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Tag: history

Ashley Street Power House, St. Louis

Ashley Street Power House, St. Louis

Growing up in the Rust Belt, I bristle at the ease with which people dismiss formerly-important neighborhoods. St. Louis’s Near North Riverfront is no exception. On a road trip to STL with my son last summer, Several well-meaning online commenters recommended avoiding the Near North Riverfront, where I had wanted to photograph a few surviving advertising remnants from St. Louis’s beverage industry past. Locals warned me not to leave my car in that area, under any circumstance. They described the environment as a predator’s haven; random violence, theft, or car-stripping awaited anyone reckless enough to leave their car in that area.

In the Rust Belt, areas like the Near North Riverfront are either “functional-and-ignored” or “forbidden” – in both perception and policy.

I’m disappointed in myself for listening to them. My entire Near North Riverfront experience was limited to a view from the Mississippi River. This photograph is the view of the back of the Ashley Street Power House, a landmark in St. Louis. Built in 1902, the front of the Ashley Street Power House is a worn beauty – a massive, turn-of-the-century Beaux-arts neoclassic. Union Electric Co. built three similar plants in Near North Riverside at the turn of the century. All three offloaded coal from river barges and boiled steam to heat the hundreds of buildings in downtown St. Louis. Only the Ashley Street Power House remains operational. At one time, the plant housed 34 working boilers; the coal dust and the functional brutalism of its backside remind us that this place was basically a caged inferno for decades.

Policies created to drive traffic to the nearby casino have kept people off the streets (many still paved with the original stone block) of Near North Riverside. But these are the lost opportunities I find most interesting. History can be viewed as a series of victories (“history is written by the winners”) or as a series of masteries. The former is a binary distinction that rewards one party over another, based on the “winner’s” adherence to their preferred ethics, mores, or goals. The latter measures importance in velocity; it is interested in motion (both progress and regress) and change… and the inspirations behind those changes.

The Ashley Street Power House is a testament to a “mastery”-based history. It heated and powered hundreds of city blocks at a time when St. Louis was packed with westward migrants and an economy designed to support them. In 1902, St. Louis was still in the process of supplying electricity to its buildings, and yet people managed to safely harness massive, Vulcan fireblasts and use them to make an entire city more liveable.

To ignore these accomplishments (or worse, reveling in them like some kind of “decay porn”) is like sleeping through your own birthday party. Policies and prejudices may keep you away, but the Ashley Street Power House is a titan in our midst. It’s a historical landmark, so the building won’t go anywhere, but we can witness its meaning and importance decay faster than a neglected facade.

January 16, 2022 No comment(s) Travel
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Outside the Octagon

@addetrick 2019

The history of octagon houses have a confusing history. Originating in the 1850’s, the North American versions were either designed as an homage to the pseudoscience of phrenology, or they were an unique approach to load-bearing walls. Others claim they were homes designed for the unitarian pious (all walls and rooms are of equal size and equidistant from each other), or for security from the rancor of the Civil War (frequent windows and vista porches made it easy to scout for approaching marauders).

Whatever the reason, the Gregg-Crites Octagon House in Circleville, Ohio was built in 1855 and sat on the main road between Columbus and Chillicothe, the original capitol city of Ohio. The original farm was sold in the early 2000s to Wal-Mart, and the house was slated for demolition to make way for a Wal-Mart Super Center. (Or, what we call “progress”.)

Fortunately, the Circleville residents were able to form a commission that moved the entire house to a safe location a few miles from its original home. They hope to renovate the house and turn it into a museum someday.

October 25, 2019 No comment(s) Art, Travel
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Fear and Loathing in Kentucky

@addetrick 2019

Kentucky is a mystery to me. It’s a place of total unpredictability. It was the first state west of the Appalachians. It was difficult to get to, and it’s rocky soil made agriculture difficult. It has a hardscrabble history atop some of the richest natural resources in the country. Possibly more than any other state, Kentucky has a lineage of tough-as-nails motherfuckers making due with very little.

It’s a state of fierce independents who make their living doing deadly work for low pay in industries that openly exploit them. It’s the third-most Federally-dependent state, but regularly and overwhelmingly votes candidates into office who support cutting Federal benefits.

Contradiction is Kentucky’s nature, and that tension of opposites creates both hopeless poverty in some, and a creative and indomitable will in others. It’s unsurprising that it has a legendary musical history. And less surprising that it was the birthplace of two of America’s most polarizing and intriguing figures: Muhammad Ali and Hunter S. Thompson.

I think I’ve read everything Thompson ever published. And like many Thompson fans, I wandered the murky, Blakean artist’s path between madness and wisdom. But Thompson was like an elite athlete of both. And like all elite athletes, he understood the nature – and the benefits – of sacrifice. His massive appetite for knowledge, experience, and intoxication led to insights into the human experience that few have been able to communicate. His was a life of madness and wisdom, of irresponsibility and wisdom, a walking contradiction. Like a true son of Kentucky.

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

This mural is on the side of a vegan restaurant in the Germantown neighborhood of Louisville.

October 17, 2019 No comment(s) Art, Travel
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