Found St. Louis

In 1926 a developer said “we gotta put a cool ornate building over at Kingshighway and Chippewa.” So they did, and it became Chippewa Drug.

In 1970 it was torn down for a Jack-In-The-Box.

I ended up entering a wormhole about Jack-In-The-Box that I couldn’t get out of. Jack came to StL around 1970 and it was a very controversial topic for St. Louisans. Even though we already had fast food companies in StL, they were still operating primarily as restaurants that you dine at. When Jack came, they came with the intention of being drive-thru restaurants. With significantly fewer seats in the restaurants, they wanted folks to drive through their window, take their food, and leave. St. Louisans were very concerned about people throwing trash out of their cars and creating massive piles of litter everywhere. They were also worried about food safety with hundreds of cars with gross exhaust pulling up right next to an open window where food is being prepared. They were also concerned about additional traffic congestion, especially in residential neighborhoods.

I’m gonna post some newspaper clippings about the fight against Jack Box. Most of these are from 1970. Does anyone or their parents/grandparents remember any of those?

Over on North Taylor is an extremely cool gate. The gate was designed by the same architecture firm that designed the New Cathedral (Barnett, Haynes & Barnett). It was built in 1895. Apparently it was supposed to have a lil statue on top but they never got around to it.

Behind that extremely cool gate is a private street that is three blocks long: Lewis Place.

Lewis Place is super interesting because even though the private street was meant to be developed for St. Louis' wealthy elite (like the private streets in the Central West End), that's not exactly what happened.

Between 1890 and 1900, only 8 large houses had been built on Lewis. There were streetcars that stopped at the end of Lewis Place that went in opposite directions which meant there was a LOT of traffic from people and streetcars at the end of the street. Wealthy people didn’t like that.

The houses that ended up filling out the private street were much more affordable. There were little bungalows and cottages and for once, you didn't have to be RICH RICH to live on a private street.

Like many streets and neighborhoods in St. Louis, Lewis Place had a restrictive racial covenant. These covenants came to be when white property owners would get together and decide that they did not want Black families living on their block. They put restrictions into their deeds that would say that the homes could not be sold to black community members.

In the mid-40s, a black dentist named Richard Layne moved into #2 Lewis Place (which was one of the original large houses on the block). The white property owners filed suit against him, but eventually the case was dropped and black families were allowed to move onto the street. After the case against Dr. Layne was dropped, more black families moved onto the street, including prominent doctors and school leaders.

I'm really bad at ending posts so bye

PS - Most of this info came from the National Register of Historic Places nomination form written by the Landmarks Association, bless you for all you've given us, Landmarks.

In 1979, a group of high schoolers in St. Louis were ticked off. Their teachers had been on strike for six weeks. They were terrified that if the strike continued, they wouldn't be able to graduate high school on time. They wrote a letter to the Reverend Jesse Jackson in hopes that he could help settle some of this.

Days after receiving the letter, Jackson was in St. Louis, speaking at a rally that was organized by the students.

Jackson knew the power of a registered voter, so while he was here he took about a hundred high-schoolers, marched them down to the Board of Elections, and got them registered to vote.

Jackson made a very unusual suggestion when he was here.

When the board of education and the local government was saying "oh there's no more money, we can't find any more money to pay, we simply cannot give any more money to the teachers" Jackson suggested that corporations and local businesses chip in and pay the deficit.

And guess what.

About a dozen companies chipped in, paid off the deficit, and the strike was over.

The strike totalled 56 days. Longest teachers strike in StL history.

You would think St. Louis leaders would've been on their hands and knees thanking Jackson for all he did for us, but guess what? One alderwoman proposed a resolution that criticized Jackson for getting involved in St. Louis matters and advised him to stay in Chicago.

When asked about the resolution to keep him out of town, Jackson reminded leaders that a resolution was passed in Birmingham to keep Dr. Martin Luther King out of town and it didn't work at all.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson did so much for St. Louis and we were very lucky to have his lifetime of support (no matter what our leaders thought of him).