Dead Pop 101: Suburban Gentrification

The various ironies of dead shopping malls have been well documented over the last ten years, as a number of the larger enclosed centers have failed and the popular interest in things-abandoned has grown. In this post, I wanted to show another aspect of suburban decline.

For decades, artists, their studios, and the galleries that show their work have sought low-rent neighborhoods in the cities in which to work. As a result, the vibrant, active communities that often follow have served to revitalize dying sections of the urban landscape. In nearly all cases, however, the long-term benefit is enjoyed by real estate developers who convert neighborhoods “colonized” by art and artists into upscale residential and retail spaces. The end result is most often the displacement of the very people (and the ideas) that reshaped the districts, and the replacement of locally-owned businesses with corporate outlets. The story is an old chestnut now. The burned-out building becomes an art gallery, and then the art gallery becomes a Starbucks.

 

Unwanted coffee (note the graffiti).

Not surprisingly, developers in the suburbs have watched this process, and have attempted to transplant the phenomenon in a few places where economic rot has crept into post-World War II communities. One example is Crestwood Mall in suburban St. Louis. What had begun as a post-war strip mall had become a sprawling enclosed shopping center by the 1980s, only to become a suburban ghost town by the first years of the twenty-first century.

After occupancy fell below 50%, artists were invited into the big climate-controlled space, and suddenly, what was once The Foot Locker was a dance studio, what was once Waldenbooks was a community theater, and what was a jewelry store became the site of an installational sculpture. For a couple of years, the mall was transformed by the eclectic – something not generally seen in such environments. It couldn’t last, however. Within a few years, the leases of art-tenants were terminated, and the big place was emptied. Word has it the mall will return to its mid-twentieth century roots as an outdoor strip mall.

It wasn't a great piece, but it was a start.

An unusual shopping mall directory: locally-owned shops and artist spaces down the aisle from The Gap.

 

Post Industrial St. Louis, circa 1990

Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina will be featuring a site that we explored and videotaped back in 1990. The powerhouse for the United Railways Streetcar Company, located near the intersection of 39^th Street and Park Avenue in St. Louis, had been empty for a long time when we began visiting the ruins in the late 1980s. The place was near an old tobacco warehouse, a portion of which we were renting as a painting studio. At the time, we had no idea what the big, empty structure had been used for originally, but we were very impressed by the utterly massive and archaic-looking furnaces and electrical equipment that we saw there. See Chris’s post for the story on the building, and the site as it looks today.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d share some of the post-industrial relics that we dragged out the crumbling structure.

From a bank of at least a dozen such meters, attached to a series of 6-foot-tall slate panels. Notice how the values on the meter had been modified, to accommodate more current. 

In a room on the second floor were dozens of old wooden file boxes, containing company files dating to the 1940s. We didn’t have the heart to disturb this mildewed archive, hoping it would be rescued.

 It wasn’t. 

In one area, the floor was littered with thousands of these iron balls. I have no idea.    

At some point after the building was no longer used as a powerhouse, it must have been leased as a warehouse. What else can explain a cardboard box full of 35mm slides from some sort of behavioral laboratory experiment on monkeys. No kidding. The slides were processed in the 1960s.  

We also shot some video of one of the trips, which took us into a wonderfully weird, labyrinthine basement. Two clips can be seen on our YouTube channel.

My good friend Miles Rutlin (who can be seen in the video lugging a motorcycle battery that powered our lights in the basement) painted a series of pieces inspired by what he saw in the old powerhouse. Below is one of those works, Arrival. I will also post an excerpt of an article I wrote about Miles’ work (as well as another St. Louis painter, Matt Walters) for the short-lived St. Louis magazine Vision (Fall 1992). 

Arrival. Miles Rutlin 1990

1992 Vision Magazine article (click on the image to enlarge)

Article part 2

From abandonment and salvage, to art and media. St. Louis was a garden of such things in 1990....

A Lovely Plague

In an earlier post about postmodernism and zombie films, I mentioned the recent phenomena of reimagining poster art for various genre films of the past, including those in the “zombie cycle” of the 1980s. Most of these employ the aesthetics, fonts, and design elements of the time, often exaggerating or distilling them.

Painter and illustrator Anne-Marie Jones has created a few of her own interpretations, including a version of “Plague of the Zombies” from 1966. However, Anne-Marie doesn’t really attempt to mimic the aesthetics of the time, and instead creates her own, very lyrical imagery.

Have a look at her work: http://annemariejones.co.uk/