Prepared in 1937 and giving the housing stock of St. Louis a “rating,” this map is more a map of what is new, and what is old, than a map of quality.. Even in the 30s, old was bad, new was good. How little some attitudes have changed.
A Blog detailing the beauty of St. Louis architecture and the buildup of residue-or character-that accumulates over the course of time.
Interesting that Lemay is still referred to as Luxembourg.
Given the age of the map, and who it was prepared by, I could be easily convinced that a hint of some redlining type of thought process contributed to the delineations of this map…
How is this map prepared in 1937? The subdivision I grew up in in Normandy was not even a thought at that time. It wasn’t developed until well into the 1940s.
Normandy has been around in some form since ca. 1811 (It was Jean-Baptiste Charles Lucas’s country estate). It was a stop on the West End Narrow Gauge railroad which ran from Grand & Olive to Normandy in 1876 and then to Florissant in 1878. But it did certainly expand during the post-World War II housing boom.
Very interesting – I noticed that my Sister’s street, Westmoreland Drive, immediately West of WashU and between Maryland and Forest Park Parkway, was called Montclair Avenue in those days.
And the Rock Island RR ran next to her backyard. I did not know that was a RR from Downtown; I always thought it was streetcar tracks.
Really interesting looking in the Northern park of Compton Heights (I live there). It’s interesting to note that the split between “2nd” and “3rd” rate housing is almost exactly where I-44 runs through, now; pretty much straight down Geyer Avenue. The Northern side of Geyer is now I-44…
I see a lot of that elsewhere; the less “desirable” in that time neighbourhoods have become interstate.