Some questions about St. Louis

Factual Questions
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  1. Driving south/east on I-70 towards downown, at one spot on the east side of the road about a mile north of downtown, I saw an abandoned railroad viaduct, but what struck me was cantenary poles above the overgrown tracks. The poles were stripped of their wires; the line is definitely NOT a working light rail line. Aside from the transit system, I didn’t know that St. Louis had electricrified railroads at one time. Anybody know the history of these tracks?

  2. It appears that the northern suburbs, a few years ago almost exclusively white, are experiencing massive racial ransition. Looking at US Census demographic progiles, the only northern suburb that has a large majority white population is Florissant. Resegregation is taking place, and it’s happening fast. Are the governments of the northern 'burbs making plans to ensure the stability and desirability of these communities after resegregation in complete, so they avoid the fate of places like Jennings and East St. Louis? Where have the former white residents of North County moved?

  3. Any plans for the reuse of the Macarthur Bridge?

  4. Looking on municipal boundary maps, it looks like there is a long, narrow section of East St. Louis that extends east of IL 152 and the escarpment/elevation on the east side of the Mississippi River. Street maps show winding, curvilinear streets, like what would be found in an affluent suburb of the 1920s. I know the rest of East St. Louis is a war zone, but what is this area like?

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      • Not actually in St Louis, but pretty close (half hour)…
  1. I can’t remember right off what you speak of. THere has been heavy construction going on at north 70 for years. If I had seen this question posted early Sunday morning, I might have gone out and looked. Not on a Monday morning, though…
  2. Yes the north suburbs are turning black, and have been for years. If anybody cares or what they are doing to stop it I don’t know. I have an aunt in Florissant–they went there because the houses had larger yards than other areas. …As I see it: rich people are building country manors west of the city, and average-income (white) people are building homes south of the city.
  3. It’s still got a regular railway on the lower deck, and I have seen construction trucks and crews on the upper deck, but that may just be something for the railway. I have not heard anything.
  4. You’ll have to get on Mapquest and give me a street intersection in the area you are speaking of here.
    ~
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  1. No idea
  2. This has been going on since at least the early 90’s. I saw “Boys in the Hood” in the theatre there and was the only white guy. My sister knew a Hawaiian guy in Black Jack then and it seemed to be pretty “white”, but I have no idea about now. Hazelwood East (all black as far as I could tell) used to kick my HS’s (Alton High) every year at football. If you wanted poorly remembered anecdotal evidence from 15 years ago, I’m your man.
    3.What about McKinley?
    4.Does E.St.Louis get worse every year? I drove from Forrest Park to O’Fallon, IL last winter and didn’t see a non-broken window in the entire city. Very disturbing that people live like that in the US.
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  1. The resegregation has been going on since before the early 90s. Two of my closest friends and an ex-gf are originally from ‘North County’ - in fact, they all went to the same Hazelwood East that dead0man mentioned. White students were distinctly in the minority by the time they graduated in the mid-90s, accounting for perhaps as little as 1/3rd of the student body. Since that time, two of the three families have moved out of the neighborhood, and the one that remains are increasingly paranoid about crime in the area (with some justification, IMO, from the anecdotes I’ve heard) and are thinking of moving as well.

DougC’s summation of the ‘white flight’ areas is fairly accurate, though the manor-building seems to me to be mostly a phenomenon on the outer edges of the west side. What he overlooks is the booming developments of middle-class homes in the suburbs west of the Missouri River - places like St. Charles and (especially) St. Peters.

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As for your first question, here is a WAG: you were looking at ruins of the once-extensive streetcar or “flat rail” system. The last streetcar line in St. Louis was one which ran through Wellston until 1966. I have very dim memories of when the last line ran in University City; my mom took me for a ride during its last week, thinking I should have the experience at least once, as my paternal grandfather had been a driver and my maternal grandfather had been a conductor. That would have been around 1960, and I was a preschooler.

Many or most of the tracks were simply paved over, but they still turn up from time to time. One place where they are visible is on Washington Avenue, west of Grand. Each side of a track looks like two narrow metal bands, with just a small interval between them, lying flush with the pavement. You can also see creases or “seams” rising up out of the asphalt on many streets, indicating where the tracks lay buried. The former presence of the streetcars is reflected in various place names: The Wellston Loop, The U. City Loop, The Maplewood Loop.

This thread must mean absolutely nothing to 99.9% of the people on the board…

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As for the question of where the “white flight” is going to, it is still continuing west: the cities of St. Charles, O’Fallon and St. Peters have been growing steadily since the 70s, which helps account for the twice daily traffic gridlock in northwestern St. Louis County and–possibly–why St. Charles County voters declined to pay for an extension of Metrolink.

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  1. I can’t be more specific, but you might have seen poles for the old streetcar system, for an interurban trolley that ran into Illinois or for the old Terminal Rail Road – a switching line that operated between frieght yards and to industrial locations.

For what it’s worth, my office is located about 300 feet north of the old Sutton Loop in Maplewood (not to be confused with the Yale Loop, which shouldn’t be confused with the Dale Loop, which was actually in Richmond Heights – I love the old streetcar lines)

  1. I actually did a demographic study of “white flight” in the 1970s. In general, the black population is heading north, the white population is heading south, and both groups are heading west. It’s been that way for 40 years that I know of. The city of Ferguson, I believe, is trying a gurantee that new home buyers’ homes will not decline in value when they sell (I guess the city makes up the difference in price.)

Decades ago, property developers in south St. Louis put restrictive covenants in their deeds that blocked selling to non-whites. The non-white population settled in north St. Louis and the division still exists to some extent today, even in the suburbs.

The situation in north county hasn’t been helped by the loss of jobs by the big manufacturers there (Boeing/McDonnel-Douglas, Ford, Emerson, etc.) Well-paid assembly line workers were the backbone of those communities from World War 2 through the 1980s.

  1. I believe MacArthur Bridge is still used for railroad traffic. McKinley is closed for a complete renovation. Last I heard it was scheduled to reopen in 2005.

  2. There was a pocket of East St. Louis they stayed pretty substanitally solid middle-class at least into the 1970s. I don’t know if it’s the area you’re talking about, or what it’s like now.