Author: Michael R. Allen

by Michael R. Allen

This is the fourth part of a nine-part series on the evolution of the Gateway Mall, that ribbon of park space that runs between Market and Chestnut streets and from the Jefferson National Expansion memorial westward to Twenty-Second Street downtown. This article began its life as a lecture that I delivered to the Friends of Tower Grove Park on February 3, 2008, and was published in its entirety in the NewsLetter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Valley chapter in Spring 2011.

In 1919 the City Plan Commission published A Public Building Group Plan. The plan called for creation of green space on blocks between 12th, Market, 14th and Chestnut streets, with two blocks extending north to the Central Library on Olive between 13th and 14th Streets. The plan called the center spine between the library and the Municipal Courts building “the mall.” All around this park space would be new civic buildings, including a massive auditorium, a court house and others. To the west, a new plaza would be built across from Union Station. The plazas would be further adorned with fountains, an obelisk, and statues for a park environment devoid of nature fully designed as monumental space.

The title page of A Public Building Group Plan bore the name of the new City Engineer, Harland Bartholomew, whose persistence and commitment to City Beautiful principles breathed new life into St. Louis’ 15-year-old plan for a civic center. Bartholomew may not have authored every word, but his philosophy is evident throughout. In the introduction, the author states that “it behooves the city to so design its public buildings that these may faithfully and fittingly depict the civic spirit.” To Bartholomew, new public buildings were more than beautiful buildings in which government conducted affairs. These buildings were, at their best, symbols of civic commitment to imposing order and beauty on the urban condition. Bad public buildings were signs of urban chaos represented in St. Louis’ hodgepodge downtown fabric.

The report states that a public building group would be a monumental visual statement about St. Louis’ posture toward its physical fabric. In the report, a public buildings group is lauded as a “medium of good civic advertising” that would promote real estate development through property value increases on adjacent property. The civic center formed by a public buildings group would also become the “veritable heart of the city,” a place at which major traffic lines intersected and through which few human and vehicular traffic would not pass. This bustling depiction is not exactly what St. Louis would build.

by Michael R. Allen

This is the third part of a nine-part series on the evolution of the Gateway Mall, that ribbon of park space that runs between Market and Chestnut streets and from the Jefferson National Expansion memorial westward to Twenty-Second Street downtown. This article began its life as a lecture that I delivered to the Friends of Tower Grove Park on February 3, 2008, and was published in its entirety in the NewsLetter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Valley chapter in Spring 2011.

The 1907 Comprehensive Plan’s call for a civic plaza blossomed after the establishment in 1909 of a permanent City Plan Commission. In July 1912, the City Plan Commission recommended to the Board of Alderman a plan called the “Central Traffic-Parkway.” The published report was illustrated with many photographs of “the blighted district” located on Market and Chestnut streets downtown. Described as the initial step in building a greater city, the plan called for the clearance of every block between Market and Chestnut streets from 12th Street west to Jefferson, which would be 26th by number. On these blocks would be built a modern parkway, with divided lanes in each direction and ribbons of green space planted with uniform rows of trees and lawns. The parkway plan called for eventual extension to Grand Avenue. No mention was made of eastward extension.

Although more of a traffic way for automobiles than a true park system, the 1912 design and description were fully rooted in the City Beautiful notion of park function. The theory behind the plan was that the blight of the central city — blight of overcrowded buildings and congested small streets — needed to be supplanted by an orderly place of defined purpose. Here would be a modern space for both vehicular traffic and human recreation. In turn, the parkway would foster stronger property values in adjacent sections and lead to the construction of new tall buildings. This would be the spine of the renewed city, and it would transmit improvement in economy and morality.

by Michael R. Allen

This is the second part of a nine-part series on the evolution of the Gateway Mall, that ribbon of park space that runs between Market and Chestnut streets and from the Jefferson National Expansion memorial westward to Twenty-Second Street downtown. This article began its life as a lecture that I delivered to the Friends of Tower Grove Park on February 3, 2008, and was published in its entirety in the NewsLetter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Valley chapter in Spring 2011.

Landscape architect George Kessler was one of the chief theorists of rationalist urban planning. Kessler designed the 1904 World’s Fair landscape, which was a masterpiece of orderly expansive views. Kessler had little use for formal gardens or wildness; he favored large neat orderly lawns defined by imposing trees or dramatized by the placement of ornate buildings. Rather than emphasize the delights of natural flora, Kessler underscored the beauty of a total landscape. At the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, this landscape included ornate Beaux Arts buildings. Here was a mirror of the early ideal of the Gateway Mall — orderly formal landscape contained by monumental public buildings. Mayor Rolla Wells was a supporter of Kessler and put him to work on several urban planning projects, including a plan for Kingshighway that envisioned the road as a true parkway.

In the absence of an official city government planning apparatus, the reform-minded Civic League created a City Plan Committees to undertake the first comprehensive city plan in 1905. The Plan Committees included numerous prominent businessmen, political leaders, architects and engineers. The Committee published the city’s first Comprehensive Plan in 1907. The Committee reported that there was one acre of park for every 96 people living west of Grand and one acre for every 1,871 between Grand and the river. The Committee found this density undesirable and recommended creating additional park space through clearance. One-hundred years later, after decades of demolition in the central core of our city has destroyed entire neighborhoods and rendered others dysfunctional, the Committee’s plan seems short-sighted. The difference recorded in the number of park acres east and west of Grand did not necessarily indicate any real difference in quality of life. It simply recorded a greater building density east of Grand in the oldest walking neighborhoods of the city. Later city planners would to appreciate the boost high building density gives to fostering strong community ties, creating safe streets, creating vital commercial districts, and raising property values.

by Michael R. Allen

Today we publish the first part of a nine-part series on the evolution of the Gateway Mall, that ribbon of park space that runs between Market and Chestnut streets and from the Jefferson National Expansion memorial westward to Twenty-Second Street downtown. This article began its life as a lecture that I delivered to the Friends of Tower Grove Park on February 3, 2008, and was published in its entirety in the NewsLetter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Valley chapter in Spring 2011.

Let’s review: The Gateway Mall is a line of parks that runs between Chestnut and Market Streets from Memorial Drive west to 22nd Street. Right?

Other than the handful of destination blocks, few St. Louisans could readily identify the visual characteristics that define the Gateway Mall. Descriptions of the mall, like the one that I just offered, typically revert to geography. The mall’s boundaries are street names. The mall’s identity lies in what surrounds it, and not in inherent qualities that the user of Forest or Tower Grove parks offers to someone unfamiliar with those spaces. Reliance on a geographic description of the Gateway Mall is quite gentle, because to enumerate what the mall contains hardly portrays an attractive green space.

We have a jumble of mismatched blocks, from the passive formal parks across the street from City Hall to the postmodern ruins of Kiener Plaza to the sunken garden between the Old Courthouse and the Arch. We have monumental blocks like Aloe Plaza and the Richard Serra sculpture block that lose all of the drama of monumentality by being placed alongside interceding dull blocks of dead park space. We have interruptions like the Civil Courts and the Old Courthouse, a fairly pleasant juxtaposition if only there were not a poorly-wrought 1980s standing between the two. Some blocks are wide, some are narrow. Some are standard length and others form smaller super-blocks. The whole mall is almost hinged around the Civil Courts building, where Market Street bends slightly southwest. That bend precludes true symmetry.

So what do we have? Currently, we have a green space running through downtown named the Gateway Mall. Is it a park? Landscape historian Tom Turner writes in his book City as Landscape: “If the space has no boundary, it should not be called a park. And if it has a boundary, the boundary should have a defined purpose.”

The Gateway Mall has no historic boundary. That is, its boundaries have shifted under various plans. Originally, it would have extended between Grand and 12th (now Tucker). Later plans had it extending east to meet the Arch. Nowadays, it does start at the western edge of the Arch grounds but ends rather haphazardly past 21st street. The terminus is a chain link fence separating and irregularly shaped block from a highway ramp.