urbanSTL

The pic makes College Church look like its a block away from the old CPI building on Washington.

I'm amused by the "I'd trade the Arch" comments. It's a one of a kind monument that instantly identifies St. Louis to the world, but yeah let's get rid of it for three or four more mid rises

^ I aim to please! Good one on the 3 or 4 mid-rises, too!

southsidepride wrote:I'm amused by the "I'd trade the Arch" comments. It's a one of a kind monument that instantly identifies St. Louis to the world, but yeah let's get rid of it for three or four more mid rises

ummm… 40 square blocks of SoHo-style cast iron facades (it was the largest district outside of NYC) is a bit more than "three or four mid rises". have you never seen pictures? here you go:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=162521

Imagine if Lacledes landing stretched south all the way to poplar street and the Arch was on the easy bank.

^ i honestly think St. Louis would have a more tangible identity (think New Orleans and Savannah) if we still had an in-tact historic waterfront. i love the Arch, but it was basically used as an excuse for misguided, urban-renewal-era land clearance.

^ here is my fantasy time warp.... convince the emerging city to keep Chouteau's Mansion (about the scale of Monticello & and Mount Vernon) as they built the cast iron beauties on the waterfront. And then the New Dealers to take just a few of those beauts to the north and south and build the Arch legs. And then allow the highwaymen the surface 3rd Street Expressway but not I-70. You'd still have an awesome NPS district but surrounded by an historic built environment. The rest of America's downtown's could just go home in shame.

I think he might also be saying that the difference in the skylines of Seattle and Saint Louis are pretty much just three of four midrises (I wish it so!) so it is amusing to see comments about levelling the Arch for that.

i thought i was maybe misinterpreting southside's comment but i didn't notice anyone suggesting that we level the arch for new construction. i'll go look...

EDIT: holy crap it was YOU roger! and db! you guys are some sh*t-starters!

We were obviously joking about leveling the arch cause that would never happen. But honestly if you said "If you level the Arch, you can have a jam packed full modern downtown like Shanghai or Hong Kong. . .well be thankful im not in charge cause bye bye arch. But im kind of an a$$ who will never be in charge of anything so no worries.

How about this. We trade chesterfield: all of their businesses for the Arch. You can put the arch over highway 40 and you can drive between it everyday. Arch: Gateway to suburbs

^ oh, of course. i'd drop-kick the Arch for a dense downtown and a healthy infusion of people as well. it's a great piece of architecture but it hasn't done anything for the city's fortunes.

Rebuild the street grid around the arch. Best of both worlds.

The Arch aint going nowhere and whose to say that if we did still have that nice riverfront neighborhood it wouldn't be scarred with parking lots and half abandoned buildings like the Landing is now. Look, the Arch is awesome and I wouldn't change it for nothing....its the symbol of our city, like it or not. What we should be focusing on now, is how do we make the North Riverfront the coolest TOD neighborhood in the city and expand that success all the way down North Broadway, where we still have some pretty kick ass warehouses, with potential to be another mixed use strip in the next 20 years. I also wish we could better connect the Arch to Chouteau's Landing, which is an absolute joke and total blight to our city, when it should be an asset. We have enough massive warehouses on our riverfront to have a whole new loft boom similar to the Washington Ave corridor.

As disappointing as it is that we lost a lot of building stock in creating the Arch... and as disappoint as it is that the mindset that built the Arch has also meant a lot of wasted money on unsuccessful plans...

The current state we find ourselves in is with one of the world's greatest sculptures and monuments right in our downtown. That, in and of itself, is pretty awesome... so now let's build out that density we all want to have (again) on the many, many other open and empty lots, a good few right downtown or near downtown.

There are lessons to be learned from our past decisions, no doubt, but the Arch is pretty wonderful, so I don't lament having it. Now we can make it a part of a world class city.

roger wyoming II wrote:

urban_dilettante wrote:

southsidepride wrote:I'm amused by the "I'd trade the Arch" comments. It's a one of a kind monument that instantly identifies St. Louis to the world, but yeah let's get rid of it for three or four more mid rises

ummm… 40 square blocks of SoHo-style cast iron facades (it was the largest district outside of NYC) is a bit more than "three or four mid rises". have you never seen pictures? here you go:

I guess I missed it in history class where The Gateway Arch was the cause of white flight and the exodus to the suburbs.

Get real! Yes those long blocks of SOHO style buildings were AWESOME! But what would we have filled them with in say 1973 when the city was in the midst of a 27% percent decline in population for the decade?

Even with the Arch clearance we came dang close to losing Lafayette Square and Soulard to Cul de sac city!

I still contend that had riverfront not been cleared we would have lost the near south side. There simply wasn't enough of a market to save them all at the time

Regardless we have the Arch now and it ain't going nowhere. I love it (full disclosure my dad was on the construction crew) and friends who visit from around the country talk about how cool it is to have such an iconic structure downtown.

Now let's rebuild a cool dense downtown WITH the Arch instead of moping about what we lost. It wasn't the Arch's fault!

I would trade forty dense blocks of rehabbed historic buildings for the arch. This land clearance happened in the 30's when almost everyone thought it was "progress". In any event it's a non issue; we have the arch and we should promote development around it. Chouteaus and the Landing in particular.

southsidepride wrote: I guess I missed it in history class where The Gateway Arch was the cause of white flight and the exodus to the suburbs.

nobody made any such claim.

southsidepride wrote: Get real! Yes those long blocks of SOHO style buildings were AWESOME! But what would we have filled them with in say 1973 when the city was in the midst of a 27% percent decline in population for the decade?

speculation. i guess we'll never know. personally i think massive land clearance concurrent with highway construction and subsidization of sprawl (not the Arch itself) had everything to do with the exodus.

in any case, mine was in response to your "three or four more mid rises" comment, which i (perhaps mistakenly) took as a reference to the old riverfront instead of new construction.