St. Louis Sings the Blues

By Ellie McGrath

The "Gateway to the West"tries to stop its urban exodus

St. Louis has long been loved as a city of beer and baseball, riverboats and tree-lined avenues, French fur traders, German burghers, and that distinctive 630-ft.-high stainless-steel arch, a symbol of the city's historic role as "Gateway to the West." At the turn of the century, St. Louis was the nation's fourth largest city. It is the birthplace of T.S. Eliot, the ice cream cone and, some say, the blues.

Today, however, St. Louis is singing the blues. According to the 1980 census, the city's population dropped 27% in the previous decade, from 622,000 to 453,000--the largest percentage decline of any major U.S. city. People are leaving so fast that each year more than 30% of the first-graders in city schools do not return for the second grade. Though St. Louis has filed a federal suit challenging the census count, the city is probably going to lose two state senators, seven state representatives, a Congressman and more federal aid than it can afford. St. Louis has also lost 24,000 jobs since 1973. Vincent Schoemehl Jr., a former alderman who was inaugurated as mayor last week, defeated Incumbent James Conway with the slogan: "Every working day Jim Conway's been mayor, one more taxpaying business left St. Louis."

St. Louis' story is a familiar one among older U.S. urban areas: dwindling population, shrinking tax base, deteriorating municipal services. Yet this story began, oddly enough, more than a century ago. In 1876 residents voted to secede from the surrounding territory, now St. Louis County, because they did not want to pay to increase services. In the ensuing century, St. Louis was one of the few major cities that did not extend its boundaries. But by the 1950s, the automobile, cheap gas, fast highways and Government-backed mortgages had helped the county attract large numbers of city dwellers. The city made a bid to rejoin the county, but county residents rejected it. Back then the city had twice as many people as the county. Today the county has twice as many people as the city. Says George Wendel, director of St. Louis University's Center for Urban Programs: "St. Louis is, unfortunately, the city of yesterday. It was built for the factory system, the steamboat and the railroad--and made obsolete by the internal combustion engine."

The people left in St. Louis proper are, to a large extent, the poor, the elderly and the unemployed. More than 16% of the residents are on welfare. Some 18% are over 65 years of age. The unemployment rate is above 8%. The city is 46% black, vs. 11% for the county, and divided into starkly segregated districts: the North Side, which is 90% black, and the South Side, which is 95% white.

Some parts of St. Louis now resemble a ghost town. The city has lost one-quarter of its housing stock to abandonment since 1950. Most of those homes were destroyed under a city policy of tearing down abandoned housing; the recycled bricks often ended up in suburban patios. One of the most notorious examples of St. Louis' physical deterioration is the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project, built by the Federal Government in the mid-1950s at a cost of $21.5 million. The high-rise complex was dynamited by the city in the early 1970s after becoming a cesspool of crime and decay. Today, buffalo grass has reclaimed the 55-acre site.

St. Louis suffered a major setback in 1979, when General Motors announced plans to close its 61 -year-old auto assembly plant downtown and build a new $500 million facility in St. Charles County, 35 miles west of St. Louis. The move will reportedly cost the city nearly 10% of its industrial tax base. Says GM Spokesman James Hughes: "We just didn't have the room we needed in the city, and we have a very willing county administration."

There are, however, a few signs that St. Louis may rise again. For one thing, the rapid growth of St. Louis County, which for decades has drawn people and businesses away from the city, is slowing to a trickle. Last decade the county grew only 2%, while nearby Franklin, Jefferson and St. Charles counties posted population gains ranging from 29% to 55%. Now St. Louis County is starting to have trouble supporting its schools and services. Already city officials are beginning to talk merger again, though this time the suburbanites do not seem so hostile.

In addition, St. Louis has taken important steps toward recovery. It stopped tearing down abandoned homes and started selling them, for $100 to $10,000, to people who agreed to fix them up and live in them. Some 15,000 houses have been reclaimed since 1977. "We can provide some pretty doggone cheap housing in this city," says Donald Spaid, director of the Community Development Agency. "It's the new territory for young buyers. The boonies don't hold anything special boonies for them. They grew up in the boonies."

A new convention center was completed in 1977, and three major high-rise office buildings are now under construction. Private developers have rehabilitated buildings in the historic Soulard Market district and created Laclede's Landing, a cobblestoned riverfront enclave of restaurants and shops. A number of longtime St. Louis firms have declared their intention of staying in town and helping. Among them is Anheuser-Busch, the giant brewer whose world headquarters now sprawls across 70 square blocks, including the site where it was founded in 1852. Says John Baird, senior vice president and general counsel of Ralston Purina Co., which also has been in the same location since its founding in 1894: "The future looks better to me now than it did ten years ago by a long shot. This isn't Custer's last stand." Adds Mayor Schoemehl: "We have problems. But we have people and we have neighborhoods who care. We are going to come through."

-- By Ellie McGrath. Reported by David S. Jackson/St. Louis

With reporting by David S. Jackson

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