburb and its host region, and especially that suburb's relationship to the central city.

Far too many "St. Louisans" grow up without any urban frame of reference. The city, to them, is but another one of the myriad municipalities in the region.

Well, even in their minds, it is a special municipality--one marked by poverty and crime and undeserving of tourist dollars anyway, likely.

Shameful.

(To end on a more light-hearted note, here is some wackiness from Big Small Town Designs in reference to Chesterfield:



).

More Modernism Mania 11:39 AM

Le Corbusier did a lot to villify the notion of modernism, especially to the 21st Century urban booster. After all, his "skyscrapers in a park" concept for reimagining the urban landscape scorned neotraditional values like historic architecture and pedestrian-scaled environments.

So Modernism is an easy target for criticism. Most pro-urban scholars of the 1960s and 1970s lashed out at the sprawling collections of ranch houses. Their assemblage in floral-esque, curvilinear subdivisions; their awkward angularity; their conspicuous, even ostentatious display of car ports; or even merely their newness and perfect conformity combined with their contrast to the crumbling old Gilded Age buildings across most of America's struggling Rust and Frostbelt: all of these things made Modernism seem like an easy scapegoat, or punching bag, for those frustrated at the misfortunes of their once grand central cities.

It is ironic today that the rise of the post-modern neotraditional mansion in many American suburbs (derided as "McMansions" by many, even academics) has reframed the whole notion of the evils of mid-century modernism. In comparison to today's grotesque caricatures of historical styles, with their distorted scales, unnecessary eaves, and frontal four car garages, mid-century moderns seem quaint, unique, and--shall I say it--historic.




This is the area of my research at the University of New Orleans. I wish to analyze the preservation movement and its change over time as it must continually redress its definition of historic--both to include structures now within the magic "50 year old" time frame to be invited into history and to assess whether or not structures or neighborhoods of cultural significance should see some recognition as well.

After all, is the Post-War subdivision not the ultimate cultural statement of the 1950s? An era in which Joe McCarthy's witchhunt for the Reds inspired dutiful, utterly American, owned, clean, sane, safe neighborhoods in which productive and capitalist citizens would reside? Of course, this is too simple a view of mid-century subdivisions, and, as you will see or have already observed, mid-century architecture is wholly unique and deserves more than a second look.

Coming soon, I will post on what touts itself to be the nation's first recognized Post-War suburban subdivision historic district. But it's a surprise for now.