Thurman Underpass - Thurman Gateway Project

Presented by Monte Abbott
Chair, Beautification Committee
Shaw Neighborhood Improvement Association

Thurman Underpass
The underpass at Thurman Avenue and Highway 44 may be the most important place in Shaw right now. Most of the beautiful housing stock has been rehabbed. Crime has decreased dramatically in recent years.

The commercial streets of our neighborhood are experiencing an exciting renaissance with restaurants, pubs and salons moving in to once-vacant properties. Our residents have created at least six community gardens. We have reached a magical moment where property taxes are decreasing but home sales and values are holding steady. In short, we have begun to recapture some of the vitality and diversity that characterized the early years of our neighborhood.

The underpass at Thurman and 44 is a different story. This is a murky, sketchy place; its appearance suggests violence, danger and division. For those of us who know our past, the underpass is a constant reminder of the dark side of our history – our environmental blunders as well as our social struggles with neighbors during the past century. In order to preserve and further the positive changes we have experienced in recent years we must transform this location with knowledge of the past, foresight and sensitivity.

The Problem: A Physical and Social Barrier

The underpass is a physical reminder of the severing of our neighborhoods by the Hwy 44 construction during the 1960’s. This act of creation was also an act of violence, destroying homes and streets. The highway separated friends, families, social networks and entire sections of the Shaw Neighborhood. Highway construction erased twelve blocks of our neighborhood, and in the process, forever severed three of the five streets connecting our residents from north to south.

During the decades since highway construction, our divided and isolated daughter communities have declined, then stabilized, and after much hard work have finally begun to return to vibrancy. Meanwhile, the isolation forced upon us by the highway has persisted. During the 1980’s, in a larger attempt to combat crime in Shaw, the Thurman underpass was barricaded, leaving 39th Street as the only way Shaw residents could cross Highway 44 without leaving our neighborhood.

Today these physical barriers remain in place. As life in Shaw has improved, the appearance of the Thurman Underpass has deteriorated until the general appearance of the area creates a second barrier - a social barrier that reinforces the physical boundaries created by the highway. Broken pavements, weedy abutments, litter and graffiti at the Thurman underpass foster perceptions of danger and insecurity. Neighbors on both sides of the highway experience this double barrier effect. Enormous concrete planters placed at both entrances to the underpass reinforce that we are not to move beyond our neighborhoods and that outsiders should not enter.

The Solution: A Social Gateway
It is time to change that social barrier into a social gateway, the Thurman Gateway, drawing people from both neighborhoods together into a welcoming and vital public space. We propose replacing the barriers at the DeTonty entrance with decorative and permanent park seating to signal that this is now a public space.

All of the pavement between DeTonty and the underpass will be replaced with a beautiful native prairie that begins at DeTonty and extends up the highway slope on each side of the underpass, creating half an acre of critical natural habitat for birds, butterflies and pollinators. Mass plantings of prairie grasses and flowering perennials will soften the hard lines of the bridge’s concrete architecture.

A foot path and a separate bike path will wind sinuously into and through the underpass, between beautiful drifts of native flowering plants, welcoming neighbors from both sides into the Thurman Gateway and creating a sense of discovery that encourages visitors to continue on into the other neighborhood. Attractive lighting will illuminate the Thurman Gateway underpass at night to provide a more secure environment for pedestrians and cyclists. Public art, especially paintings and mosaics created by local children, will adorn the space beneath the underpass. This interior area will welcome families, transforming the Thurman Gateway into a warm and positive location.

Revamping this eyesore into a welcoming and attractive Thurman Gateway will provide a number of important benefits for neighbors on both sides of the highway. The most immediate benefit will be the physical and social reconnection of the Shaw Neighborhood with Botanical Heights and Tiffany. The Thurman Gateway will become a new focal point for all three, drawing neighbors together at the Gateway. Walking tours and bike lanes currently being developed in South City may converge on this natural connection point rather than avoiding the area as they would now. The Thurman Gateway will become a place people care about.

Restaurants and other businesses in both Shaw and Tiffany will benefit from an increase in commerce from the adjoining populations. As the blighted appearance of the barrier is transformed, the desirability of real estate in the surrounding blocks will increase. While Highway 44 is here to stay, we have the opportunity to reconnect our people to the benefit of us all.

Prairie Habitat
There is a second part to the back story of the Thurman underpass. This ugly eyesore, this physical and social barrier, this testament to unintended consequences is located in a geographically critical location -- a former watershed. The history of St. Louis is in part a history of rivers and streams and a history of our manipulation and abuse of those streams. We have diverted, built over, paved under and rerouted all of the streams that once flowed through the city of St. Louis. In the process, we have destroyed almost all the natural habitat, removed local plant and animal communities and seriously altered our run-off systems and water reservoirs.


From Compton & Dry 1876, neighborhood boundaries and stream added by author.

Thurman Avenue is the area of lowest elevation in the Shaw Neighborhood. Before any of our houses were built this land was a large prairie, named the Prairie des Noyers by the Eighteenth Century French settlers. The principle stream draining this prairie flowed beneath today’s Thurman Avenue, from Tower Grove Park in the south towards Mill Creek to the north. If you stand under the Thurman underpass and look south towards Sasha’s you will see the land rise up to the right and to the left, echoing the banks of this lost stream.

Prairie streams are critical habitat locations where plant and animal diversities are at their highest. Our predecessors destroyed that habitat when they built our neighborhood. Prairie habitat around St. Louis continues to disappear ahead of commercial and residential development and prairie communities become more and more precious. Today it is estimated that less than 1/10th of 1% of Missouri’s prairies remain intact (http://www.moprairie.org/educational-resources/ ).

We cannot bring the stream back but we can replace some of that disappeared habitat. Our design for the Thurman Gateway recreates an half acre of prairie habitat. This new green space will provide food and shelter for local pollinators, butterflies and bird species. We need these pollinators for our flower and vegetable gardens and our fruit trees. Many of us find great joy in watching for the wildlife that accompanies a healthy native plant community. In addition, urban children should have the opportunity to touch, observe and learn about the plants and animals that are native to our place. The Garden Gateway will provide us all with these opportunities for an improved quality of life.

Project Objectives
The Thurman Gateway Project seeks to transform the last blighted public area of Shaw. Overgrown weeds, broken sidewalks, pavement and unsightly concrete barriers will be removed. In their place, a beautiful pocket prairie will be planted up to the drip line of the overpass. A bicycle path and a pedestrian trail will enter the Thurman Gateway at Thurman and DeTonty Streets and will meander through the prairie, pass beneath the underpass and connect to the Botanical Heights neighborhood at Lafayette and Thurman. The Thurman Gateway will include park benches, lighting, and will feature public artworks by local children. This project accomplishes several important social, economic and environmental objectives.

Social: The Thurman Gateway represents our first attempts to physically reconnect the surviving portions of the former Shaw Neighborhood since construction of Highway 44. The transformation of this area will stimulate connections between currently isolated communities and, through interaction and beautification, will improve the quality of life for us all. A cleaner and more beautiful physical environment will give a better impression of our neighborhood. This project will demonstrate to visitors an increased investment in the community and will inspire in residents a greater pride of place.

Economic: The Thurman Gateway enhances the ongoing improvements in each neighborhood simultaneously by creating a nexus for exchange and transit between residential populations and the commercial developments along Shaw Boulevard, Thurman Avenue and Tower Grove Avenue. The potential for inclusion of the Thurman Gateway in walking tours and bike routes offers further opportunities for commercial growth. Housing and property adjacent to the Thurman Gateway will become more desirable. This is highly significant as the 4000 and 4100 blocks of DeTonty are among the most visible and the least well maintained in the neighborhood.

Environmental: From an ecological point of view, this project will accomplish additional important
objectives. The installation of prairie grasses and perennials will recreate about a half-acre of prairie habitat, making this one of the few prairie habitats in urban St. Louis. The local pollinators, butterflies and bird species that rely on prairie habitat for their food and reproduction will benefit greatly and our local food-wildlife web will be strengthened.

Prairie plants are naturally adapted to our local environment. They require a great deal less water and maintenance than other ornamental species commonly planted. As our climate continues to warm prairie plantings represent a sustainable choice – these plants have been here through previous cycles of warming and cooling and they can thrive in spite of change. The less intensive management and maintenance required for prairie plantings also represents lower financial costs to us.

Eight storm water drains are located within the boundary of the project area, a testament to the high volumes of rain runoff generated by extensive impervious surfaces. Removal of existing paved surfaces will allow for a substantial increase in rain infiltration, helping to recharge our aquifer. Additional environmental benefits include a reduction in the city’s heat island effect and a decrease in highway-generated pollutants such as carbon dioxide and contaminated soils.

Summary
In the past we have responded to changing condition by walling off our neighborhoods. The Thurman underpass is one of the last remaining reminders of this period, blocked off, neglected, a no-go-zone. If we are to continue the development and advancement of our neighborhoods, we must find ways to reconnect across the Highway 44 barrier that we have inherited. We must also find solutions to the social barriers that we have maintained and reinforced for so long. Currently conversations are taking place among city officials to permanently close off the Thurman underpass with fences and eventually with infilling.

We believe that our plan to create the Thurman Gateway is a better option. It will promote connections between our neighborhoods for families, visitors, businesses, and tourists. Our plan accomplishes these changes while protecting and enhancing our natural environment. The Thurman Gateway brings neighbors together, increases the prosperity of residents and businesses, provides opportunities for education, repairs some of the ecological damage of the past and improves the quality of all our lives in numerous ways. We don’t need more barriers. Now is the time for more Gateways.