Urban Hike In the Pursuit of Ice Cream: Part II

By Jeff Fister

On our 12-mile hike with boy scouts through the heart of the city last month, as the day wore on, the big question was: if we stopped walking, would we fall over and call someone to pick us up?

On the other hand, there was a mighty motivation: we’d started with chocolate malts at Crown Candy and at the end of the trail (or almost, as I learned later) beckoned frozen treats from Ted Drewes on Chippewa.

After leaving St. Stanislaus church north of downtown we continued south on N. 20^th. At Delmar we walked by the Magic Stove Lofts, a huge condo/apartment conversion of an old stove factory. Developed by Robert Wood Realty, the building was built in 1895 and helps to anchor the western expansion of downtown loft development.

At Washington was another Robert Wood development — the string of distinctive Tudor shops and residences know as, well, the Tudor. Originally built as the showroom for The Wrought Iron Range Company, another stove company (the “Stove District”?), in 1925, it encompasses a full city block and has been converted into loft apartments and retail storefronts.

As we trudged down N. 20^th, ahead loomed what seemed like the Wonderful City of Oz… Union Station.  We’re talking shelter from the rain, indoor plumbing, benches to sit on and maybe even a chance to get some food. Maybe.

If you grew up in St. Louis, you doubtless have memories of Union Station, perhaps good and bad. My earliest recollections were waiting in the old terminal for my grandmother’s train to arrive from Jefferson City for a visit. This was in the 1970s, long before the rehab was a gleam in Mayor Schoemehl’s eyes. For me, the other major memory was my honeymoon; we spent a few days at the Hyatt before loading our U-Haul and old red Mustang to drive to California.

Union Station

One thing I remember as a kid was the “Whispering Wall” in Union Station. Not oneof the boy scouts knew what we were talking about. But as you stand the grand foyer of the train station, there is a long arching wall that frames the entry way. If you stand at the bottom of one end of the arch, and someone stands at the other end of the arch, you can talk to the other person like they are standing next to you. Don’t ask me how to explain auditory physics; like cell phones, airplanes and radios, to me it’s just magic. Let the mystery be.

The danger we faced at Union Station was that we might encounter a sudden drop in energy and even a possible mutiny. So instead of staying long enough for the kids to scatter and seek out fast food, we marched on, promising them we’d stop somewhere “up ahead” for lunch. Luckily, it worked, and we soon exited the station and parking lot, heading south on Truman Parkway, over the railroad tracks (and the old Mill Creek).

Lafayette Square

We went west on Chouteau a few blocks then turned south on Mississippi for a walk through Lafayette Square. If you haven’t been there recently, it’s really worth getting out of the car and seeing some of the meticulously cared-for Victorian houses. There was a time when I was getting out of college that kids were buying “shell” houses for $5,000 and doing gut rehabs. Good investment… like buying IBM stock when computers were the size of a warehouse.

Crossing over I-44 we turned west on Allen and “picked up” a scout who lived there. Aha! Fresh legs! Maybe he’d carry my water bottle?

We worked our way to Russell and Jefferson, and, standing on a corner, I experienced a very “St. Louis” thing. I looked in a doorway and out walked my friend Michael Kilfoy, a graphic artist who’s rehabbing an old commercial building. I would have liked to talk with him some more, but the light cycled once and the scoutmasters urged us on. No time to tarry, here.

Compton Heights Gazebo

Later we walked through another famous St. Louis historic neighborhood: Compton Heights, the winding streets which held mansions once owned by famous St. Louis German beer barons with names like Busch and Griesiedieck. Ya! And they still keep their streets clean (the scrubby Dutch).

By the time we got to Tower Grove Park, we were getting some “pushback” from the kids — and from our middle-aged legs. The rain started to pick up and we finally collapsed at the gazebo ringed with busts of famous composers and the home of the Compton Heights Concert Band. We sprawled on the stage and ate and watched the rain fall on the green beauty that is the park.

I don’t know what got us going again, but it seemed pretty clear that we’d better not stop too long again or we would bail on the whole deal. I’ve hiked this far before in a day, but usually on soft dirt trails, not the mean streets of the city. And then somehow, reaching Kinghshighway, we started to sense the end of the trail. Kind of.

We went out of the park, west on Arsenal and angled south toward Hampton. We passed two of the city’s most interesting historic buildings with two very different missions.

Known to most as the State Mental Hospital — but officially known as the St. Louis Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center — the large building on Arsenal looks almost like a southern state capital with columns in front and a dome on top. The hospital was designed by William Rumbold, who also designed the dome atop the Old Courthouse downtown. Built in 1869 as the St. Louis County Lunatic Asylum (I’m not kidding — it was later called the St. Louis County Insane Asylum). Originally, its capacity was only 150 patients. After a series of expansions, the hospital held more than 3800 people in 1940.

Walking south on Sublette, we viewed on the west side of the street, up a hill and behind some trees a group of buildings, one of which was red brick and looked like a giant mausoleum. This is the Missouri Crematory, built in 1888, designed by Otto Wilhelmi and was the first crematory established west of the Mississippi. The grounds also include a chapel and columbarium, where urns the ash remains are stored. I took a tour of the facility once… and even on a Saturday morning in May, it’s a little creepy.

We soon approached Tilles Park and scoutmaster (and urban architect) Ralph Wafer mentioned something that I had never noticed. On the north and east side of Tilles, which extends to Hampton Avenue, are several neighborhoods consisting of small wood-frame houses. We’d spent all morning walking through Old Red Brick St. Louis yet here was a group of cookie-cutter houses you’d expect to see in Affton or other post-war suburbs. Ralph explained that these homes were built after World War II in an area that once had a number of clay mines and brick factories. So ironically, the clay that was mined from that area was used to build many of the historic neighborhoods we had walked through. And of course you know how the nearby “Hill” neighborhood got its name… this was the hill that the Italian immigrants who worked in the clay factories had to climb to get to their homes.

Reaching Hampton almost felt like the finish line, yet we still had to make it to Chippewa. South on Hampton, past Oleatha… near the house sold by Mayor Slay in March… to Pernod, where we headed west. I’d never been on this block before — and it was yet another display of classic St. Louis architecture. Yet this was not like the old converted stove factories, or Victorian mansions, or shotgun working-class homes we’d already seen.

This was “So St. Louis,” home of over-designed stone and brick bungalows with postage-stamp green lawns, lawn ornaments, neat-as-a-pin and you’d better not spit on my sidewalk. Sturdy, neat, scrubby-dutch, conservative hard-working St. Louis. It was the beginning of the ‘burbs, but not really; the homes were still distinctive and stylish, yet small and very close together. It was a neighborhood where you’d go to see your “grandma in the city” on Sundays, or where you’d grow up walking to the neighborhood parochial school and play soccer for the CYC. It certainly was a long way from homeless encampments on the Mississippi river we’d seen that morning.

Before I knew it, we were walking south on Watson and at the Chippewa intersection. It took every bit of my will not to walk through Donut Drive-In and order a dozen, but I knew “in sight it must be right” that Ted Drewes would appear soon.

12 miles later...

For the past six hours we’d been telling the kids that “it’s not that much farther” and I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly the boy scouts disappeared. After all-day hiking through rain and city streets suddenly they burst into a sprint a block from Ted Drewes. While I could barely walk, there they were, like horses trotting faster near the barn, running down Chippewa in hiking boots, unbuttoned scout shirts flying in the wind.

By the time I stumbled to a stop in front of the familiar white ice cream palace, the boys were well into their assorted concretes and sundaes. Except for our bedraggled group, it was a familiar scene in front of Drewes… a group of nuns, a wedding party (after the mostaciolli) and various other white-short-sleeved carb hunters. Looking for some kind of validation, I told the girl who served me at the counter what we’d done. She looked at me blankly for a moment, said OMG! and then asked, “do you want any nuts on your concrete?”

The end of the trail...

Epilogue: a couple of kids were picked up by their parents, but most of us chose public transportation to get back to our cars at the MetroLink lot on DeBaliviere. After some discussion, we decided to take the Hampton bus instead of the Shrewsbury MetroLink, and just when we thought we were finished we walked back to Hampton and waited at a bus stop. My one son Paul immediately sprawled on the grass and 10 minutes later a bus took us all the way up Hampton, through Forest Park, and finally to DeBalivere.