Author: Rudy Owens

I have a professional background in journalism (MA from UNC-CH), public affairs, and more recently public health (MPH, University of Washington). I publish several online properties, including my web site www.rudyowens.com. I also am an author of the first-ever memoir and public health examination of the U.S. adoption system ("You Don't Know How Lucky You Are," BFD Press, 2018).

Renewal and Decay in The Grove
The entrance to The Grove improvement district
A beautiful old St. Louis home, in decline
Another apartment under the aegis of the Restoration StLouis development company.
An abandoned home at the entrance to The Grove
The Urban Chestnut Brewing Company is an anchor business on Manchester Avenue.
Feral homes are common in North St. Louis and also Forest Park Southeast Neighborhood.
An abanoned home near the Urban Chestnut
Manchester Avenue looking west
Three abandoned homes, just south of Manchester Avenue
Two abandoned homes, south of Manchester Avenue
Signs of decay are visible in streets off of Manchester Avenue

(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

My trip to St. Louis in March took me into new neighborhoods, including the area known as The Grove. It is located along Manchester Avenue, in the south central section of the city. It is an excellent example of both decay and renewal in a city that continues to see its population decline to barely more than 300,000 from more than 800,000 six decades earlier.

I visited the area in October 2016 and drank beer at the popular brewpub called the Urban Chestnut Brewing Co. It is a trendy watering hole known to beer connoisseurs and travelers. Most never venture two blocks away to see homes that are shuttered and abandoned. In fact I saw several abandoned and beautiful old homes on Manchester Avenue less than 150 yards from the Chestnut, near the iconic electric sign announcing “The Grove” as you enter the business strip heading east. This dichotomy captured for me the struggles of trying to save a city that has been on the decline for more than half a century.

The Grove itself is located in the official Forest Park Southeast Neighborhood of St. Louis. Created in 2009, the Grove Community Improvement District has worked to restore the area. Its website boasts that urban decay has been licked along the main business district on Manchester: “Known for its diverse community, The Grove is home to several LGBT friendly businesses, several of which lead the initial wave of investment in the area, starting with Attitudes Night Club opening in the 1980s. In recent years, community members devoted to filling one vacant storefront at a time, have revitalized the district.”

When I drove through the area, I saw many homes from the early part of the 20th century in various signs of decay. I did not feel that safe having my car parked only one block off of Manchester on a calm spring night.

It’s a heavily industrialized area, next to interstates and rail yards, and home to industry along with commercial establishments. Many homes just two to four blocks south of Manchester were shuttered. There were visible signs to rebuild and restore many of these distressed buildings. They had the signs of the development firm Restoration St. Louis spray painted on plywood on entrances. Restoration St. Louis’ website boast of its efforts to preserve historic buildings through what it called “urban husbandry”–an expression I have never heard of before, which to my mind blends animal breeding with urban renewal. The firm also has plans to tear down and build new multi-story dwellings, similar to what one finds in high-density areas of West Coast cities.

I have little insider knowledge of the local politics and efforts to maintain the area and keep it going. One of the best resources I found is published by Mark Groth. He has  extensively profiled all of St. Louis’ 79 neighborhoods. His profile of Forest Park Southeast, on his website www.nextstl.com, offers a rich archive of images and a discussion of efforts to redevelop the area. He notes a few trends toward gentrification, such as an increasing white population and decreasing black population. He calls the area “up and coming.”

Groth’s work is wide-ranging and visually dynamic. It is far more accurate than the occasional parachute journalistic profiles of St. Louis, such as the one CNN recently ran in its story on Feb. 16, 2017, on the supposed rebound in St. Louis and Kansas City (St. Louis and Kansas City Bounce Back). Such reporting does a disservice. It denies the evidence plainly visible to anyone who drives a car through the city. It also downplays the complexities of addressing decades-old problems of racial divisions and redlining, de-industrialization, and policies that promoted suburban development at the expense of older urban communities like St. Louis.

Also See my first photo essay on The Grove, published on April 2, 2017.

 

 

Remembering Jerusalem on Easter Sunday
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, taken in 2004.
The Edicule, located inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

I visited Israel and the Occupied Territories in 2004. It was one of the most amazing experiences I can remember. I saw tension, conflict, and beauty in a land that is revered by three monastic faiths and billions of people. Here are a couple of shots I took in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the spot where reportedly Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.

I never tire of Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden

(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

April in Portland means flowers are bursting. They always bring a smile to my face. They also bring back amazing memories of my first trip here as a senior in high school in the 1980s. I bought my own ticket with money I saved and visited a college, where I eventually applied and graduated. It was something I controlled from start to finish: the trip, choosing the school, and eventually paying for the school with my savings, earnings, and a little bit of support left to me from my long deceased grandfather. It wasn’t much, but college was affordable in the 1980s for those of lesser means who got good financial aid packages. I was a very lucky young man indeed.

That life choice is linked partially to one fateful decision I made on that trip. I wasn’t that enamored by the school, but Portland had me spellbound. During that trip I took a detour to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, in southeast Portland. I was blown away. I still am every time I visit the place in April. It is funny to think what can influence your decision at certain stages of your life.

I took these shots with a simple handheld Canon, which was about as fussy as I wanted to be. I spent most of my time smelling the aroma of spring and feeling young and on Cloud 9. There is something to be said about memory linked to the senses, olfactory and visual, and what rekindling those senses do for one’s mood. For me the place brings me back to my earlier days when I chartered the kind of life I ended up living, where I wanted to live it.

Shuttered in St. Louis
A fourplex is among many closed buildings in the blocks just off Manchester Avenue.
This fourplex is now shuttered.
A common sight in St. Louis is plywood in the window set against a brick facade.
A closed building awaits an uncertain future in The Grove neighborhood.

Readers of this blog know that I have been documenting the struggles of St. Louis through photo essays. These topics cover a range of issues, from 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 hundreds of thousands of more residents–more than 600,000 residents called it home the year I arrived. 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.

Today, St. Louis’ population is barely 300,000, and 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.

During my last trip in March 2017, I visited some new areas, surprised to see signs of hope and also continued signs of despair.

I will be publishing a more detailed essay soon on The Grove Neighborhood, in south central St. Louis. The area, anchored by the business corridor on Manchester Avenue, stretches between Kingshighway and Vandeventer. Here are just a few of the buildings I found in this self-defined revitalizing area. The streets do not look that different from the more distressed North Side, where the majority of African-American residents call home. The brick structures, despite their neglect, still stand proud. I always try to imagine life decades earlier, when optimism abounded and the craftsman built the structures brick by brick, not knowing their destiny. I wonder what they might think if the could foresee the fate of their handiwork decades later.

Early Spring at the Missouri Botanical Garden
I captured this very calming scene at the Japanese Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden
A so-called Zen garden (karesansui) perfectly maintained at the Japanese Garden area of the Missouri Botanical Garden. I love this place.
Spring blossoms were peaking out at the Japanese Garden.
The Missouri Botanical Garden features a beautiful English-style manor garden.
The orchid show is always popular at the Missouris Botanical Garden.

(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

I always visit the Missouri Botanical Garden, in south St. Louis, when I see my family in the St. Louis area. It remains one of the constants in life that weathers the turbulence of the larger world and my personal world. It is where my mother and I have spent some of best times as we have gotten older, together.

Things have changed for us, but less so for the Garden. I like that. Perhaps I need that. It remains a beautiful place with phenomenal displays of flowers, plants, and mini ecosystems from the world over. My favorite section of the Garden is the serene and exquisitely maintained Japanese Garden.

During our visit, my mom and I also saw the lovely orchid show. The daffodils and crocuses were blooming–daffodils being the beautiful harbinger of spring. I had never seen that many before at the Garden, probably because I do not visit just before the vernal equinox. It was really nice to see the Garden right as the season was changing.

If you visit St. Louis, this should be on your top three list of things to see besides the Gateway Arch and Forest Park/Zoo/Art Museum (all in Forest Park).

Grand Boulevard tells a story of St. Louis’ historic decline
Saints Theresa and Bridget Catholic Church
Shuttered factory on Page Avenue, just off Grand Boulevard.
Abandoned grand homes sit north of Midtown St. Louis, on Grand Boulevard.
Shuttered business building on Grand Boulevard.
The Most Holy Name of Jesus of St. Louis Cathedral closed in 1992.
North Grand Water Tower and Most Holy Name Jesus of St. Louis Cathedral, both landmarks, are now in decay in North St. Louis.

(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

During my most recent visit to St. Louis in mid-March 2017, I drive more than half of the once-elegant Grand Boulevard, one of the city’s main south-north arteries. The route took me from the heart of St. Louis’ historic Midtown neighborhood, in the center of the city.

I headed north to the city’s historically impoverished and African-American neighborhoods. These lie north of the city’s unspoken dividing line for white and black residents that has an unfixed border running east to west, through the old and glorious industrial city. That line has always meant blacks on the north and whites on the south, though it remains blurred in more recent years.

The landscape along Grand Boulevard reveals severe economic distress that has seen St. Louis shrink from nearly 880,000 residents in 1950 to barely 311,000 in 2016. The numbers keep falling.

I wrote about the decay in North St. Louis in June 2016, documenting through my Leica lens the blight I saw throughout this once magnificent area. (See my photo essay: “North St. Louis, a gentrification-free zone.”)

Grand Boulevard put that pain on display almost too perfectly.

As one drives north from Midtown starting at St. Louis University, one first sees the Fabulous Fox Theatre and then the majestic Powell Hall, home of the once world-renowned St. Louis Symphony. (Use Google Street View to begin the tour and point your browser north from Powell Hall.)

Heading further north, the decay is instantly visible. As one drives past St. Alphonsus Liguori Catholic Church, the signs of poverty and distress can be seen in shuttered businesses, homes, and churches. Entire blocks are cleared, and what remains is a ghost of former grandeur.

Going further north, you can pass by the old Schnucks grocery store, at Kossuth Avenue and Grand, which closed in 2014 due to lack of profits, leaving the entire north side of the city with just one grocery store.

After you cross Florissant Avenue, in the deep core of North St. Louis, you can spot the magnificent Corinthian column known as the North Grand Water Tower, a historic landmark. It is a sad reminder of St. Louis glory days as a city to be reckoned with economically and architecturally.

Next to the column stands one of many abandoned Catholic churches, Most Holy Name of Jesus of St. Louis Cathedral. It was closed by the St. Louis Archdiocese in 1992. It boasts power and pride of the people who made it and their confidence in their community and city.

Of course one cannot avoid talking about race, segregation, deindustrialization, the loss of factory jobs, out-migration, the impact of the federal Interstate Highway System, and more when discussing the distress in the blocks that intersect Grand Boulevard.

These changes are described in detail in Colin Gordon’s 2009 book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City. As one reviewer wrote of his study on my former home town: “Once a thriving metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi, St. Louis, Missouri, is now a ghostly landscape of vacant houses, boarded-up storefronts, and abandoned factories. The Gateway City is, by any measure, one of the most depopulated, deindustrialized, and deeply segregated examples of American urban decay.”

Anyone visiting St. Louis should do this drive to see the painful, magnificent, and still evolving history of a Midwest city. It is a story also showing the decline of the United States as a manufacturing nation that once supported family-wage jobs that have disappeared in the last half century.

Shredding it at Seaside

There was a break in bad weather at Seaside, Oregon, this past weekend and the A-Team showed up on long and short boards. I saw a lot of beautiful rides after I got out of the water. The outing inspired me to get some old surf rock classics, like the Ventures. Enjoy their beats and see what’s splashing on the surfcam at Seaside.

(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

My own Shawshank Redemption tree
This is my self-appointed Shawshank Redemption tree.
This is my self-appointed Shawshank Redemption tree.

(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

I love driving out to the Oregon Coast. I have been doing that regularly since I took up surfing late last summer. My normal route, on Highway 26, passes through rural stretches of Washington County, which are not developed because of the state’s urban growth boundary rules. About 20 miles west of Portland, just before you hit the coastal range, stands one special tree that always reminds me of that mighty oak tree, in the film the Shawshank Redemption.

In the scene, the former Shawshank prisoner Ellis “Red” Redding visits a field where he finds a majestic white oak tree. Stashed in a stone wall by the tree, Red’s best friend and escaped prisoner Andy DuFresne has left a stash of money and an invitation to join him in Mexico. The scene, beautifully directed by Frank Darabont and masterfully acted by Morgan Freman, always gives me hope. When I see this tree, I  always think about hope and redemption, and those are good things.

Oswald West-Short Sands, a beautiful Oregon beach
Short Sands, calm side.
A nerve wracking early morning drive to the beach.
The drive is half the adventure.
The trail to Short Sands is magical.
It was a chilly day.
Bad surf day, let’s be honest.
Dear World: this is how rough Oregon surf is.
The tip of Oswald West looks north to Cannon Beach. It was a stormy day!

Oswald West State Park/Short Sands beach is a beautiful coastal spot about 90 miles from Portland. The snug little cove is surrounded by giant, original old growth and coastal mountains. Three streams find their way to the ocean here. The place is exceptionally popular in the summer with day trippers and with surfers year-round.

I have made more than half a dozen trips here, lately to go surfing. Despite its reputation as a beginner surfer beach, I have rarely seen a clean wave here. I know they exist, because I have seen YouTube videos on those rare, bluebird sky summer surf days. I have only known it on rainy days, mostly, when the surf churns like a bad brew. That happened to me on Feb. 24.

A winter’s surfing trip to the coast is an adventure before you even get there. I drove through a winter storm, over the coastal range. White knuckles were de rigueur. I saw multiple trucks stuck on the higher passes. Before I reached the beach, I had two choices once I hit Highway 101: head to Seaside Cove, which has some beautiful swells and clean lines or try Short Sands, with the hope I might surf in an area covered by snow. The thought of that sent me south to Short Sands.

Well, the waves were mostly disappointing. I got my first head ding from the board and torqued my bad knee. Still, I found some lovely waves in the strong rip and currents that churn here when there is high tide. A resident bald eagle circled above and came to feast on some dead sea critter that had washed ashore. I can’t complain about seeing a bald eagle eating sea carrion. Just as I was leaving, the waves started to calm and a new set of surfers arrived. I wished them well and walked amid the druids of giant Sitka spruces, listening to the clear stream head to the ocean.

 

 

Otter Rock surfing on a winter’s day in Oregon

I finally made it out to Otter Rock, one of Oregon’s premier surfing beaches. The spot is located next to a state park, where you can also find Devil’s Punch Bowl. It’s a great place to appreciate the beauty and ruggedness of the Oregon coast.

Well, surfing here in the Northwest is never perfect, and Otter Rock like all beaches must contend with the swells and winds of winter. When I headed out on Feb. 17, 2017, the forecast called for not-so-windy weather and swells spaced apart at least 15 seconds. It proved far windier and rougher than I had bargained for.

Was that going to stop me? Heck no. I put on the suit and got out. I did get my requisite rides, plus many shorter rides closer to shore. Not a perfect day, but when you spend four hours in the waves, do you have anything to complain about? Absolutely not. A day later I still feel the vibe.