As I visit different offices downtown I’m always looking for interesting views. From some of the tallest buildings you get spectacular views across the skyline. But from the fourth floor you get a view I treasure much more.
The above is the view from the offices of the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis in the Laclede Gas Building.
– Steve Patterson
Recently while driving down Cherokee Street I noticed something I had never noticed before.
I’m usually so distracted by the beautiful glazed terra-cotta on the building on the right above, 2817 Cherokee. But the void between the buildings is what caught my eye. The short stone wall with the break and steps. Was there a narrow building between these that was torn down, I wondered? The answer is yes and no. The building we see today was constructed in 1936. The date on the building on the left is unknown except it is newer.
From the alley on the side of 2817 Cherokee to the corner at Oregon Ave contained five one-story brick homes (pink) with wood back porches & sheds (yellow) at the 9ft alley in 1909. What was platted as five parcels of approximate equal width in 1909 is now three parcels of different widths (27.5ft, 25ft , & 75ft). The above 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance map is from the University of Missouri Digital Library.
Neighborhoods and streets are not static. As the streetcar line on Cherokee Street brought more and more people to the street homes gave way to commercial development.
– Steve Patterson
In 2025 the 30-year lease of the Edwards Jones Dome to the St. Louis Rams will expire. Last week’s poll was a revision of a poll a few weeks earlier.  This time around I get a better sense of what you, the reader, expect. The biggest number want football to stay in the same spot, here are the results:
Q: Forget funding, where would you place a new stadium for the Rams?
- Rebuild/build in current location 44 [ 23%]
- East bank of the Mississippi River (IL) 41 [22%]
- Old Nooter Co site just South of Chouteau 24 [12%]
- downtown St. Louis (River/Cole/Tucker/Chouteau) 18 [9%]
- Just adjacent to downtown 14 [7%]
- As long as it is open air or has a retractable roof I don’t care. 12 [6%]
- elsewhere in City of St. Louis 7 [3%]
- Unsure/don’t care 7 [3%]
- Metro East (IL) 6 [3%]
- Other answer… 6 [3%]
- St. Louis County 3 [1%]
- anywhere in the region is OK 2 [1%]
- St. Charles County 1 [0%]
- Jefferson County 0 [0%]
Besides the same location, a few adjacent locations also ranked high. In this post I want to focus on the existing location, shown in green below.
Along Cole Street the Edward Jones Dome and convention center is a four block long wall (Broadway/5th to 9th). A four block wall. So here are my thoughts about rebuilding a football stadium on the existing site. The first thing that needs to happen is 7th Street needs to continue through (blue above) rather than be cut off. I’d like to see the new facility be open air. Not a retractable roof, but no roof. Such a facility would be less intrusive in the urban context.
Seventh Street was a through street before the dome was added onto the convention center so it can be removed. The back of the 1977 convention center will continue to be an ugly edge to Cole St. – two blocks of loading docks. Allowing pedestrians and traffic to go through 7th Street will help connect our central business district to the areas to the North of Cole.
– Steve Patterson
My 2004 Toyota Corolla is not part of Toyota’s current sudden acceleration trouble, but any vehicle can get a stuck accelerator and if you drive a car you need to know how to safely stop your vehicle. Drivers of manual transmission vehicles it is ordinary to shift to neutral. But all too often this is the story we hear:
For 30 miles, [James] Sikes said, he swerved in and out of traffic, narrowly missing a big rig and trying desperately to slow the vehicle down, at one point reaching down with his hand to pull back on the gas pedal. The brakes were useless.
“I was laying on the brakes,” Sikes said, “but it wasn’t slowing down.”
The “nerve-wracking” experience, he said, ended when a CHP officer, responding to his 911 call, instructed him through a loudspeaker to apply his emergency brake in tandem with the brake pedal. Sikes pressed down, hard. “My bottom wasn’t even on the seat,” he said.
When the Prius, which had reached 90 mph, dropped to about 50 mph, Sikes turned off the engine and coasted to a stop. There was nothing else he could have done to stop the car, Sikes said. [LA Times]
Except there was something else he could have done, reach over and shift the transmission to neutral.
The following video from Consumer Reports illustrates the issue:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoIIT0WJS4s
If you drive a vehicle, please be sure you know how to stop it safely.
– Steve Patterson
After years of controversy and plenty of lawsuits, the new Centene buildings are going up in Clayton. Just what Clayton needed, more generic glass towers. Yawn…
For decades the site at Hanley & Forsyth was occupied by the unique Scruggs Vandervoort Barney/Library Limited building (learn more at Vanishing STL). While I don’t believe we can or should save every old building, I do think we should have higher expectations for the buildings that replace significant structures.
No, this is not a high-rise prison. This is their second building under construction, just West of the corner tower. Maybe it will all be great when finished but what I see so far makes me think it will be more of the same — anonymous boxes.
At least the other end of the block has a low, but appealing, scale.
– Steve Patterson