St. Louis, Missouri.
In the previous article, I opened by talking about how I didn’t have much more than a vague awareness of this place before fate landed me here for a long weekend. And that is true, BUT—since I have become obsessed with doing these articles where I compile collections of murals in a particular place, I have had my antenna up for information about where I can find the best street art. And I had heard that St. Louis was actually one of the street art capitals of America. Who knew!
The gallery you’re about to see could not have happened by accident. I spent 5 or 6 hours driving around in my car with the sole purpose of tracking down as many pieces of street art as I could. These are from all over the city, and the only reason I was able to do this so quickly was that this article from Sailingstone plotted a lot of the hotspots on a Google Map for me. So I literally just drove from point to point and discovered a few new things of my own along the way.
It might seem like a weird way to spend your time in a new city, but I have found that these scavenger hunts help you get to know a place better than any conventional “sightseeing” expedition ever could. It forces you to go out and explore areas that you wouldn’t otherwise have even been aware of—and I mean EXPLORE. Walking down all these back alleys in case there are murals hiding there is a great way to get a feel for the DNA of a place. I have done this in quite a few different cities now—and although murals generally are not found in “nice” areas of town—I have not ever needed to venture into places quite this terrifying until St. Louis. Some of these places were ROUGH. I’m going to break a few highlights in that department out separately before we jump into the rest of the city at large…
THE MURAL MILE
Also known simply as “The Graffiti Wall,” the Mural Mile is actually even longer than a mile in length. When I rolled up, it took me a couple of minutes of driving at 30+ mph to get all the way past it so I could walk its full length. And then, once I parked, I realized that it kept going even further.
What is the Mural Mile? It’s a flood wall that stands between a rail yard and the Mississippi River that is covered in its entirety with paint. Since the 90s, an organization called Paint Louis (great name) has organized yearly festivals where hundreds of muralists from all over the country come to St. Louis and create new art on top of what is already here. I believe this festival typically runs over Labor Day weekend. And then, over the course of each year, all of these gorgeous murals get covered up with graffiti, which really shines a light on the difference between street art and graffiti. Of course, this is subjective to a certain extent… but when you see the shit that people have put on top of these murals, I can promise that it will feel a lot less subjective. So let me give a big “FUCK YOU” to all the posers that felt good about taking a sharpie to the Mona Lisa. Good job keeping St. Louis ugly. 👍
Some of the more heavily-covered murals in the gallery below can be found in their original, un-desecrated form in that Sailingstone article. One of the worst before & after comparisons is this one (credit to Sailingstone for the “before” picture.)
Anyway, these industrial areas of the St. Louis riverfront are honestly pretty scary. I’ll bet before these murals made this place into a B-list tourist attraction this was NOT a place you would have wanted to visit alone… or just ever. I was a bit sketched out leaving my car alone here to walk the length of this thing. Here’s are a few snapshots of the surroundings of the Mural Mile to set the scene for you…
Anyway, there’s a lot to see on this wall, but on the spectrum that exists between “graffiti” and “art,” the majority of this wall is closer to the former. BUT, there are some cool things hidden amongst the scribble. The gallery below contains some highlights:
Cotton Belt Freight Depot
A now let’s jump to the north side of the St. Louis riverfront to somewhere TRULY scary. This riverfront area has ACRES of abandoned factories and warehouses. A crack house here or there is one thing, but these things are crack APARTMENT COMPLEXES. One day I’m sure these will all be converted into trendy office space, but for now, it’s all just blight. The Mural Mile was sketchy but fine… but the Cotton Belt Freight Depot actually made me feel pretty uncomfortable. And I’d like to think that I’m a guy who has been to enough weird places that it takes a lot to make me feel uncomfortable. If you look this place up on Google, it actually has reviews. I remember one of them just said “People live here.” I had to laugh reading this. The tone rang through loud and clear.
Anyway, on the river-facing side of this 750-foot building, there is a MASSIVE mural titled “Migrate,” painted by Nita Turnage and Hap Phillips. It was painted in 2014 to greet commuters coming across the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge, which connects Missouri to Illinois just north of St. Louis.
The rest of St. Louis
ANYWAY, with those two spots out of the way, the rest of this gets a bit less scary. There were definitely some other areas where I found myself looking over my shoulder more often than I would have liked, but overall the rest of St. Louis was surprisingly difficult to categorize as “nice” or “rough.” It was patchy. One block feels trendy and urban, the next 2 blocks feel like the ghetto, and then things feel trendy again.
I’m no expert, but here’s my take. St. Louis is clearly in the early-ish stages of gentrifying, and gentrification is always a mixed bag. While I can recognize the good and the bad in it, I tend to be “team gentrification” just because I like it when cities are walkable and thriving, even though I know that not everybody can be a beneficiary of that. But in the case of St. Louis, I think there might be a path forward that doesn’t push people out of their homes. Because each of the specific signs of gentrification that I saw all appeared to be the work of individuals, not corporations. It all seemed to be local businesses, local homeowners, and/or local artists, all just trying to make their little slices of the city better. I’m sure that, at some point, some of these St. Louis neighborhoods will start to reach critical mass and suddenly “big money” will start to be interested in building apartment complexes… but how St. Louis responds to that is yet to be seen. Right now, this place has some real magic to it, and I hope it can stay the course and find a way to bring everybody along with it, wherever its going. It will be a slower path, but it will yield a really cool outcome.
Here are some of the other cool murals from all around St. Louis’s many neighborhoods…
Of course, before we wrap, I will make an attempt to identify as many of the artists responsible the art shown above as I can. Everybody that I have been able to identify is below, but if you know of somebody that I missed, please hit me up and let me know! I’d love to be able to give credit where credit is due.
ninjamin314 (@ninjamin314)
Nita Turnage (RIP)
PREACHER (@preacherart)
Jaí Love (@folkrootzj)
Boots (@poetrybyboots)
That’s it! Another street art installment in the books.
I really enjoyed St. Louis. I don’t know when or if I’ll be back, but I have really positive feelings toward it. I’ll be rooting for it moving forward, even if it’s from afar.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter was born & raised in Columbus, Ohio, and started this blog when he moved from Boston to Hanoi (Vietnam) in 2014. After years based in Nashville working on his band, The Great Palumbo, he now resides in London, UK.
