Decade Since The Failed 14th Street Pedestrian Mall Was Reopened in Old North St. Louis

It has now been a decade since a 33-year mistake was corrected. During the 1960s & 1970s removing a street to create a “pedestrian mall” was a magic bullet tried by cities coast to coast. Almost fall failed.

In the early 1970s North 14th Street merchants began looking for solutions to a decline in sales as residents of the surrounding near north neighborhood left for better housing elsewhere.

The solution, they thought, was to mall 14th Street. Some buildings behind the street were razed to create large surface parking lots, so former residents could drive back to their old neighborhood to shop at chains like JC Penny & Woolworth’s and local businesses like Sobel’s Furniture.

Open air and enclosed malls were attracting more and more customers so remaking a decades-old neighborhood shopping district to emulate suburban malls would attract customers. Well, that was the theory that led to hundreds of streets nationwide being malled.

More like mauled.

The new 2-block long mall opened on March 2, 1977.  Two blocks of North 14th Street were closed to vehicles, from Warren Street on the south to St. Louis Ave on the north. The one cross street, Montgomery Street, was also closed. See current map.

By the time I first saw it in the Fall of 1990 very few businesses remained.

By the Spring of 1991 I was living in the Murphy-Blair neighborhood, the local group was working to rename it Old North St. Louis. The neighborhood located just north of downtown St. Louis was a separate village 1816-1841, when it was annexed by a growing St. Louis.

Two business that were were just beyond the mall were Marx Hardware (Est 1875) and Crown Candy Kitchen (Est 1913), both are still in business.

I left the neighborhood in August 1994, but others finally figured out how to put together a project to both renovate the buildings that remained and put back the street. I applaud all involved for their perseverance.

After the ribbon cutting & celebration traffic didn’t immediately begin driving up & down 14th Street. The new streetlights were delayed, so the city’s Streets Dept wouldn’t let cars use the new street. Within a few months the lights and a few other punch list items were completed.

In the decade since the reopening new occupants of the  storefronts have changed, retail is a struggle everywhere. The spaces aren’t empty, which is important.  The street trees have matured nicely.

Some say the mall helped keep these buildings from being destroyed, but I think had the mall not been built the street might have been slowly brought back one business at a time, like others in St. Louis.

— Steve Patterson

North 14th Street Reopened To Traffic 5 Years Ago Today

Five years ago today people were able to do what they hadn’t in 33+ year — drive on two blocks of North 14th Street.

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Successful Pedestrian Malls Kept Cross Streets Open

Pedestrian malls, the closing of a street to vehicles, is an area of great interest to me. Popular in the 1960s & 1970s, very few had long-term success in North America, most failed and have been reversed. St. Louis’ former 14th Street Pedestrian Mall was such a failure.

In September I got to visit two of the successes, both in Colorado: Denver’s 16th Street Mall and Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall.  After visiting these two I’ve identified some key differences that I believe contributed to the success of these two while others failed. The main difference is both of these allow the cross streets to continue through uninterrupted. Most pedestrian mall projects screwed up the street grid in two directions, the closed mall street and all the intersecting streets. Depending on the length of the pedestrian mall this could mean 1-8 cross streets got redirected. In doing so a large area and many streets were cut off from regular traffic.

St. Louis’ 14th Street Pedestrian Mall — 1977

• Length: 2 blocks
• Status: removed
• Map (was 14th from St. Louis Ave to Warren St)

St. Louis’ pedestrian mall was only 13 years old when I first saw it in the Fall of 1990. Long-time residents I talked to said the mall failed very early on, long before I saw it 13 years later.

Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall — 1977

• Length: 4 blocks
• Status: active
• Map

Many small town pedestrian malls were built by malling the main highway that ran through the downtown business district and creating opposite one way streets on either side so highway traffic could continue. Boulder, however, allowed their highway to continue with only a traffic signal like you’d see if Pearl St was still open to cars. They too did the one-way couplet thing on parallel streets, but it and the mall are perpendicular to the main highway through town.

Denver’s 16th Street Mall — 1982

• Length: 13 blocks
• Status: active
• Map

Denver was late to get a pedestrian mall, few were built in the 1980s. Perhaps their delay paid off, enabling them to see mistakes made by other cities. Chicago also had a transit mall, but it was for many bus lines. The diesel fumes meant their mall wasn’t a pedestrian paradise. Whereas Denver runs free shuttles to get people up and down the 13 block length, with several points where you can connect to local bus or light rail lines.

It appears Denver, unlike St. Louis, has kept its street grid in tact — with the exception of 16h Street. St. Louis has made it a habit of closing streets, disrupting the grid.

Conclusion

Another successful pedestrian mall is Church Street Marketplace in Burlington VT (map).  Like Boulder & Denver, the cross streets continue uninterrupted. I need to return to my grad school data to see if any of the failed/removed pedestrian malls allowed cross streets to cut through the mall, I don’t recall any.

This is not to say that the many failed pedestrian malls might have succeeded had they kept cross streets open, or a that a remaining mall could be enlivened by opening the cross streets. Both might be the case, I just can’t come to that conclusion — yet.

Still, St. Louis serves as an example of ongoing struggles when the street grid has been repeatedly compromised.

— Steve Patterson

Dead at 33: North 14th Street Pedestrian Mall (1977-2010)

The North 14th Street Pedestrian Mall, in a vegetative state for 20+ years of it’s short life, has died. The plug was finally pulled but nobody is mourning the passing.

In fact, today from 4pm-8pm is a celebration.

In a bit of irony, 14th Street will not be opened until after a street party.  The center of the newly redone 2-block area is 14th & Montgomery, one block south of Crown Candy Kitchen. The area is easily reached by transit (via #30 & #74) bus routes.  Congrats to everyone in Old North St. Louis for finally reopening North 14th Street!

– Steve Patterson

Un-Malling 14th Street

The year was 1977.  The city was hemorrhaging population at an alarming rate (nearly 170,000 between 1970-80).  What to do?  Emulate the suburbs! So why not close the street grid and create a pedestrian “oasis”?

Except it never quite turned out as expected.  The pedestrian space was free of cars but it also appeared empty most of the time. There is indeed safety in numbers.

Next year sometime 14th Street will be a through street for the first time in 32 years.  This experiment that last 32 years will finally be over.  Many experiments were tried in cities — the money was found to do the experimenting but harder & more costly to undo the results of the experiment.

If only the citizens had run off the mad scientists promising suburban bliss inside our historic neighborhoods.

Did closing 14th street slow down population loss or speed it up?  My instinct tells me we would have lost population anyway.  But had the street not been closed this neighborhood commercial district might have had a better chance of rebounding in the last 30 years. Unlike other areas that simply had to worry about the buildings, in Old North they had that plus a dead pedestrian mall with no population to populate the space.

The day in 2009 when the ribbon is cut and the street is reopened I will be there front and center. Then I’m going to Crown Candy for a banana malt!