Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Tower Grove Park in 1876, from Compton and Dry's "Pictorial St. Louis"
I live three blocks from Tower Grove Park, and I have a confession to make: Over the past 12 years I’ve owned my house in Tower Grove East, I’ve only visited the park just across Grand several dozen times, an embarrassingly small number considering what a gem it is. Tower Grove Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, with Esley Hamilton,—a St. Louis treasure himself—having written the nomination. Perhaps it's the physical barrier that Grand creates; originally planned to be an august Paris-style thoroughfare lined by mansions of the St. Louis elite, it's devolved into something much less successful north of Arsenal.
All that changed two or so months ago, when the pandemic began, and options for healthy, safe outdoor activities shrank back to those very similar to our 19th-century ancestors. I left my house, headed west, crossed Grand at the pedestrian-activated crosswalk just south of Pestalozzi (whose wait time is far too long) and headed into Tower Grove Park. The nonprofit administration for the park had already made the decision to close the roads to cars, and the resulting peace and quiet was immediately refreshing. I proceeded to walk to the middle of Main Drive (the straight east-west road that heads west from the Grand entrance to the park) and looked west, and the view was revelatory.
This is the way to enjoy Tower Grove Park, I thought to myself. Long forced to walk along the edge of Main Drive on paths, I had never been able to truly enjoy the layout of the park based on centuries of European garden design going back to the Renaissance. Tower Grove is designed to be viewed from right in the middle, looking down the long allée that stretches the length of the park all the way to Kingshighway. Such beautiful tree-lined views had long been the monopoly of 17th- and 18th-century royalty and their palace grounds in Europe, but here Henry Shaw had opened it up for everyone who visited his park. Now, as one strolls down the middle of the road, you can truly appreciate the various fanciful Victorian-period pavilions that appear through the trees, and the city truly disappears in the foliage. But for decades, most of the time this beautiful unobstructed view was jealously hogged by the automobile.
It wasn’t always like this. I looked back to Compton and Dry’s 1876 Pictorial St. Louis, when Tower Grove Park was far out in the country. Amazingly, much of what is familiar to today’s visitor had already been built and is easily recognizable. I looked closer at Main Drive, and while I saw horse-drawn carriages out for an afternoon drive heading up and down the road, I noticed something that had long been banished: pedestrians. Here and there, along the roads normally reserved for automobiles today, were people walking, enjoying a respite from the coal smoke of the central city.
As officials relax stay-at-home orders and businesses reopen, I hope Tower Grove Park leaves these roads closed. Center Cross, the north-south artery that connects Tower Grove Avenue to Arsenal Street, certainly needs to reopen to provide for traffic flow—there is nothing good about generating more pollution due to congestion elsewhere, and access for those with disabilities needs to be guaranteed. But can we say that anyone has been seriously hurt by not being able to use Main Drive, or west of Center Cross, Northwest and Southwest drives? (By the way, Northeast and Southeast drives have been closed for years with little complaint.)
It also raises the issue of other superfluous roads in public parks throughout the city that have been liberated from the tyranny of the car for several months now. Forest Park has closed several streets, and Carondelet Park has closed most roads except for Grand Drive and its spur, which allows access from Grand to Loughborough. I asked Jason Gray, who’s provided much of the photography of the Lemp Brewery for me over the years, how it has been to enjoy the historic park near their house in Holly Hills, and his wife, Mandy, had this to say:
“Keeping the roads closed in Carondelet Park is something I believe needs to become the norm. As a mother of two young boys who I take on scooter rides and bike rides frequently, it is so much safer for those enjoying the park to not have to worry about cars speeding through and not looking out for pedestrians. Also, the park is already congested due to the pandemic, and opening the roads will just encourage those who are not at the park for recreational purposes to congregate.”
