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Placemaking

Adding "Places" to the St. Louis Landscape

Published on Sunday, 07 February 2010 00:00

Written by Alex Ihnen

The Arch is a grand landmark, but it's only marginally useful in telling us where we are in the city. You can see it from parts of Forest Park and you know you're looking east and you know approximately where the river runs. You can see it from the south on I-55 and know when you're getting close to downtown. Barnes-Jewish Hospital is useful from the south and west to help located Forest Park and the Central West End. A number of useful landmarks exist in St. Louis, but too often the places in between are "placeless."

{placemaking with lighted towers at LAX}

Where is the entrance to Grand Center and St. Louis University from I-64? Where is Soulard? How do I find Tower Grove Park? I believe that enhancing the sense of place in our central city would help orient visitors and provide residents with meaningful landmarks. The city once did this with water towers and three fantastic examples can still be seen in St. Louis. Church steeples have played similar roles in defining a neighborhood or parish.

I'm stealing the idea from a design competition for Indianapolis. The bottom image is from that proposal and the objective was to provide directional landmarks for downtown Indianapolis. As in the Indianapolis design competition, the towers would be painted and illuminated at night by LEDs (the same lights used on the Lumiere Casino Hotel, but toned-down a bit).

The light towers would serve as gateways to nodes in our city. Landmarks such as these are instantly more memorable than highway signs. Signs hold zero interest. Think of your last trip to Chicago. Do you think, "There's always a good place to park if I turn onto East Jackson Boulevard." or do you remember that if you turn just after passing Buckingham Fountain there is a parking garage that always has spaces available? Instead of telling someone to look for the "Hampton Avenue" sign you could say, "you'll see the green towers for Forest Park then you take the next exit."

I could go on, but I suppose you get the idea. Sense of place is important for visitors and residents alike and St. Louis would benefit from some creative thinking as to how to better define places in our city.

How much modern architecture can you find within three blocks: Columbus, Ohio's answer...a lot

Published on Sunday, 07 February 2010 00:00

Written by Alex Ihnen

It took all of a five minute wall to find everything in the slideshow. So if you find yourself in Columubus, Ohio make your way to the Short North and take a look around, but only after visiting Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. Now the official out-of-state ice cream of nextSTL!

Forest Park Excels With Landmarks, Amenities And Attractions, Needs More "Places"

Published on Sunday, 07 February 2010 00:00

Written by Alex Ihnen

{Turtle Park provides an excellent "place"}

I started this post a few months ago and then set it aside. After all, Forest Park is a fantastic place with world-class amenities. Locals are familiar with, if not frequent visitors of, the zoo, art museum, history museum, science center, Jewel Box, Municipal Opera Theater, Steinberg Ice Rink, Davis Tennis Center and the 27 holes of golf. So what's not to like?

For all the things in the park, there are far too few "places." With some irony, the northeast corner of the park, nearest the Central West End leads the list. It's utterly placeless. The CWE is by far the most densely populated of the park's adjacent neighborhoods. Yet how many people would name Murphy Lake, the Blair Statue or the Jewish Centenary Memorial as "places" in the park? How many pedestrians enter the park by crossing Kingshighway at Lindell? How many people linger there?

I came back to this topic because last weekend I visited Lafayette Park, a place I've been a number of times, and the contrast was very clear. The St. Louis Perfectos were playing the St. Louis Unions in a vintage baseball game, a wedding party was having photos taken and people were milling about. We wondered over to the grotto and sat for a while, shuffled over to see the swans and then wondered out of the park through one of the ornate iron gates.

{the grotto in Lafayette Square Park provides the perfect "place" to linger}

Perhaps the feeling of "placelessness" is inevitable in a park the size of Forest Park, but I think much more can be done to provide "places" for people to visit again and again. To make a broad claim, it can be a challenge to find shade in Forest Park, a requisite for enjoying summer in the park in St. Louis.

To be fair, there are a few more intimate features in the park: There's the waterfall along Lagoon Drive, but it fronts what may be the busiest road in the park. There are the dinosaurs near the Science Center, but they're really a playground. The Victorian Bridge is nice, but there's little shade and only a basic bench nearby on which to sit. The Boathouse is nice, but only if you want to eat dinner. Turtle Park may be the clearest exception. It's distinct and on a very human scale, it's only drawback is that it borders I-64.

{the dinosaurs of Forest Park}

I heartily applaud the enormous effort to restore the natural landscape to the park. In the middle of more than 2.5M people one can feel very close to nature. The park is incomparable as an asset to the City and the region. I hope that as the park continues to be developed that more attention is placed on the smaller, intimate individual experiences that visitors often treasure more than the overwhelming vista or landmark.

{a view of the natural landscape of Forest Park}

Below are a few of the notable landmarks in the park, but for various reasons I do not think that they effectively instill a sense of place.

Artist Bernar Venet Successfully Created "Place" In Forest Park (And Now It's Gone)

Published on Sunday, 07 February 2010 00:00

Written by Alex Ihnen

{Venet's "230.5 Degree ARC x 5" as placed in Forest Park}

For all that I love about Forest Park, I haven't been feeling "places." In a previous post I mentioned a temporary sculpture installation that did successfully bring "place" to an area of the park. Thanks to another urban junkie on the Urban St. Louis forum I have tracked down a little more information on that now gone installation.

The sculptor's name is Bernar Venet and the temporary installation was courtesy of the Gateway Foundation. Forest Park was just a stop on the sculpture's way to a permanent home in the new City Garden, a two square block urban sculpture park in the heart of St. Louis and a component of the Gateway Mall.

{another view of "230.5 Degree ARC x 5" in Forest Park}

The television program Living St. Louis did a short piece on Venet when his piece was still in Forest Park. The essential comment comes very near the end when it is said that Venet's sculpture "activated" the space in which it sat. Exactly. Sadly it is no more.

One More Sign That More People Care About Forest Park Southeast: Funky Painted Fire Hydrants

Published on Sunday, 07 February 2010 00:00

Written by Alex Ihnen

If you have a keen eye you may have seen a small transformation in The Grove lately. Local artist Grace McCammond has been painting fire hydrants up and down Manchester Avenue with a motif inspired by The Grove logo. According to the 17th Ward website the Washington University Medical Center commissioned the work.

I think it's yet another small sign that people care about the neighborhood. Painting fire hydrants is unlikely to be a cure-all, but it and the dozens of other small efforts underway will make the neighborhood a better place to live and visit.

If you're a neighborhood resident and the colors or design don't particularly appeal to you, don't worry. The remaining neighborhood fire hydrants will be painted in a different theme than those on Manchester Avenue.

Grace is also the artist responsible for the 19 ft. x 11 ft. St. Louis mural inside Sweetie Pie's: