Crossing a St Louis street that divides communities. (St. Louis, University City: houses, neighborhoods)

[Baldrick]

This is a report i saw a little while ago on the BBC. I thought some of you might be interested.

BBC News - Crossing a St Louis street that divides communities

"Delmar Boulevard, which spans the city from east to west, features million-dollar mansions directly to the south, and poverty-stricken areas to its north. What separates rich and poor is sometimes just one street block."

[inahandbasket]

Originally Posted by Baldrick

This is a report i saw a little while ago on the BBC. I thought some of you might be interested.

BBC News - Crossing a St Louis street that divides communities

"Delmar Boulevard, which spans the city from east to west, features million-dollar mansions directly to the south, and poverty-stricken areas to its north. What separates rich and poor is sometimes just one street block."

Well, it's hyperbole. My neighborhood of University Park is one block north of Delmar. Finding a house for under $275,000 is a bargain that probably needs updating. Most of the single family houses start in the low $300,000 range.

There's a lovely little neighborhood just east of mine called University Heights that has similar housing prices. Going west on Delmar and immediately north of said street, all the way to the next municipality of Olivette, there are middle to upper middle class neighborhoods, a very vibrant orthodox Jewish community and gets increasingly suburban in feel with the change over to one story ranch (but still BRICK construction) style houses.

Really, the sort of dividing line is Olive, several blocks north of Delmar, especially if you're west of Big Bend. Even then, it's really working class neighborhoods with tidy, albeit smaller, houses, NOT ghetto, although racist people think "ghetto" the moment they see a preponderance of African Americans.

Hey, I'm not saying there isn't poverty in University City, because there certainly is. But this meme of a stark dividing line between million dollar homes south of Delmar and ghetto shacks immediately north is simply BS.

Come visit lovely University City someday and see for yourself, especially the lovely neighborhood of University Park.

http://universityparksubdivision.com/

[Dawn10am]

I've always thought that the "north of Delmar" rule only applied to the City proper. Once you cross Skinker into UCity that dividing line pretty much disappears. But the difference is VERY stark in the Central West End (which is what that video is talking about). There really are million dollar homes just south of it and bombed-out shells just north of it.

[aragx6]

I can't watch the video here at work but if it doesn't get into it, it's important to note that while Delmar has for a long time been a siginifcant demarcation line between the white "haves" and the black "have nots" in the city, it definitely wasn't always that way and there was a time when areas like Fountain Park were filled with middle class families. There are stunning houses north of Delmar in Academy and Sherman Park though many of them have also been lost. I've always had a facination with rehabbing one of those houses on Enright just north of the Central West End, but gentrification has always been difficult in that spot and while a few were rehabbed during the height of the last boom, that's all but ended now.

[flynavyj]

The areas north of Delmar further west of the Loop aren't bad, but if I was around the Loop, id rather stay South. As you move further East towards the city line, I think North of Olive becomes the cutoff between "ok" and "stay the heck out"!

[stlouisan]

These boundaries are pretty typical of a Midwest city. they are stark and cleanly drawn out. IMO, the dividing line between white and black in the county is bordered by I-170 on the west and on the south by either Olive Blvd. or Page Ave., although North County is very racially diverse. In fact, that take on Delmar is pretty inaccurate...South City east of Grand is heavily black. In St. Louis County, Richmond Heights, Maplewood, and Webster Groves all have large black populations. So in reality, St. Louis is not nearly as racially segregated as people make it out to be. in fact, where I live, which is largely white, just north of I-64, to the south of there lies a large black neighborhood that does have a white population. But most neighborhoods are still fairly racially segregated...in the Midwest those housing patterns are very common.

[flynavyj]

I think you'd notice that about much of St. Louis. The individual municipalities will have a mix of multiple races, but between white and black you might see segregation within the mentioned city. That is definitely true in Webster Groves, I don't know if you see Blacks being told to "not move" towards one side of town...but I think there is pressure for Whites to not move towards the other side...but I could be terribly mistaken.

[wustu87]

I know exactly what stlouisan and flynavyj mean, and I always thought how odd it was that these small municipalities each have these very specific small black neighborhoods within them. I remember when we first moved here in the 1980's there was a specific black neighborhood in Brentwood which is now where the Target and Dierbergs plazas sit off Eager Road. I remember we lived in Brentwood about a decade and never went into that area until it was razed and turned into shopping plazas! And now we live in Richmond Heights and the exact same thing is going to happen to the black neighborhood in Hadley Heights. Just this past weekend I was using an old map to try to find a restaurant in the Kirkwood Commons area and I realized that used to be part of Meachem Park (it was blocks of streets on the old map still labeled as Meachem Park). It seems like more and more black neighborhoods in St. Louis County are redeveloped into shopping plazas.

[kshe95girl]

Whats up with the Brits broadcasting all the stories about the Lou?
This must be the fourth one I have heard about in a couple of months.

[aragx6]

Originally Posted by wustu87

I know exactly what stlouisan and flynavyj mean, and I always thought how odd it was that these small municipalities each have these very specific small black neighborhoods within them. I remember when we first moved here in the 1980's there was a specific black neighborhood in Brentwood which is now where the Target and Dierbergs plazas sit off Eager Road. I remember we lived in Brentwood about a decade and never went into that area until it was razed and turned into shopping plazas! And now we live in Richmond Heights and the exact same thing is going to happen to the black neighborhood in Hadley Heights. Just this past weekend I was using an old map to try to find a restaurant in the Kirkwood Commons area and I realized that used to be part of Meachem Park (it was blocks of streets on the old map still labeled as Meachem Park). It seems like more and more black neighborhoods in St. Louis County are redeveloped into shopping plazas.

That's because of long-term and systematic red lining. It might not happen anymore but this practice played a huge part in the racial segregation, particularly in many suburbs, that still exists today.