Downtown - a Core of Discovery 1:35 AM

Have you ever heard the phrase "there's nothing to do downtown"?

The National Park Service's answer to this is the Downtown "Core of Discovery".

With the ongoing City Arch River 2015 design competition, it's great to see the NPS express its dedication towards connecting the Arch to downtown in the meantime.

Each attraction has a nice informational page that will certainly be of use to tourists if this website is well-advertised. I particularly like the Flickr photo pools for each listed attraction. My favorite part, though, is the downtown architecture tour.

It's a 20-stop architectural smorgasbord. The tour covers the greatest hits (the Wainwright Building), the modern marvels (the Zinc building), house museums (the Campbell House), and more.

It might seem like a small step on the part of the NPS, but clearly much thought has gone into the design of this site and the marketing of our downtown. I applaud this effort and am excited that I'll be here in person to witness the more radical interventions that will be proposed this fall as a part of the Archgrounds International Design Competition.

Archgrounds Design Competition: Its Participants and Their Design Philosophies 6:45 PM

St. Louis Energized has a nice write-up on last night's "Meet the Designers" session for the City Arch River 2015 competition, which was held at the Roberts Orpheum Theater downtown.

The author summarized the five teams still vying in the competition along with their design philosophies, presented in brief, 15-minute presentations in which no questions were allowed from the audience.

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  • The Behnisch Team focused on the "needs of people" (stating that a "good city is a city with a human dimension"), as well as the built environment by calling for the Memorial to become an "active catalyst for urban cohesion." 

  
  

  • The approach of the MVVA Team seems primarily landscape-oriented, stressing that landscape (1) accommodates a humane scale, (2) provides continuity, and (3) is affordable.

  
  

  • The PWP Landscape Architecture, Foster + Partners, Civitas team (whose representative personally knew both Eero Saarinen and Dan Kiley) advocated "subtle and respectful" changes that, while transformative, are so natural that they're barely noticeable to the majority of the public.

  
  

  • The SOM, Hargreaves, BIG team stressed "making places for people" (places that are "alive" every day), as well as tying design ideas into a community's bold, long-range plans to "create economic vitality."

  
  

  • The Weiss/Manfredi team referred to three primary design categories, titled "Icon and Setting," "Connections," and "Layering Programs." The interesting facet of this team's approach was an affinity for embracing barriers (such as highways), by turning them into connections and "capturing their energy" without actually removing them.

  
  

Reading Live Tweets from the event, as well as the above summary in addition to others, I must say I am a bit worried that the most obvious problem of the Archgrounds may not receive its due attention and the needed ultimate solution. Interstate 70 from the Poplar Street Bridge all the way to the New Mississippi River Bridge is the obvious problem. Wholesale removal is the needed ultimate solution. I-70 will be re-routed upon completion of the new bridge anyhow, and connecting the Arch to neighborhoods should take this very symbolic and helpful step. An open doorway with a removed I-70 will literally allow surrounding neighborhoods a brand new view of, and connection to, the Arch. I fully endorse this concept and support City to River's effort to make this solution part of any proposal to redevelop the Archgrounds.

It's important here to note the ramifications of the removal of I-70. Does a removed I-70 promise instant development along the old interstate right-of-way? Of course not. The land where the highway once sat, upon removal, might sit as a landscape boulevard with few buildings of note for quite some years. Almost certainly, the entire 1.4 mile stretch of the new Memorial Drive that would take the place of the old I-70 will not be filled with urban-formatted buildings by the time the design competition's winning proposal is completed in 2015. This sounds very pessimistic, right? It seems to defeat the purpose of undertaking something so exciting and momentous as giving a stretch of road back to the city and its people rather than to speeding vehicles. After all, if the "new" Memorial Drive is in fact just a landscaped but largely lifeless boulevard in 2015, City to River will have failed and all skeptics of the City to River concept will have been vindicated, right?

Wrong (at least in my opinion!). An empty, but pedestrian-oriented, Memorial Drive will create an opportunity that does not presently exist--development could then locate on the periphery of the Archgrounds and create a "spine" of activity linking neighborhoods to the north (Carr Square, Columbus Square, Neighborhood Gardens, the Bottle District, Laclede's Landing, the Near North Riverfront, etc.) to their downtown. The present mess made by I-70 as it slices through a once functional grid is reason enough to abandon this alignment. Pedestrians and vehicles alike could safely maneuver a reconstructed street whereas I-70 today merely creates confusion and barriers.

As far as the new Memorial Drive proposed by City to River, and the possibility that it might not attract builders to populate the newly developable parcels, I point you here:

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The year is 1951 and these jets are flying just northeast of today's site of the Gateway Arch, which was completed in 1965. It was in 1947 that Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch concept won the international design competition. In anticipation of the competition, most of the dozens of square blocks containing an antebellum manufacturing district were cleared in the early 1940s. So, if all building were gone from the site by 1942, and the site was a surface parking lot, as seen above, by 1951, then for at least 14 years the site of the memorial was not truly public. Considering that the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial didn't even officially open to the public until 1967, we see here that the same competition that netted the ingenious Arch design caused a 40-block swath of the city to go out of commission for over a decade. (I don't count parking lots, even publicly owned and maintained ones, as public places). If this is true, then we should allow for the same grace period for a new Memorial Drive in anticipation of its own greatness. That doesn't mean we as a city shouldn't aggressively market this newly available land or that the design competition won't cause an increase in demand for these blocks. It's just a plea for skeptics to realize that sometimes, as the old moniker goes, great things come to those who wait. The old I-70 alignment's erasure will have been more than justified if, in ten or twenty years, a new Memorial Drive is beginning to kick and thrive.

Now back to the buzz over the five teams. Not having seen the actual presentation, it's difficult to pass any substantive judgment on their concepts. As written up by St. Louis Energized, I despise the idea of Weiss/Manfredi. St. Louisans have had to limbo around barriers long enough! There are no LCD screens; no garish light displays; no amount of lush greenery or ivy screens; there is no sculpture large enough; no pedestrian bridge crazy enough; no public-space-beneath-the-interstate-avant-gardeism impressive enough; no single or multiple solutions to screening and/or incorporating deadening infrastructure into the redesign. While this is surely an interesting proposal from a conceptual standpoint, the design will be inhumane, no matter how flashy it is, if it values "concepts" over people and access. So I am turned off by this description of their philosophy entirely.

I am surprised at the suggestion of the PWP, et al. crew to make changes that are "barely noticeable" to the public. We must keep in mind that the Archgrounds are quite large and that, preserving the landscape largely as is requires that activation efforts on all edges of the Memorial be stepped up considerably. People need to be able to appreciate the passive landscaping of the Archgrounds, or otherwise the respect for its presence in this competition is somewhat ill-founded.

Many of the teams correctly identified that the Arch redevelopment, ultimately, should cater to people. This is a great though often overlooked observation--especially as traffic engineers crunch numbers and determine that the needs of cars somehow take precedence over the needs of people in what should rightfully be the region's greatest civic and public space.

I would not mind a design proposal that dedicated most of its time to addressing issues presented by having an interstate as a neighbor. Remove I-70 (do not tunnel it and merely hide the problem for just four blocks). Incorporate retail or tourist-supporting services within the arches of the Eads Bridge piers. Redesign parking for the site so that the northern edge of the Memorial visually and physically connects with Laclede's Landing and points north. Landscape the riverfront itself--certainly it is one the nation's most barren urban riverfronts today. Have water taxis or some sort of pedestrian bridge to connect to East St. Louis; see to it that the East St. Louis Riverfront indeed becomes home to the world's largest architecture museum, as proposed and sought by the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation. Enhance pedestrian connections to Chouteau's Landing; allocate some funding to the Chouteau Lake and Greenway to jumpstart that project. And so on and so forth. All of these interventions would make the Arch more of a "place" situated in a context--and little would have to be altered within the existing landscape other than its worst features currently, the parking garage and floodwalls.

Despite my earlier comments, I am absolutely thrilled by the excitement over this competition. Its outcome and winning proposal could truly lift the spirits of our city and give us all a place we're proud of. The Arch, downtown, the Mississippi River, and the city deserve it!

Winners of Archgrounds International Design Competition to Frame a Modern Masterpiece... 12:01 AM

...with the Serra Sculpture, AKA Twain (pictured below).

A source who wishes to remain anonymous has leaked the winning proposal of one of nine teams behind the City.Arch.River2015, the international design competition for the Archgrounds in downtown St. Louis.

The ever-controversial Serra Sculpture will be relocated from its current spot on Market between 10th and 11th Streets to the large lawn fronting the Arch, only several yards from Memorial Drive. The much-maligned "depressed section" of I-70 will remain as is. So too will its elevated portion near Laclede's Landing.

I am told that the winning team--also not to be announced yet--was selected for their design's "thoughtful reflection on the 'less is more' school of modernism".

"The winning team was believed to have stayed most true to the modernist spirit of the Archgrounds. What's more modern than a depressed interstate?" my source rightfully asked.

Below is a preliminary rendering of the proposal.

 Above, the Serra Sculpture will soon frame the Arch and Old Cathedral. Not to scale.

Think it's a little bare bones? Well, the multi-million dollar budget of the Framing a Modern Masterpiece design competition was completely gutted when, out of the blue, the National Park Service threatened to relocate the Gateway Arch to Clayton's Shaw Park, forcing the City of St. Louis to offer $10 million in tax credits for the iconic monument to remain in its historic location.

Reportedly, the second place team proposed reinstalling the St. Louis Centre skybridges over the depressed section of I-70 to allow for better connections between downtown and the Archgrounds. Competition judges felt the 1980s mall appendages were too garish and clashed with the minimalist 1960s-design of Interstate 70.

More details as they emerge.

City to River Group Hits the Local Media 3:56 PM

KMOV (Channel 4) has covered the City to River group's proposal to tear down a portion of Interstate 70 soon to be redundant with the construction of a new Mississippi River Bridge. Watch their coverage above or read the transcript here.

The only problem is that they failed to explicitly mention this--that I-70 will be rerouted over the new bridge and that a new at-grade, urban Memorial Drive would not be replacing I-70 at all in any official capacity. KMOV opened by labeling the proposal a "radical idea".

Also, the reporter interviewed a MODOT official who claimed the agency had "severe reservations" about removing any portion of I-70. See the video above. MODOT is open to tunneling the depressed lanes of the soon-to-be-former I-70, but not demolishing the whole 1.4 mile stretch in favor of an urban boulevard.

Where do I begin?

Removing a redundant piece of an interstate is not a "radical idea" in my book. The transformation of the area would be radical in the physical sense, if that was what was meant. But the notion itself is rather, well, sensible. The Archgrounds International Design Competition is underway and has provided funding for making better connections to the Arch and surrounding neighborhoods--not just the four blocks where the depressed section runs. It makes sense to remove the barrier between Laclede's Landing and the rest of downtown and to create a nexus of activity in the Memorial's center. An urban Memorial Drive would pull visitors from Laclede's Landing southward and allow them to much more easily, and with much more urbane surroundings, reach the Gateway Arch and Old Courthouse.

Furthermore, as mentioned, the new Mississippi River Bridge will carry the new I-70 route, which will now enter the city of St. Louis at Cass Avenue rather than the Poplar Street Bridge. Funding is in place and the bridge is being constructed. Now is the time to capitalize on the fact that this 1.4 mile stretch is simply redundant and not needed. Current plans indicate that MODOT will simply rechristen the old I-70 lanes as I-44, extending it northward from its terminus at I-55. To me, it's a radical idea not to remove this ugly barrier at such an opportune time.

Now for MODOT. How exactly is any 1.4 mile stretch of road absolutely necessary to the region's transportation network? Okay, maybe turning I-270 into an urban boulevard would be a ridiculous proposal, but a small run of a road at the convergence of several interstates? That's a bit of a different proposal. There's simply no way of arguing that a new Memorial Drive with even a 30 mile per hour speed limit could not accommodate traffic attempting to travel the 1.4 miles to either I-55 or I-64 from the new I-70 landing at Cass Avenue.

At an average rate of even 20 miles per hour (factoring in a stop light or two and clear traffic), it would take just 4.2 minutes to make it from one end of the new Memorial Drive to the other. Trucks heading northbound from I-55 could choose to either cross the river twice to reach I-70 without using surface roads or simply proceed north on Memorial Drive.

Our region has an incredibly dense network of interstates for its size. Some urbanists, including me, believe more than just this 1.4 mile segment of I-70 should be studied and considered for removal as well. (How about looking into reconnecting Soulard and Benton Park by "boulevardizing" I-55 from Lemp to the Poplar Street Bridge? Now that would be in the realm of "radical".) But that is for another time. City to River's proposal is smart and sensible, looking to improve our city at a low cost to all us, who'll enjoy the project's many benefits.

The New Memorial Drive, at Spruce looking eastward toward Busch Stadium.
Image Courtesy of City to River

Disrupting a National Historic Landmark 9:38 AM

I don't usually dedicate an entire blog post to someone else's blog post, but the occasion calls for it.

Rob Powers of Built St. Louis has posted a provocative piece on the Archgrounds Redevelopment--AKA Framing a Modern Masterpiece international design competition.

Powers argues that the landscaping, while a nice photo-op, is not part of the city. He calls for the landscape surrounding the Arch to be built upon, restoring a street grid and "bringing the city back to the Arch".

It is important to note that both the Arch and its surrounding landscape architecture are listed as a single National Historic Landmark.

How would you feel seeing the reflecting ponds and other green space disappear in favor of an urban street grid?

In my own opinion, the grounds make for a masterful design of deferring to the Arch in every way. The sleek, modernist monument is almost elemental, rising out of passive green space just as sinuously as its curving pathways and reflective lakes.

That said, if an urban streetscape restoration were gradual and were highly invested, I don't know if I would much miss this reflective landscaping. I simply worry about the execution of any construction projects in our time. Craftsmanship and creativity are too often lacking, most markedly when juxtaposed next to our city's cache of historic buildings. Especially if such a project were to have too low a budget or be conceived and built by one developer/builder, I don't think the result would honor our modern masterpiece. I do believe in good, sound contemporary construction--but we would need something especially smart to defer to the silent grandeur of the Arch.

Besides that caveat, I simply doubt the National Park Service would ever go for it. What do you think?

City to River 12:03 PM

The all-volunteer citizens' advocacy group City to River has debuted its website.

CITY TO RIVER OFFICIAL WEBSITE (And be sure to scroll over the main photograph with your mouse).

It's wonderful!

City to River's work is essential for the future of our city. The time has never been more opportune to demand for the Archgrounds Redesign (called Framing a Modern Masterpiece) to include the removal of both the depressed and elevated sections of Interstate 70.

Since Interstate 70 will be rerouted to the Cass Avenue landing upon completion of the new Mississippi River Bridge, the leftover section of I-70 running along Memorial Drive from the Old Cathedral to the Bottle District will no longer be necessary. Current plans call for this stranded section of I-70 to become a northward extension of I-44. This status quo action is unacceptable amidst an international design competition enacted to bring bold, transformative ideas to the Archgrounds.

What is likely to happen without action by the City to River advocates is a proposal that calls for the "lid" over the depressed section, essentially tunneling it. This is not enough. Connecting Laclede's Landing and points northwest of the Arch is just as important a goal as connecting those points directly to the west. The elevated portion of I-70 must go too!

Bravo to City to River for providing a clear and organized voice for positive change in St. Louis! I hope to become involved from afar!

St. Louis Infrastructure and Development Review 11:40 PM

I've been lax on updating lately, despite the fact that St. Louis has seen some big news as of late. So why not crunch it all into one convenient post?

First, Highway 40's open again. Interstate 64. Whatever.

I'm flabbergasted by the largely positive response to the re-opening of the highway. It provided nothing for St. Louis but more highway lanes, fewer homes in Richmond Heights, a look fresh out of 1960s Brasilia, and better-designed interchanges. For hundreds of millions? Pardon my dripping sarcasm, but grrrreeeaaaaat. Call me out for not actually having driven the highway yet (not been home since it opened), but the pictures seem to me to only highlight the project's total lack of imagination.

Where's the lush median?

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What about High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lanes? These are pretty standard on many roadways. If you don't have at least one other person in the car with you, you cannot use the lane with a symbol like the one below:

Source

HOV Lanes encourage (read: enforce) carpooling and therefore fewer smog-emitting cars on the road.

Better yet, as I've argued on this blog, why not simply end I-64/40 at McCausland/Clayton Road. At this point, there could either be an urban boulevard with a 35-40 MPH speed limit or...no roadway at all. The region survived a year or so without this segment of the interstate; it's hard to argue that it was vital to the survival of the region at this point. This would have been a great opportunity to open up Forest Park to the neighborhoods to the south and show that pedestrian traffic flow matters as much as automobiles. Oh well; another generation or two of an obtrusive interstate in a city that has far too many.

I know it's too late to complain (yet I persist), but I just am nauseated by the positive response to this large and wasteful infrastructure project when the region has so many greater needs for transportation infrastructure.

Next, the Archgrounds International Design Competition! Hearkening to the original international competition that netted Eero Saarinen's landmark Gateway Arch proposal, the National Park Service will hold another competition with an eye to reinvigorating the present grounds and forging connections with surrounding neighborhoods, including the East St. Louis riverfront. In keeping with my teeth-gnashing over Highway 40, I am absolutely thrilled that the project could see the removal of the depressed lanes of I-70 and even the elevated lanes at Laclede's Landing. This portion of the highway is set to become obsolete as I-70 is re-routed into Illinois over the new Mississippi River Bridge. Proposals must include removing this divisive eyesore from the equation if the Arch is ever to be psychologically connected to Laclede's Landing and downtown. I am beyond excited at these prospects!

Ballpark Village. I agree with blogger Rick Bonasch's (St. Louis Rising) sentiments on recent discussions of the Ballpark Village development. There's no "village" component being discussed at all! Not including residential in this high-profile parcel would be an enormous mistake, especially considering Blue Urban witnessed a nearly instant sell-out of the Ballpark Lofts development in a down economy.

The Bottle District. HRI, Inc. of New Orleans is set to redevelop the old McGuire Moving and Storage building into lofts geared toward artists. Excellent! It's great to see the Bottle District development start off on a positive, organic note. There are no contrived 700-foot skyscraper pipe dreams--just a sensible proposal to restore a historic building and inject new life into it.

Grand Center. Not to be outdone by downtown, Grand Center may soon be getting its own artist loft development in the old Metropolitan Building. Right now, this is coming to me in the form of an unsubstantiated claim on the Urban St. Louis forums, but hopefully we'll hear some sort of confirmation soon. This building was scheduled to become a hotel of the Hyatt brand, but those plans have fallen through.

As for hotels, Grand Center may soon have two. Again, Urban St. Louis forum rumormongers (a term of affection, mind you) stated that St. Louis University President Lawrence Biondi was opposed to a hotel proposal on Forest Park Avenue just south of campus, this one of the Holiday Inn chain. That one may still be going forward. But SLU is not sitting idly by. SLU is partnering with the Lawrence Group to transform the former Interiors Unlimited Building adjacent to Triumph Restaurant and the Moto Museum into a luxury hotel.

Could St. Louis be emerging from the recession?

Jefferson Expansion National Memorial General Management Plan 6:35 PM

I received an email request from the National Park Service to post this video to the blog. I'm happy to oblige. You'll notice that this blog has been mum on the issue; others, including STL Rising and Ecology of Absence, have been more proactive and involved. I, like you, have deferred to them for information.

The Arch and adjacent grounds are the most iconic features of the St. Louis region. Plans to alter the monument and its historic site plan deserve careful thought, attention, and commenting. The public comment period for the Archgrounds redevelopment is coming to an end, so please, heed the advice of the video and let your opinions be known.

Click here for the plan (including the alternatives). Click here to submit comments.

District-ification in downtown St. Louis 10:46 AM

It's tempting for planners and even plain ol' citizens to approach urban development with the idea that, whatever the development is, it must immediately have an identity.

And so, our city brought us Laclede's Landing, the remnant of the city's warehousing district, revived as a "nightlife district".

Downtown Now! brought us an Old Post Office District. Some refer to most of the "63101" ZIP as the "Central Business District". Some call the area around the Convention Center as the Convention Center District. Now, we have the Loft District on Washington. We almost had the Bottle District, near the Convention Center. We're trying to build a district in disguise--Ballpark Village. And Chouteau's Landing will be downtown's unspoken "Arts District". The Civic Center is yet another district--a product of the City Beautiful movement of the turn-of-the-century that called for grand public buildings to be arrayed along wide boulevards, awing all passers-by (Civil Courts, City Hall, the Municipal Courts Building, all along or near Market Street).

Some of these "districts" have more merit than others. Those that do have found an identity over time. This is precisely how urban areas work: a wedge is developed and, hopefully, absorbed into the urban fabric over time, becoming part of its story.

We need not force a story at the very outset, though. The district-ification of St. Louis leaves it a choppy, disconnected grouping of intentionally single-use districts.

As I've said many times before, Ballpark Village, Chouteau's Landing, and the Chouteau Lake and Greenway (as well as any Arch-Riverfront development) provide a unique opportunity to reconnect a severely tattered built environment. One of the problems of large, private redevelopment schemes is that they are not accountable to the public and, more importantly, developers rarely know how to develop at the macro-scale, and even less often do they work with other developers on completely "separate" projects.

It is my hope that a combination of citizen vigilance and city-led efforts (Planning and Urban Design Agency, anyone?) will mold these proposed "districts" into an organic whole that will reconnect and benefit the city. Identities of each project might become clouded (God forbid someone enjoy a pre-game snack in Chouteau's Landing rather than Ballpark Village OR enjoy an art gallery in BPV)--but this is good. This is what cities are. Developers don't define and give identity to the built environment--rather, it's a mixture of things for which the chief ingredient is time.

A historic day in St. Louis 6:28 PM

Today's rally for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in St. Louis underneath the Arch. I have to admit: this photo nearly gave me chills. For once, I felt like the Arch Grounds were a vital public space, a veritable D.C. Washington Monument Reflecting Pool.

On some political blog I was reading, someone even noted a great irony: that Obama rallied about 100,000 supporters (yes--that's the largest rally so far in this country!) in front of the courthouse where Dred Scott, in 1857, was deemed not a citizen of the United States due to his African ancestry. What a triumph for the bygone soul of Mr. Scott!

The photo is from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch story "Huge crowd hears Obama".

Just look at that crowd!

Spanish Government House - St. Louis, 1783-1804 5:12 PM

This Colonial structure is long gone, submerged first by a manufacturing/warehousing district along the riverfront and next by the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

Still, HABS has some drawings of site plans that were researched back in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

That's the Spanish Government house. A series of similar structures lent St. Louis a French/Spanish Creole feel that is now only truly possible to experience here in New Orleans' own French Quarter.

Happy 4th! 10:54 PM

...from New Orleans.

I'm really missing my traditional attendance of Fair St. Louis right now. When mushrooming fireworks sprawl across the summer sky, framed by the Arch, I cannot deny that monument's majesty, how much it truly has come to symbolize "home" for me.

Of course, St. Louis's independence day is August 22 (1876)--the day the City-County split was voted upon, which would, after some controversy, loose the noble city from the greedy county's grip.

I kid, of course.

Happy Independence Day!

Valentine Street: gone, like much of the rest of downtown 9:32 PM

In an 1868 map of the city of St. Louis, an inconspicuous five blocks along the St. Louis riverfront bore the name of Almond Street.

At some unknown point, Almond became Valentine Street, named after St. Louis's first resident Catholic priest.

HABS has a photo of one of the buildings that used to line the street:



The intimate interaction with the street is, of course, unrivaled today. This photo was taken in 1936. Valentine, an east-west street that ran just between Spruce and Poplar and ended at Broadway, was erased for the Arch Grounds.

It's easy to pick out these HABS photos and note the mass devastation to the St. Louis built environment the clearance for the Arch project caused. But perhaps the piecemeal destruction of downtown post-Arch is worse--the Gateway Mall's replacement of Real Estate Row, the Mercantile (now US) Bank building's destruction of the Ambassador, the senseless loss of the Century Building to petty and shortsighted politics, and all stories of corporate boxes replacing real urbanism downtown.

Will we ever see a downtown St. Louis with lively blocks, human scale architecture, pedestrian friendliness at the expense of interstates, corporate boxes, etc.?

The Gateway Arch vs. St. Louis's long gone Warehouse District 9:13 AM

Sure, Laclede's Landing survives as a portion of the 40-some blocks of commercial and manufacturing buildings that used to cling to the riverfront. It'd be great if this remnant were as cherished as it deserved to be; sadly, Laclede's Landing's magnificent stock of buildings has continued to decay despite its "entertainment district" status, and roughly half of the lots in the district are surface parking now.

Take a look at the picture below. This is South Main St., now covered by the depressed section of I-70, as well as Memorial Drive. Walnut is the cross street, as is evident by the street sign in the picture. That means that the Old Cathedral is on the east side of the block that is barely visible. [Edit: Actually, the Old Cathedral is located on what was Third and Walnut, not Main, but this is close nevertheless.]

Sure makes you rethink whether or not the Gateway Arch was a successful urban renewal program. (Yes, I am aware these blocks pictured were torn down in the 1930s, prior to any official "urban renewal" policy. And yes, I am aware they sat as a parking lot until the Arch's construction. So don't quite blame the Arch entirely! Blame the circa 1930s administration who thought these "outmoded" warehouses would never again have a useful function!)



This photo is courtesy of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), a Depression-era program that put civil engineers and architects to work documenting America's historic buildings, starting in the early 1930s.

Here's a bonus, of North First Street, demolished in 1940.



And N. 1st and Market:



And another view of the same block: