I am strolling through Tower Grove Park on a gorgeous weekday afternoon in the heart of Missouri’s largest city. I’ve forgotten my hat, and if I’m not careful, the premier Victorian park in the United States will very likely charm the socks off me as well.
Created in 1867 by one of the town’s fathers, Henry Shaw, Tower Grove Park is a living, oxygenating symbol of the St. Louis that once was and, thankfully, is becoming anew. Shaw took this 40-square-block patch of prairie and filled it with more than 8,000 trees, seven miles of meandering footpaths and delightfully oddball architecture — including a set of faux ancient ruins and a bandstand surrounded by busts of the great European composers.
Even if you’re a St. Louis native, or you go there often, Tower Grove Park is probably something of a unexpected pleasure. The travel books would rather steer you to the city’s more famous outdoor venues: Forest Park, where much of the 1904 World’s Fair took place, and the Missouri Botanical Garden, another Shaw creation just to the north of Tower Grove Park and a magnet for horticulturists around the world.
Likewise, out-of-towners tend to make a beeline for the waterfront, close to the Arch, the riverboats, Busch Stadium and Soulard, the home of Budweiser. (Soulard, with its jazz cafes, eclectic antique shops and historic farmers market, is arguably St. Louis’s hottest neighborhood.) And at one time, perhaps, that would’ve sufficed for the tourist.
Today, however, many of the older neighborhoods that once saw their fortunes ebb, as its denizens pushed west to greener pastures in the suburbs, are alive and kicking. Residents old and new, people who equate venerability with virtue, give these places — the Hill, University City, Central West End and Grand South Grand among them — their own unique attractions and character.
“More than most American cities, St. Louis has experienced the rise and fall and rise again of neighborhoods,” writes Barringer Fifield in his indispensable 1987 walking guide “Seeing Saint Louis.”
Walking, in fact, was exactly how I saw much of St. Louis this visit — simply hoofing it, city block after city block, past flora and fauna, retail and restaurant.
When I wasn’t on foot, I was on board the city’s 4-year-old light rail system, MetroLink, which runs 17 miles from Lambert Airport past all of the downtown attractions, and across the Eads Bridge into Illinois. One could also say, of course, that MetroLink runs from Illinois to the airport, but that misses the point of this latter-day streetcar, which pulls people into the core of the city rather than push them out, as the highways and early streetcars of St. Louis once did.
Now, thanks to public funds and private efforts, the rails are returning to many of the neighborhoods they once served. But this time, their purpose is twofold: not only as an alternative to cars for local commuters but also as the official tourist shuttle of St. Louis. MetroLink stops at all three downtown sports venues, the Arch (at Laclede’s Landing), and Forest Park (home to the St. Louis Zoo as well the St. Louis art and Missouri history museums).
MetroLink’s rails were laid in existing right of way, much of it formerly owned by the Terminal Railroad Association. This has helped keep the system’s costs down — by public transit standards, MetroLink was a bargain — which is probably why the city’s western and southern sections are now clamoring for the line to be extended to their neighborhoods.
For the out-of-towner, MetroLink outside of the downtown area poses a moderate but not undaunting challenge. The train does not penetrate the neighborhoods it serves so much as skirt them. At the Central West End station, for instance, you’re dropped off below street level in the midst of two medical centers. Bring a street map and be ready to walk anywhere from a few blocks to half a mile.
Seeking a more permanent reminder of my visit than a sunburn, I exited Tower Grove Park at its southeast corner and discovered one of St. Louis’ latest renascent districts, Grand South Grand.
Essentially a row of ethnic eateries and urban shops, Grand South Grand offers the best Thai and Vietnamese restaurants in St. Louis, according to a recent newspaper’s reader poll. But I was drawn to Siete Mares, a restaurant whose north wall is festooned with mementos from Nicaragua, co-owner Sonja Trogler’s native country. Even though I accidentally ordered the repochetas for lunch — the Nicaraguan version of grilled cheese sandwiches — they were redeemed by the flavorful salad and rice on the side.
At the Vintage Haberdasher, a men’s and women’s resale shop, I found dozens of excellent vintage neckties. The store’s owner, Joile Mackney, said she had operated a vintage shop for 11 years in Soulard before coming here.
“I keep a lot of the same customer base because it’s close by,” said Mackney, who moved after losing her lease in Soulard. “It was a hard decision. I absolutely loved Soulard, but there wasn’t anyplace with the space that I needed.”
A better location for resale than Soulard? I asked. The store’s manager, who helped me pick out a dandy gold-on-brown cravat, circa 1960, shrugged and said, “I guess Grand is coming back.”
One neighborhood that didn’t come back so much as stubbornly refuse to go away is the Hill, a heavily Italian enclave perched on a modest plateau in the city’s southern section.
The Hill is one of two neighborhoods I visited (University City being the other) that are not really navigable except by car or cab. And provided you don’t get the driver who took me to the Hill — the surliest I’ve encountered in all my years cabbing around Chicago and New York — you’ll find this a wholly satisfying side trip to an old-fashioned, unmeltable ethnic base.
Originally designed as temporary housing for Italian immigrants who started clustering here in the 1890s, the houses on the Hill are no great shakes architecturally, until you begin to look at them in their aggregate. There they are, block after block of tiny brick estates with their swatch of lawn (many of the yards are watched over by Blessed Virgin Mary statuettes), and all of them in astoundingly good upkeep. Walk around long enough and you’ll see residents sweeping their stoops.
Despite numerous attempts to steamroll its residents — running an interstate right through the neighborhood, as Interstate 44 does here, a tactic too often used in the name of progress — the Hill survives. More than that, it thrives, having long ago learned to use its isolation and homogeneity to great advantage.
I followed my nose into DiGregorio’s grocery, one of several excellent Italian food shops on the Hill, where I almost grabbed a $10 replica of the Italian Immigrants statue that sits outside St. Ambrose Church, the area’s spiritual anchor. I did, however, pick up some handmade pasta made just down the street at the Sacred Heart Villa.
My next stop was at a bakery — again, there are several to choose from, and St. Louisans each seem to have their favorite — and had a sfogliatelle that tided me over the rest of the morning. The Hill’s restaurants are widely respected, if not especially revered; that distinction goes to Tony’s, an Italian restaurant downtown.
Then again, the modest shops and residences on the Hill seem more worthy of admiration than adulation. Besides, where else but on the Hill can you step out from dinner and stroll over to an outdoor boccie garden, just in time for league play?
One part of St. Louis that is definitely getting its due is University City, also known as the Loop, northwest of Forest Park and just north of the campus of Washington University. In a town where sensible, if not sturdy housing prevails (even the garages are made of brick), the cafes, galleries and entertainment offerings along Delmar Boulevard provide a welcome burst of bohemia.
During the summer months University City restaurants — Ethiopian, Lebanese, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean and Greek — open up to sidewalk patrons. Dine there and perhaps your table will rest atop one of the bronze stars that compose the “St. Louis Walk of Fame,” every bit as cheesy and arbitrary as its Hollywood counterpart (a star for Scott Joplin, sure, but Marlin Perkins?).
University City is also home to the original St. Louis Bread Co. — yes, it really did start with one store — and the newly refurbished Tivoli Theater, a lustrous showcase for the arthouse genre of movies it carries. These two establishments, the premium eatery and the indie theater, perhaps best characterize the transformation of “U City” from a marginal neighborhood into one targeted to the well-funded alternative set.
“When we first got here, there were an awful lot of vacant storefronts and a real problem with absentee landlords,” said Alan Suits, who has owned and operated the Coyote’s Paw Gallery just down Delmar from the Tivoli for the last 14 years. Now the absentees have been rooted out, and there has been “a precipitous drop in petty crime,” according to Suits.
“There are only one or two chain stores on this strip,” he added. “People here are fiercely committed to keeping businesses private.”
For more information about St. Louis, contact the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Bureau, 800-916-0040.
