There’s a good chance that if you live in South County, your roots go back to the city of St. Louis. Perhaps you, your parents, grandparents or even great-grandparents lived there. According to the U.S. Census, when the city hit a peak population of 856,796 in 1950, South County, or everywhere south of Watson/Highway 44, had only 60,252. Today, while the city has plunged to 269,385, a drop of nearly 70% from its heyday, South County has more than tripled to nearly 200,000. No doubt many came from the city, especially the South Side.
The city of St. Louis is a shell of its former self. In the 1950s, every block was densely packed with all types of homes, from large mansions to countless tiny “shotgun” houses where you could see through the front door straight to the rear exit. Multifamily flats were everywhere. Corner grocers, confectionaries, pharmacies, cleaners, department stores, movie theaters or anything you needed were a walk, short drive or bus ride away. Kids played outside until dark in yards, playgrounds and even alleys.
I recall those days well, having lived in the city my first thirty-five years on both the North and South Side. I loved it. The Foghat song “Fool for the City” described me. I also closely studied changes occurring in the city as part of my doctoral program at St. Louis University in the 1990s. My mentor, Dr. George Wendel, knew the city well, tracking neighborhood changes and population flight from the 1950s until his death in 2000.
Wendel followed all the attempts to fight the city’s decline, from land clearance policies dating to the 1920s that bulldozed large areas blighted by planners in the name of urban beautification to the installation of the interstate highway system that destroyed swaths of residential areas and cut paths through the middle of neighborhoods like The Hill.
As flight to the county picked up after World War II, it appeared nothing could stem city abandonment. It began with returning soldiers who lacked viable housing alternatives in a packed urban environment and chose the lure of new subdivisions popping up across the county aided by low interest home loans through the GI Bill. The process was exacerbated by neighborhood racial redlining that led to white flight.
Despite efforts to turn around neighborhoods and reduce flight, debacles like the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project further cast St. Louis as a textbook case for decline. Other attempts at rejuvenation followed, including housing tax credits encouraging “gentrification” of neighborhoods like Lafayette Square. Tax abatements for development in the early 2000s were meant to foster business incubation and revitalize Midtown from Jefferson Avenue to Washington University (remember Cortex?). But giving away tax revenue for such projects kept the city’s budget in a hole, while residents living north and south of the central corridor saw few direct benefits.
When I got married in 1996, my wife and I joined the “Great Exit.” I was working at Jefferson College in Hillsboro and she was a school principal in the city. South County was a good middle ground, so there we moved. About that time, I recall Dr. Wendel wondering whether the city would simply end up as a destination for sports, entertainment and cultural attractions by people living outside its borders. Those venues are true gems and rightly celebrated for the vibrancy they give the entire region.
But what about the rest of the city? Those once-packed streets north and south of the central corridor that bustled with life? Granted, some neighborhoods maintain their vitality with remarkable success, but those are the exceptions, pockets scattered around but leaving much in between declining or desolate.
The reality is, even if you’re a dedicated city dweller, the city offers few incentives to maintain what I call sustainable habitability. The earnings tax shaves 1% off your check. Public schools are subpar. Crime, though down recently, remains a problem. St. Louis Hills, where I lived and was one of the city’s safest areas, had to call on its residents to hire off-duty police for patrols. Even immigrant groups like the Bosnians, who first settled in the city in the 1990s, migrated in large numbers to nearby Affton.
Sadly, I believe Dr. Wendel’s prediction has proven to be largely true. I wish it were otherwise.
