On Friday, as part of the epic Southern Graphics Council (SGC) Convention night on Cherokee Street, the St. Louis Mythory Tour made its debut. An expanded version will return soon, as will a new edition of the ‘zine guidebook, printed in a limited edition of 70 for Friday.
St Louis Mythory Tour
a collaborative tour and zine making workshop
by Emily Hemeyer & Michael R. Allen
May 12th, 2011. 6-9pm. Cherokee ReAL Garden. Cherokee Street. St Louis, MO
“[M]yth is speech stolen and restored.â€
-Roland Barthes, Mythologies
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The built environment of St. Louis reveals itself through our observations, often clouded by nostalgia, ideology and comparison. We look around us and see inscriptions of what we imagine St. Louis to be, be that a “red brick mama”, an emergent Rust Belt powerhouse, a faded imperial capital or simply our home. St. Louis offers back its own narrative mythologies, presented through chains of linked sites with collective meanings. We quickly find that the city’s own presentation of itself is as veiled as our own observation. There is no one St. Louis, but there is no one archetypal St. Louisan.
The Mythtory Tour imagines a landscape of accrued building that has been neglected, in physical form and human consciousness. This tour presents one possible mythology of place centered on traditions of construction converging across disparate neighborhoods and many generations in order to show us St. Louis. Whether you can find this city out there is irrelevant, because using this map you will find some city worth your love and respect.
View St. Louis Mythory Tour in a larger map
THE TOUR
1. THEY BUILT WITH EARTH
Sugarloaf Mound, 4420 Ohio Street
2. THEY BUILT WITH STONE
Stone House, 124 E. Steins Street
3. THEY BUILT TO PRODUCE
Lemp Brewery, southeast corner of Cherokee & Lemp streets
4. THEY BUILT IN THE AIR
Pruitt-Igoe Site, Southeast Corner of Cass and Jefferson Avenues
5. THEY BUILT FOR THE FUTURE
Kingshighway Viaduct, Kingshighway Boulevard Between Vandeventer and Shaw
Avenues
6. THEY BUILT UNDERGROUND
Cherokee Cave, Under Cherokee Street at DeMenil Place
7. THEY BUILT ON THE WATER
U.S.S. Inaugural, Foot of Rutger Street
(Full descriptions and photographs of each location are available in the guidebook. Those interested in ordering a copy can contact Michael Allen at michael@preservationresearch.com.)