One of my fondest recurring childhood memories is seeing my grandfather, Art Landsbury, sit at the kitchen table with his transistor radio tuned to the Cardinals ballgame. In the ashtray would be a Raleigh cigarette. In a tall brown bottle would be either a Falstaff Beer or a Stag Beer. When I recently went to […]
“In the early 1950s,” writes St. Louis blogger Toby Weiss, “Jennings, Missouri was a red hot White Flight destination, just a scootch outside the St. Louis city limits proper. “ She goes on: ‘Newfangled’ is the correct word to describe the new homes and businesses that were built at a rapid clip, designed in the modern […]
Continue reading about Another Great Mall Gone: Northland Shopping Center
This typical kitchen, circa 1950s, is part of a fascinating Missouri Historical Society exhibit on the development of St. Ann, an inner-ring St. Louis County suburb that drew many post-war families. Originally developed in 1942 and incorporated in 1948, the community was named for the mother of the Virgin Mary. The community had a strong […]
Continue reading about St. Ann: The Epitome of Suburbanization
For the past three weeks, I’ve been providing highlights from Colin Gordon’s provocative study, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Penn Press, 2008). This week, I thought I’d take a look at what Gordon has to say about Wellston and about Wagner Electric. Gordon traces the development and then abandonment […]
Continue reading about Mapping Decline: What Colin Gordon Has to Say about Wellston
One of my goals in keeping this blog is to share resources I’m finding helpful as I research Wellston and St. Louis history (and soon I’ll be sharing resources related to the novel’s three target decades – the 1920s, 1950s, and 1970s). One resource I come back to again and again is Andrew D. Young’s […]
Continue reading about Streets and Streetcars of St. Louis, Part 1
Ray Suarez’s 1999 book, The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999, identifies a persistent pattern in city after American city: the heyday of the old urban neighborhood, the decline and loss of that neighborhood, and the subsequent ghetto that took its place. Suarez describes the tight-knit urban communities that many […]
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