Though I permanently left the St. Louis area in 1983, I still consider myself to be St. Louisan. I grew up next door, in University City. During my youth and then over the decades traveling back to visit family, I watched this once great American city decline.
Today, the city is struggling to define itself in the post-NAFTA, post-industrial reality of the “new economy” that has led to the greatest level of income inequality the nation has seen since before the Great Depression. This transformation is visible everywhere in the city, mainly in shuttered factories and feral and abandoned houses that almost give Detroit a run for its money as the center of urban decay in the United States.
I love St. Louis because of its character, elegance, and historic charm. St. Louis features some of the most beautifully built homes in the country, a world-class art museum, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and perhaps the best public park in the United States, Forest Park. St. Louis is also one of the greatest cities in the United States for exploring the magnificent architecture of American churches from all Christian denominations, as well as many synagogues and seminaries. One of my favorite areas is the historic Lafayette Square neighborhood, which evokes Paris of the late 1800s. (Essay continued below the photo essay.)
Starting in 2014, I began documenting St. Louis through photo essays. My subject include the decline of industry to the racial segregation and widespread abandonment and decay in North St. Louis. My photo stories are fueled in part by nostalgia for the city of my youth, when factories still hummed and the city had more than 600,000 residents the year I arrived. The population dropped from 880,000 residents at the start of the 1950s to a mere 315,000 souls in 2015, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimate.
My memories of the past now collide with the free fall that has long been underway since the 1950s. By being an outsider who visits yearly, I now get time-lapsed snapshots, each time I visit to see my family. Many sections of the city are depopulated, filled with empty buildings and homes. Large factories have long moved away, including the iconic Corvette plant in North St. Louis, which closed its doors in 1981 after a 37-year run.
St. Louis experienced what many Midwest, industrial cities confronted during and after World War II. The U.S Interstate System promoted out-migration to the surrounding county. White flight rapidly accelerated population losses following the 1950s. (Read a superb illustration of that white flight on this website.) Industry, including automobile manufacturing and other sectors, began a long slide to obsolescence.
St. Louis is encouraging redevelopment in its urban core, to make its downtown a place where people want to live, play and work. Investments have trickled into neighborhoods like The Grove through urban renewal funding, sparking debates over gentrification.
The new St. Louis is now defined by corporate finance, hosting the headquarters of Edward Jones, and biomedical research, startups, and health sciences, concentrated at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital and surrounding area. These new economy employers do not pay living wage family jobs to tens of thousands of workers like the former factories did.
Even the once mighty King of Beers, Anheuser-Busch, was bought out by Brazilian brewer Inbev in 2008 in a leveraged buyout worth $52 billion. The global conglomerate then laid off hundred of workers based at the historic factory in St. Louis. It marked the end to one of the city’s last vestiges of its former glory.
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