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  #21  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2009, 8:00 PM
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Wonderful thread.
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  #22  
Old Posted Jan 5, 2009, 3:37 PM
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great thread, great discussion.
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  #23  
Old Posted Jan 5, 2009, 8:02 PM
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Wow tragic. Similar destruction was done in Philly for the construction of I95 along Penn's landing.
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  #24  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2009, 12:02 AM
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Originally Posted by LMich View Post
BTW, I've always loved the Railway Exchange Building for its sheer dominance of downtown. It's so ridiculously out of scale that it's charming. How many hundreds-of-thousands of square feet is it, and what's it used for, today?
At the time the Railway Exchange was under construction, it was largest building under construction in America outside of New York City.
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  #25  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2009, 12:10 AM
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Sad, sad, sad.

Unfortunately, some back-in-the-day St. Louis bigwig decided that as he crossed the Eads Bridge the buildings along the riverfront were "ugly" and embarked on a clearance for the monument. For the record, some of the buildings housed financial houses for the slave trade too.

I get po'd everytime I see these photos and I am not a staunch preservationist.
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  #26  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2009, 6:41 PM
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Depressing.
As.
Hell.
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  #27  
Old Posted Jan 12, 2009, 8:39 PM
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that sucks. old montreal is a big draw here, and you had one too.
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  #28  
Old Posted Jan 14, 2009, 7:43 AM
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Great, I always have loved that arch but didnt realize the cost of its existence. What a terrible crying ass shame. So much history destroyed by morons touting urban renewal as the savior for all mankind... well maybe not mankind but cities; at least thats what they thought. Urban renewal was/still is a tragedy for American towns and cities.
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  #29  
Old Posted Jan 19, 2009, 12:27 AM
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what a tear jerker... Anyone have any tissues?
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  #30  
Old Posted Jan 21, 2009, 6:53 AM
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There are some good photographs of the area inside the museum, too. I didn't realize that there had been so much demolition until I went into the museum.

I appreciate this thread, good work! American 1890-1930 urbanity was really, really great, and so much of it was destroyed in all our cities- I'd have to say STL's riverfront is the worst example I'm aware of.

I was recently in Guthrie, Oklahoma, which was the capital and most important city in Oklahoma for about 20 years before the capital moved to OKC. It had been a big boomtown, but overnight Guthrie became a ghost town for 70 years. That economic downturn literally saved its downtown from demolitions and renewals, so they have the largest historic district in the country (which is now one of the most active downtowns in the state). Walking those streets really makes you wonder what our cities would be like if the urban style had continued to flourish and the whole urban renewal thing never scarred the cities.
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  #31  
Old Posted Jan 21, 2009, 6:31 PM
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^^^That's very interesting about Guthrie Oklahoma.
I'll have to check it out.
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  #32  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2009, 12:49 AM
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Truth be told, I'd not mind surrendering a piece of the Arch grounds for a corny-ass reconstruction of this warehouse district. Yes--I'm talking Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia style.

It'd be a hit. And how appropriate? The adjoining museum of expansion could then point to: the reconstructed old riverfront, the office towers of the latter half of the twentieth century, the Arch itself, and the undemolished portion of the old riverfront known as Laclede's Landing--all telling different tales about the city's manner of expansion, decline, and re-expansion.
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  #33  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2009, 3:11 AM
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Originally Posted by STLgasm View Post
Sad, sad thread. Here's a picture of present-day Laclede's Landing, the last remaining vestige of the historic riverfront district. Lacelede's Landing is sandwiched between the Eads and Martin Luther King bridges, and is the only remaining section of the original French settlement of Saint Louis:

The arch is wonderful, but it is a shame that there is so much surface parking and that so much had to be destroyed for that purpose.
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  #34  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2009, 3:18 AM
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whoa, wierd...i've had a repeating dream that i'm in a denser, flooded st. louis without an arch...and it looks like this, but i've never really seen such detailed photos of this area before.

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  #35  
Old Posted Mar 14, 2009, 9:52 PM
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Originally Posted by mmourning View Post
Truth be told, I'd not mind surrendering a piece of the Arch grounds for a corny-ass reconstruction of this warehouse district. Yes--I'm talking Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia style.

It'd be a hit. And how appropriate? The adjoining museum of expansion could then point to: the reconstructed old riverfront, the office towers of the latter half of the twentieth century, the Arch itself, and the undemolished portion of the old riverfront known as Laclede's Landing--all telling different tales about the city's manner of expansion, decline, and re-expansion.
i'm completely with you on this, mmourning. what better way to pay homage to the old riverfront than to rebuild it with as close to the original materials as possible? i'm not so sure about recreating colonial williamsburg in downtown STL though (barf) - i'd rather the new buildings have historic facades and contemporary innards. the arch is wonderful but the arch grounds are a swath of dead space. i was recently in savannah, GA walking along River Street and thinking how we could have had something very similar in STL. now how to come up with the money...
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  #36  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2009, 2:16 PM
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I've seen pics of this area before the arch many times, I just never realized that they started mass demolishion there in 1940.
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  #37  
Old Posted May 5, 2009, 9:56 PM
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A rare 1965 aerial.


unknown


This gives you an example of how LARGE an area was cleared/destroyed for the Gateway Arch.
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  #38  
Old Posted May 5, 2009, 10:50 PM
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It also shows the area of demolition on the southside of downtown for Busch Stadium, which anchors the "new" downtown which isnt built yet in this photo. Chinatown was razed for it. As much as I enjoy downtown stadiums, I sure wish they had left it on the northside nestled in the neighborhood like wrigley...and if we had built better rapid transit, it might have. We almost had heavy rail throughout the city. The St. Louis City Fathers basically jacked around with some key, sacred urban spaces which I'm convinced help send the City on a tailspin (and stunt the growth of the metropolitan area). I love this City, but some things are unforgivable.

Sportsmans Park (Busch I)...


http://www.thedeadballera.com/Stadiu...ark_photo2.jpg



http://www.thedeadballera.com/Stadiu...ark_photo6.jpg


http://www.thedeadballera.com/Stadiu...ark_photo8.jpg

Last edited by SuburbanNation; May 5, 2009 at 11:08 PM.
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  #39  
Old Posted May 6, 2009, 4:36 PM
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^^^Very interesting.
I had no idea about Sportsman Park and it's history.
Also, the Chinatown aspect of the tale is very intriguing.
Are there any extant photographs of this area?
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  #40  
Old Posted May 6, 2009, 8:32 PM
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Sad, but fascinating thread. Minneapolis also tore down a huge portion of its original downtown (The Gateway area between 3rd Street and 1st Street, from Hennepin to 3rd Avenue S) back in the late 1950s-early 1960s (courtesy of the Urban Renewal program), but we didn't get an arch out of the deal!
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