City Garden or Gateway One Garden?

City Garden and Gateway One: illegitimate children of Corporate Interests and Incompetent Urban Design.

A horrifying thought occurred to me while walking past the construction site of City Garden the other day: they designed it to compliment one of the biggest urban design mistakes in St. Louis.





City Garden's tank barricades sweep gracefully into the stairs of Gateway One's half-a-mall and hides itself from Chestnut Street.

The color of the stone resembles the color of the stone panels of Gateway One, and the curving walls on the north half of the block take up a similar footprint to the high-rise office park. The half-a-mall plan that cost us the Buder and Title Guarantee Buildings has come back to bite us on the ass, and somebody conned Shaw's Garden [otherwise known as Missouri Botanical Garden] into sponsoring it. It wasn't bad enough to hem 'Twain' into a bumpy park, the corporate sugar daddies had to also use it to enhance their most heinous act upon the city's central green space.








'Hello, AT&T employees, welcome to City Garden.' The view from the main entrance of the AT&T tower.

City Garden, then, is no more than a ploy by the owners of the city-killer glass boxes on the mall to give their properties 'curb appeal' and drain taxpayers' resources. It is specifically designed, like the 'mall' at Gateway One, to discourage public use. Its massive walls and berms obscure street views and sever the space from the little bit of retail space that could serve it. Foot traffic even during rush hour is minimal, with only the weary poor who have to park south of downtown braving the abysmal streetscape of the corporate wilderness.

City Garden genuflecting to its daddy, with the AT&T complex standing smugly and lifelessly beyond. Notice the lack of pedestrian activity in an area densely packed with office workers.

This photo was taken at lunch time on a Friday. No surprise here--there's absolutely nothing to do but smoke a cigarette.












AT&T data center retail space. How do you get in?


There's actually a snack shop in there. The Metrolink station and sheer perseverance are the only explanations for its continued existence.

In my walk from 4th to 12th on Market Street each morning, there is no retail opportunity to buy a paper or a cup of coffee. I walk it for the exercise since there is absolutely no other reason for anyone to be there except to get to and from work. Sales tax dollars by the thousands walk out of downtown and land in suburban strip malls, all because of arrogant corporate looters who took financial incentives to build their monolithic slabs of cubicles and conference rooms, and gave nothing in return for the favor.



















Darth Vader dares you to walk here.

City Garden is a waste of resources and worse, a waste of an urban design opportunity to create dynamic space in the midst of a dead district.







AT&T's skywalks protect its employees from the dangers of dead sidewalks that its buildings killed.





I.M. Pei should have known better. The General American Building is a dead zone, and an uncomfortable hovering mass to walk under.


Meanwhile, the 'Darth Vader' building is set above the sidewalk as if the mere pedestrian is unworthy of the glory of modern banking and unwelcome in an urban center.

Harry Weese's 1010 Market Building is a little better. Its hovering mass almost suggests a canopy [and is welcome respite on a rainy day], but its blank wall implies that human presence, evidenced by the bus stop, was an afterthought.
It does offer retail space, tho set well back from the street. Only a Subway shop has managed to survive in its two lease spaces, even though channel 5 news draws potential customers to its 'Window on St. Louis' in 'Television Plah-zuh'.