Pasadena Hills: My dream town, whats yours?

[Valerie-Lydie]

I don't know very well St. Louis. I come and go. We are divided between staying to St. Louis (buying there) or settle down in Atlanta.

For what i saw in St. Louis, I like those historical houses like in kirkwood, I also love trees.

It is nice to be able some houses that are not all dark red bricks...it is too dark for my tastes and kind of remind me the second world war... I can't come to like these...

Just my opinion

[STLCardsBlues1989]

I like the red brick, but there are homes that are more modern throughout the metro.

[marakaysta]

Originally Posted by Danilo-11

I just went by today and it looks a hell lot prettier in person than in pictures.
It kind of looks like a gated community, if that's the case, it's a huge gated neighborhood.
Is there a history of how that place came out to be that way?

This is the only picture where you can see a little how the neighborhood looks like

I'm coming way late to this discussion, but I was just looking at pictures of St. Louis and came across this. I grew up right across Lucas & Hunt Rd. from Pasadena, on Roland Blvd., in Northwoods. Where the "pond" is. All of us kids walked through Pasadena to school, Thomas Jefferson Elementary. Then we went to Normandy Jr. and High School. The whole area was all white back then. There were a handful of black kids at Normandy HS at the time (I graduated in 1965). (My dad was a jazz piano player, so we weren't really white per se. )

Pasadena was the "rich" neighborhood. Northwoods was much more humble. I remember hearing of $100,000 homes in Pasadena, and that was really expensive, like million-dollar homes today. Our house cost $14,000.

Okay, so here's what I understand about the "gated" thing: when the white folk were moving out even further into far-flung suburbs and blacks were moving out from the city center into these outer neighborhoods, Pasadena put up those gates, to try to make it exclusive. Northwoods was becaming predominantly black, and those kids couldn't even walk through Pasadena to the grade school like we did! Shame on Pasadena. So I'm glad to see that has changed since then.

There was another neighborhood, south of MLK Blvd where Normandy High School was, that was mostly black then, where the black students at Normandy lived. There were gates at the ends of their streets too, and in my innocence at the time I thought it made their neighborhood exclusive. But the truth was that the gates were there so the blacks couldn't freely go through the adjacent white neighborhood.

I left St. Louis in 1967 and lived in the LA beach area, then in Berkeley, and now in San Diego since 1980. I have no family in St. Louis anymore, though there used to be a lot of us. Grandparents and aunts and uncles lived in Wellston, another place with much nostalgia for me. Back to Pasadena, from the photo it still looks as beautiful as it was then. But I think almost all of St. Louis was really beautiful. Such a fine city, but seems it is achingly slow in revival.

Well, if anyone picks up on this, it's a pleasure to armchair-travel St. Louis again for a little while. (I had been looking at urban decay photos, which I love -- as a visual art, not as a reality.) And this seems like an interesting site, about cities all over the country.

markaysta

[BoomBoxing]

^Much of St. Louis still is really beautiful. Check out some recent picture threads over on skyscraper page. Here's a link:

My City Photos - N - Z - SkyscraperPage Forum

Right now there are three St. Louis picture threads on the first page, go back a few more and you will see quite a few more. There's some urban decay still to be sure, but plenty of urban fabric remains and several neighborhoods have been rehabbed to their former glory (such as Soulard).

[zach_33]

Originally Posted by marakaysta

I'm coming way late to this discussion, but I was just looking at pictures of St. Louis and came across this. I grew up right across Lucas & Hunt Rd. from Pasadena, on Roland Blvd., in Northwoods. Where the "pond" is. All of us kids walked through Pasadena to school, Thomas Jefferson Elementary. Then we went to Normandy Jr. and High School. The whole area was all white back then. There were a handful of black kids at Normandy HS at the time (I graduated in 1965). (My dad was a jazz piano player, so we weren't really white per se. )

Pasadena was the "rich" neighborhood. Northwoods was much more humble. I remember hearing of $100,000 homes in Pasadena, and that was really expensive, like million-dollar homes today. Our house cost $14,000.

Okay, so here's what I understand about the "gated" thing: when the white folk were moving out even further into far-flung suburbs and blacks were moving out from the city center into these outer neighborhoods, Pasadena put up those gates, to try to make it exclusive. Northwoods was becaming predominantly black, and those kids couldn't even walk through Pasadena to the grade school like we did! Shame on Pasadena. So I'm glad to see that has changed since then.

There was another neighborhood, south of MLK Blvd where Normandy High School was, that was mostly black then, where the black students at Normandy lived. There were gates at the ends of their streets too, and in my innocence at the time I thought it made their neighborhood exclusive. But the truth was that the gates were there so the blacks couldn't freely go through the adjacent white neighborhood.

I left St. Louis in 1967 and lived in the LA beach area, then in Berkeley, and now in San Diego since 1980. I have no family in St. Louis anymore, though there used to be a lot of us. Grandparents and aunts and uncles lived in Wellston, another place with much nostalgia for me. Back to Pasadena, from the photo it still looks as beautiful as it was then. But I think almost all of St. Louis was really beautiful. Such a fine city, but seems it is achingly slow in revival.

Well, if anyone picks up on this, it's a pleasure to armchair-travel St. Louis again for a little while. (I had been looking at urban decay photos, which I love -- as a visual art, not as a reality.) And this seems like an interesting site, about cities all over the country.

markaysta

Neat history. I had a family friend, dean of the business school at SIU-C, who bought his retirement home in Pasadena Hills. I remember visiting him with my mom back in 1984. I was 12 years old and I remember being impressed by the house and the neighborhood - it was clearly a nice area and affluent. They got broken into sometime in the late 80s/early 90s and moved *way* out to Lake St. Louis because they were elderly and couldn't deal, physically or psychologically, with any threat of crime. I recently cruised the area to reminisce and I was impresssed with how well preserved it is. There's an art deco fountain at the intersection of Country Club and Roland-- with the grand homes all around the landscape looks like something out of an upscale mediterranean villa. I also drove down through Glen Echo Country Club and did a little tour of the club house - that place is still beautiful. I'd be a member there in a heart beat if I had the cash.

[flynavyj]

My Great Grandmother had a home over in Northwoods (not exactly sure what year she purchased the home) but as a kid (80's through 90's) i can remember driving down Lucas & Hunt towards her home and always passing and awing at Pasadena Hills. Her little bungalow in Northwoods was quaint, but pretty cool. She had even wanted to will it to me, but finances forced her daughter to sell it much earlier than that, would have been a great first home, and potential rental at some point in the future...Those old brick bungalow's really had some amazing character to them.

During the early to mid 90's my great-grandmother's home was broken into while she was there...Her alarm (an ironing board leaning against the back door) actually scared the intruder away ...after that, we had an ADT system installed, and she lived there happily for another few years until she moved...The house was sold to someone else locally, who did some much needed renovations before moving in.

[pdm_ad]

I have many fond memories of Pasadena Hills. My grandparents had a house built on Rivinia in the 20's and my mom grew up there. The house was about 2500 sq ft which was big for the time but the detail that went into the construction was impressive. They had a 2 car garage which was under the house, a built in refridgerator, a dumbwaiter to the second floor and a goldfish pond in the sunroom.

About the gates: From what I remember, back in the late 70's and early 80's they started getting a lot of drive thru traffic and many of the residents were affected by crime. So they put up these barriers at most of the entrances to the subdivision and only allowed access at a couple of points with the idea that it would dissuade people from driving thru. Pasadena Hills was very integrated at that point so I don't buy the notion from the previous poster that the remaining whites were trying to keep blacks out. In fact, the street my grandmother was on had about a 50-50 mix by the late 70's or early 80's when the barriers went up.

When my grandmother became ill in the late '80s and had to sell I was sad to see it go. My uncle still lives a couple doors down with a friend and he loves it there. It has gotten better from a crime perspective compared to the days that I spent up there. And the fantastic houses are in great shape, for the most part.

[pdm_ad]

I forgot to add one thing. With the expansion of Lambert and TWAs hub in the late '70s and '80s the noise really became a problem. The neighborhood was under 30L and when the wind was right from 5:30a until 11p you had a jet a couple of hundred feet directly over the house every couple of minutes.

I loved it and it got me into aviation but anyone there 24/7 got sick of it in no time. A lot of people left in that era.

[flynavyj]

Thankfully for the subdivision, lambert is in shambles and the number of flights has been reduced from every couple minutes, to a few an hour...I also credit living close to the airport with my infatuation with aviation. As a result, i now hate that i ever lived so close to the airport...because aviation is a very "love/hate" relationship....kind of like a hot girl, who's also a psychopath.