"Gaslight Square Illuminated"

In yesterday’s post, I thought about abandoned buildings and urban landscapes. That reminded me of a book that’s been on my “to-read” pile.

When I was a kid, my parents were avid antiques collectors. Though I was bored at the time, I remember fondly the trips we made around central and southern Illinois antiques stores, looking for treasures.

When I was 12 or 13, in 1969 or 1970, we visited Gaslight Square in St. Louis. St. Louis was "our" big city to visit, just seventy miles away. My folks had heard about the antiques stores at the square. I’m not sure they had ever been there, or whether they had visited the place years before. But the square had an unmistakably run-down feeling, not Victorian-quaint as Mom and Dad had expected, and sloppy-looking hippies sat around on walls and benches. One clerk offended us: I was interested in an old book on Russia, for a school report, and he responded, “Oh, that’s too advanced for you,” and then quoted a $10 price. At the time it was probably worth a dollar or two. All around, a disappointing trip.

After twenty-five years of living around the country, we live in St. Louis now, and I enjoy revisiting places my parents and I knew years ago (although I’m still too acrophobic to go up into the Arch). Today, the old Gaslight Square buildings are all gone and the area has been renewed with condominiums and other places, as shown at this interesting website: http://www.builtstlouis.net/northside/fountain_park15.html

But Gaslight Square had once been a special place, and I was happy to purchase the book to which I referred: Gaslight Square Illuminated: The Rise & Fall of St. Louis' Premier "Hot Spot" by Rich Fuegner an David Roth (St. Louis: Virginia Publishing Co., 2010).

Gaslight Square is/was the area around Olive and Boyle Street in St. Louis. Today this area is on the eastern side of the flourishing Central West End and is near the also-flourishing Grand Center theatre and arts district. The area got its name from the Victorian style buildings and the gas lit street lamps. Not only antique stores but restaurants, dancing places, clubs, and theatres characterized Gaslight Square in the 1950s. The roster of entertainers who performed there include Barbra Streisand, Jackie Mason, Phyllis Diller, the Smothers Brothers, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and others, as well as noted jazz musicians like Miles Davis. In the 1960s, the square became somewhat more counterculture, visited by writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

A 1959 tornado devastated the Central West End, but the square recovered, and property values were very high in the early 1960s. "White flight" to the suburbs and urban difficulties proved more devastating than a tornado, beginning in the mid 1960s. Two murders in the square in 1964-1965, followed by reports of other crimes in the area, gave the square a scary reputation that it ultimately could not overcome, although crime in the square itself was lower than in nearby neighborhoods. People were fearful of coming. Over time, businesses closed, and efforts at redevelopment and rejuvenation of the area were unsuccessful. My parents and I unwittingly visited the square in this time of decline. Eventually, buildings grew more ramshackle and were razed.

Feugner and Roth's book gives many interesting details of the square, of individual businesses, a map of "hot spots," and information about both the glory days and the years of decline. Many black and white photos and a collection of color photos in the book's center give a wonderful sense of the square's  vitality. Today, the pillars that had once been part of Smoky Joe's Grecian Terrace are all that remain and form part of a memorial to the square.

Here is another site that provides vintage photographs of the square: http://www.stltoday.com/gallery/news/multimedia/look-back-gaslight-square-in-st-louis/collection_d9158dbf-7c8e-5cf4-8fa9-d3988a1f840e.html#0

AND….

After I posted this review, a friend on Facebook alerted me to a local PBS feature on Gaslight Square:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAUA7st75ds