Tearing a Gash through Old North

Update: I went back and looked at 11th Street in the winter of 2022.

In my continuing series of neighborhoods severely damaged but not knocked out by interstate construction, I headed to the desolate pedestrian bridge that stretches from Jackson Park to the Near North Riverfront.

I’m sure the motorists down below us were confused; there are rarely pedestrians on this bridge, because in many ways it doesn’t go anywhere.

A recounting from a resident stated that the neighborhood’s psyche was permanently damaged the huge swath of destruction; people just felt like it was time to give up, and thousands did.

Update: The pedestrian bridge was torn down in mid December 2018. Looking back at a picture of the concrete taken in 2014, it did look like it was in a state of deterioration.

2 Comments Add yours

  1. Tim Long says:

    I-70 destroyed St. Cashmir”s and St. Michael’s Catholic church and hundreds of homes and lives.

  2. Patrick J. Kleaver says:

    A new pedestrian, disability-accessible bridge has been built in 2020 to replace the one this article mentions. When I lived in the neighborhood from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, virtually no one used the original one, and that was when there was still a fair amount of housing east of I-70. Classmates of mine who lived east of I-70 would cross the highway using the sidewalks on Madison Street and St. Louis Avenue that ran over it. Building a new one seems a TOTAL waste of money even if the old one HAD been used, since now there is virtually no remaining housing east of I-70 along that stretch of Old North St. Louis.

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