New West Cahokia

The attacks against 'Twain' continue. Richard Serra's monumentally-scaled tour-de-force is under attack yet again, but these vandals have the city's blessing. Gateway Foundation and Shaw's Garden are building 'City Garden' in the two blocks east of 'Twain', using forms and materials that completely contradict the straightforward simplicity of the Serra sculpture.

The earlier renderings I saw of City Garden showed an open, visually accessible landscape that extended into the 'Twain' block, integrating the sculpture into the section of the mall isolated by the Gateway One disaster. But what's going up is entirely different. Massive concrete walls clad in rustic random ashlar limestone and mounds.

Yes, Virginia, there are mounds in Mound City.

The result is that the view of the sculpture is completely blocked from the north side of the mall, and hemmed in by a mound on the south side. The horizontal emphasis of the sculpture comes to an abrupt end scarcely a hundred feet from its easternmost point. Instead of being an environmental sculpture, it is now a display piece; just as the Wainwright building has been framed-in with bland modern neighbors, 'Twain' is now framed in with dirt. The arrow pointing boldly down the mall now points meekly at a bank of earth. [For the record, the State's additions to the Wainwright are one of the city's great modern works; it's what surrounds it that ruins its context.]

Precious few people understand the subtle beauty of 'Twain'. I'd venture a guess that most of its detractors never truly experienced it. 'Twain' is about its context. To appreciate it, you have to walk around and thru it, observing the city and experiencing the way it frames your surroundings. Go inside, and the clutter and noise of traffic are cut from your perception, leaving the city around you as the sculpture. This is public art at its most humble, and it deserves better respect than it gets.

I don't know if Shaw's Garden [yes, I still call it Shaw's Garden, MoBot is too impersonal] had any impact on City Garden's design, but it's shaping up as yet another wasted opportunity in the history of St. Louis public space development, unworthy of the Garden's immense contributions to our city and to the world of botany. In stark contrast to the head-noddingly boring federal courthouse square [the English word for plaza], it appears overly elaborate. Its massive walls and berms already block views from the street, divorcing it from its urban context.

For urban spaces to work effectively, they must be welcoming, and they must have active adjacent uses to feed them. Neither the federal square or this New West Cahokia achieve these. I'll admit I may be premature on my assessment of City Garden, but indicators are not favorable. Old Post Office Square should prove successful for these same reasons, and should enliven their surroundings. I expect retail space around it to become prime property, and that it will fulfill its aim of emulating New York's Bryant Park. City Garden and Federal Square lack any active adjacent uses. One obstructs views and the other is a parched lawn with furniture that looks painful to sit on, even more so to look at. Workers who park south of downtown have not one single retail opportunity until they reach Olive Street; a wasted opportunity to have a vibrant urban neighborhood.

The Gateway Mall has been doomed from the start, when Corbusian urban design eradicated its relevance with its inward-looking corporate neighbors. It has been nothing but a somewhat-pretty lawn for corporate aristocrats who have since sold their holdings out of town. What it needs is retail space--real storefronts, and adjacent residences. 1010 Market by Harry Weese is a good building, perhaps even a great one. I.M. Pei's General American Building is a pretty street-killer. The rest of the private buildings facing City Garden are mediocre, and calling them street-killers is being generous, especially in the case of 'Gateway One on the Mall'. The city must require retail storefronts on all new downtown buildings, and should offer some serious incentives for the conversion of existing ground floors to retail. This is the only way the Gateway Mall and City Garden will have a chance of becoming relevant urban spaces.

Otherwise, we should just give it up and turn it into the Gateway Shopping Mall.