What Would You Do for Ted Drewes?

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. 20th. 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. 20th, 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

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.

Urban Hike Showcases St. Louis from One Ice Cream to Another

By Jeff Fister

So how far would you walk for ice cream?

Twelve miles?

The event showed up on my son’s boy scout schedule a few months ago: the “ice cream hike.”

This sounded interesting.The Hikers

Not all boy scout hikes are over the river and through the woods. My sons are part of Troop 98, based at St. Roch school in the Central West End. There is a tradition at Troop 98 — and at other urban boy scout troops — of plotting hikes through the city, often along historic or architecturally significant routes. And this one ended at place that had concretes made of chocolate.

I went on an urban hike several years ago. It was a frozen morning in January. We started at Carondelet Park in south city, hiked to Jefferson Barracks Park in south county, then back to Carondelet Park. It was a gritty walk… past a homeless tent city near River Des Peres and along a string of vacant storefronts. The view of the Mississippi from Jefferson Barracks was nice, but we only stopped twice — once to eat frozen pizza and another to warm our toes and use the rest rooms at a Quik Trip.

But this hike sounded more promising. It would start at Crown Candy Kitchen in north St. Louis city and end at Ted Drewes in south city. I didn’t really think of the intervening 10 miles or so… just the ice cream at both ends.

We gathered for the hike at the DeBaliviere/Forest Park MetroLink station. It was not a large group. It included my two sons, three other scouts and two scout leaders, Paul Winter and Ralph Wafer.

I still feel a little funny going on “scoutings.” I was a boy scout for about three weeks when I was a kid; we had a bad leader and the whole thing seemed vaguely conformist and militaristic.  And for a pre-teen: Not Fun.

But two of my sons have found a good troop and a good leader. I help out with the activities I like — hiking and camping — and my sons go along with the rest. I don’t quite understand the whole passion for collecting “badges” but then there’s the “fun stuff.” Last summer, one of my sons took a train to New Mexico with scouts and spent 10 days backpacking in the mountains, an experience I would never have the time, money or opportunity to give him.

Anyway, the ice cream hike was attractive to me in several ways: not just the chocolate, but the chance to walk through the city and glimpse the architecture and history.

Ralph Wafer was a good person to have along; a veteran scout leader, he’s also an urban architect and St. Louis history buff.

We got off MetroLink at Laclede’s Landing around 9:30 a.m. and headed north. Though I consider myself a “city person” I had never walked north of the landing or taken the Riverfront Trail. This is the bicycle trail built by Trailnet that travels along the river north to the Chain of Rocks Bridge.

This particular Saturday morning was cool and there was a light rain. The plan was to take the trail north to St. Louis Avenue and then head west to Crown Candy Kitchen.

The first mile or two was fascinating.

Bob Cassilly's Riverfront Sculpture

We saw: Bob Cassilly’s amazing sculptures on the flood wall; the old Admiral/President Casino boat being shut down because of rising river water; the “Hopeville” homeless encampment that had just moved from Tucker Boulevard; the beginnings of the new Mississippi river bridge; and the seemingly endless industrial buildings and railways along the river.

This was not a nature stroll at Babler Park.

This was the city, and the river, in all its urban glory and decay. Meanwhile the boys were jumping in puddles, climbing walls and asking: how far to Crown Candy?

By 10:15 a.m. we arrived at ice cream oasis number one. Crown Candy, run by the colorful Macedonian (don’t call them Greek) Karandzieff family for several generations, is a wonderful St. Louis anachronism. It’s a 60’s-style ice-cream-soda-fountain joint that caters to tourists and adventurous natives. It’s plopped in the middle of a historic red-brick neighborhood peopled with poor families, liberal homesteaders and hopeful rehabbers.

We walked in and ordered malts “to go.” The boys wanted to sit and eat, but we told them we had a LONG way to go. That’s the great thing about youth: fresh springy legs and undying optimism untempered by the knowledge of the trek ahead.

14th Street Mall

Leaving Crown Candy we walked south through the 14th Street Mall, a new redevelopment effort by the Old North St. Louis group.

The mall seeks to recreate one of the city’s once-thriving shopping districts, like the U. City Loop and Wellston, before shopping malls and strip centers made the streetcars obsolete. One city official called it the “Soulard of the 21st century.”

The mall features two blocks of old storefronts and offices painstakingly restored. New sidewalks and curbs are installed and the street seems ready, if not for the rain, for new paving. One of the scouts observed: “so where are the stores?” Wafer, a veteran of urban rehab, said: “yes, all they need now are more tenants. That’s always the hard part.” Given the recession and fears of crime in the city, this may be harder than ever.

If you’re a middle-class suburban-raised person like myself, one of the endlessly fascinating aspects of “city living” are the contrasts that exist from one street to another, from one block to the next.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the near north side where we walked. From homeless tent people to large industrial complexes. From run-down row houses to sparkling new suburban-style homes. From trash-strewn vacant lots to blossoming urban community gardens.

At the corner of North Market and  Hogan Street is the old St. Liborius church. The rectory building is the home of Karen House, a Catholic Worker settlement inspired by Dorothy Day that serves the poor in the area. A little farther down Hogan Street we walked by New Roots Urban Farm. This is a patch of vacant land claimed by young people who grow vegetables and work with residents to sell them and to create a “sustainable” community. I’d been here before; my son, an “eco kid” who had graduated from Truman State University with an environmental  degree, had volunteered there last summer and had given me a tour (for more information: Newrootsurbanfarm.org). Who says hippies are dead? On the farm’s website is this statement: “We are here because we believe that in order to create a more ecologically-sound lifestyle we must create radical systems that actively oppose the dominant capitalist model of exploitation and oppression.”

From there we walked closer to the city’s core; past the old Falstaff brewery which had been one of the north side’s first residential rehabs. We also passed numerous vacant plots of land owned by Paul McKee and slated to be used for his ambitious north side development.

A distinctive landmark is St. Stanislaus church. This old Polish Catholic church, the subject of much recent controversy, is emblematic of the city of St. Louis, which is dotted by large Catholic churches built by immigrant communities in the 19th century. As the city population has shrunk and people have moved to St. Louis county, these large, historic, often architecturally-stunning churches have met mixed fates. Some survive due to being in gentrified neighborhoods or support from the heirs of the original immigrants — like St. Stanislaus — but many have closed or have been sold.

When we first saw St. Stanislaus, one of my sons said, “isn’t this the church that’s in trouble?” It wasn’t that simple; I wanted to explain the church’s struggles with the Archdiocese of St. Louis about governance and recent efforts to resolve the controversy.

But that would have to wait. As I’ve learned on other scout hikes, the main goal is to keep moving. There were many miles to go.

Check back in June for part two.

Did Mark Twain Sleep Here?

By Jeff Fister

clemens2The dilapidated Clemens Mansion just north of downtown looks like a horror movie set…. Nightmare on Cass Street. With its faded antebellum columns, collapsing porches and lean-to construction, it seems likely to fall over (or fall in) at any minute.

It’s hard to believe that this decrepit old house is set to become a centerpiece — a “legacy” property — of the $8.1 billion north side redevelopment plan proposed by developer Paul McKee.

Central West End developer and rehabber Bob Wood is partnering with McKee on the project, which will turn the 150-year-old mansion and adjoining chapel into senior apartments and community center.

“We’re talking to the Missouri History Museum housing a museum honoring the heritage of the surrounding neighborhood,” said Dan Holak, who is heading up the project for Wood. “They would occupy part of the chapel building and we’re also talking to the Missouri Botanical Garden about doing some landscaping and putting in an urban garden.”

For years, McKee secretly bought more than 850 properties on the city’s near north side in a two-square-mile area. He announced last year the redevelopment plan and is negotiating nearly $400 million in tax increment financing with the city of St. Louis. He said he plans to turn the mostly vacant properties into 10,000 new homes and millions of square feet of office, warehouse and retail space to the area over 15 years. At the end of last year, the Missouri Department of Economic Development awarded McKee $20 million in tax credits for the project. McKee bought the Clemens mansion in 2005.

Wood is also hoping to finance the $13 million Clemens project through historic and low income tax credits. A model for the development is Wood’s work on the Franklin School at 814 N. 19th Street. A former St. Louis public school, designed by famed school architect William Ittner and opened in 1911, Franklin was closed in 1995. Wood renovated it into 75 senior apartments and reopened it in the growing neighborhood now known as Downtown West in 2007.

“The condition of Franklin School when we started there was pretty nasty,” Holak said. “With funding, we’re confident we can make the Clemens mansion work.”

I met with Holak and architect David Lorentz at the Clemens mansion on a cold December afternoon.

At first, I was content to just walk around the outside of the property, which includes the 55,000-square-foot mansion, an addition on the back of the house, and an adjoining 3,000 square foot chapel building. Wood’s plan, Lorentz said, is to convert the main house into 49 senior apartments. The first floor of the chapel would be residential, and the second floor would be the public museum space.

Holak and Lorentz then pulled out their flashlights and invited me inside the mansion. We stopped first on the front porch and Holak pointed out the distinctive columns. With everything else falling down around, how do they stay up?

“They’re cast iron,” Holak said, and sure enough, I knocked on the two-story high columns and they “clanged” like an old kettle. Maybe this house, built in 1860 and listed as one of the city’s most “endangered” landmarks, might hold up after all.

But then we went inside.

I’ve been inside a lot of old and deteriorated properties, but this one was, well, the creepiest I’d ever seen. We walked a bit down the main hallway and glanced inside dark rooms filled with trash, crumbling walls and exposed wires. I’m not a haunted-house guy, but even this one seemed ripe for a ghost or two as a cold wind rattled through the old walls.

Holak and Lorentz were unfazed. They calmly pointed out the distinctive hardwood floors — “we can save that” — and some of the mouldings and architectural detail that were dirtied but salvageable. Lorentz flashed his light on an elevator shaft that he said would work. Holak said that conditions at Franklin School were just as bad, or worse, and talked about the rehab like any other home improvement project. He added that if financing gets approved, his company would start construction this spring or summer and it would be completed the summer of 2011. As he talked, I could almost imagine a warm and bright historic home filled with “active” seniors. Almost.

Ten minutes was about all I could handle in that place. After we shook hands, I walked to my car and glanced back at the building. I thought about all the people who had lived there — from the Clemens family to Roman Catholic nuns to Buddhist monks. But did Mark Twain? I don’t know, but it would have made a good story.

(Part II: History of the mansion’s inhabitants and the Mark Twain connection.)

The changing face of Lindell Boulevard

By Jeff Fister

Lindell Boulevard is one of the city’s best-known streets; it began around 1800 as a small path in the prairie leading to a spring near what is now Maryland and Euclid avenues. French colonials and others made their way from downtown to the spring to drink, gossip, quarrel and relax, according to CWE historian Mary Bartley in her book, St. Louis Lost. The street was named for Peter Lindell, a 19th century merchant who made his fortune in trade along the Ohio River and later as a holder of extensive real estate in the area.

Lindell Boulevard was the main street platted in the subdivision of the Lindell farm west of Grand Avenue. The subdivision of their farm into straight wide streets with large blocks was unique at a time when most additions were still conforming to the same old irregularities.

Later, in the early 20th century, city planner and architect George Kessler envisioned Lindell as one in a series of grand city boulevards that would connect parks, residential and business areas. In part, this plan was realized. During the World’s Fair of 1904, Lindell was an important route from the city to the fair; it’s westernmost section, from Kingshighway to Skinker, hosted an amusement park called the “Pike.” The grand mansions, institutions and apartment buildings that lined the street boasted some of the nation’s finest architects.

Fast-forward a hundred years. “Lindell seems schizophrenic,” said Carolyn Toft, former director of Landmarks Association. While some blocks retain their Victorian glory, many historic buildings are gone, including the Castleman-Mackay mansion at Spring and Lindell, now a parking lot for the next-door Masonic Temple.

The blocks east of Vandeventer to Sarah have been especially prone to change. A series of commercial buildings have been built and torn down from the old Windsor Hotel to the recent demolition of the San Luis apartments. Strip malls have been built and bland 1960s-style office buildings still stand.

Remember the Cinerama? This was a popular movie theater that I attended as a child. Built in 1962, it was billed as having one of the largest indoor screens in the world; 100 feet wide on a curve. I’ll never forget George C. Scott yelling and World War II army tanks marching across the screen during “Patton.” It’s at the site where the Walgreens now stands.

I do remember — but never visited, I promise — the old Playboy Club on Lindell near Vandeventer. It was Hugh Hefner’s fourth club, at 3914 Lindell. Also, the Windsor Hotel, built in the 1920s but torn down in 1993, occupied what is now the American Cancer Center Hope Lodge.

These blocks of jumbled urban architecture have been slowly upgraded with newer buildings which employ brick facades and architectural character lacking in the older ones. The Hope Lodge, the Walgreens, and yes, even the new McDonalds may not win awards, but they do blend better into the streetscape.

One new building which did win an award is the 3949 Lindell apartment building which opened this year. It’s a four-story, 200 unit structure which caters to students, staff and employees of nearby St. Louis University, Washington University and the Grand Center entertainment district. On Oct. 9, Mayor Francis Slay recognized the apartment complex as the city’s “Best Economic Project.

There’s still a long way to go to reduce the street’s “schizophrenia,” but perhaps someday Lindell will return to the grand urban boulevard that would make Peter Lindell proud.

They Call Me ‘Mr. History’

By Jeff Fister

I can be incredibly annoying when I’m driving around town with passengers in the car.

By virtue of publishing books on St. Louis history for nearly 20 years, I’ve slowly accumulated tiny bits of St. Louis historical trivia. Occasionally, I can impress an out-of-town visitor, but mostly it’s my kids who bear the brunt of my utterances.

Also, now that I’ve been on the planet for 50 years, and in St. Louis for 41 of those, historical facts are now mixing with my own past into one big grab-bag of entirely useless bits of information — that is, useless until there’s a St. Louis category at a trivia night I’m attending.

Years ago my older kids started calling me “Mr. History.” I thought it was out of respect, but I noticed that they’d always giggle after they called me that. One of them finally told me they watched a cartoon where one of the villains was, you guessed it, Mr. History.  He would show up and start spouting random historical facts, and punishing the other characters by “boring them to bits.”

Thanks, kids.

But I don’t take the history thing too seriously. It’s not that I even LIKED history that much in high school and college. For myself, it was just another class requirement to complete, easier than math and less memorization than French. But in my career as a journalist, editor, PR guy and publisher, I’ve had to master quickly whatever subject area I was writing about. Believe it or not, I spent five years learning to be an “expert” on the U. S. space program when I worked at Boeing.

So becoming a publisher of local history books has helped me to master a lot of PR-worthy historical blurbs, although I’d never profess to be an expert. Read More »