Dutchtown- South St. Louis’ Historic German Community now one of its most Diverse Neighborhoods

Dutchtown gets its name as it was the  southern center of German-American settlement in St. Louis with rapid development beginning here in the 1870s with the development of the Commons. Dutchtown continued to fill in all the way until about WWII. Post War Dutchtown, like most older inner city St. Louis neighborhoods, began to loose population. It wasn’t until the 90s that African American families began to fill the void and resettle in the neighborhood as Black families from north of Chippewa were displaced by gentrification. By the 2000s significant numbers of Latinos and Asians relocated to Dutchtown and helped slow down the neighborhood’s population loss and helped the neighborhood keep more of its structures intact than other St. Louis’ communities. Dutchtown saw a drop of only 18K-15K from 1990 to 2020. But the influx of new residents has been mainly working class families and Dutchtown still struggles with high commercial vacancies and some residential vacancies, which an influx of higher income families would certainly help stabilize.

Dutchtown is also home to several long standing dessert joints well known in St. Louis (i.e.  Ted Drewes frozen custard stand,  Merb’s Candies, and Dad’s Cookies). Downtown Dutchtown is located along Meramec Street between South Grand Boulevard and Compton Avenue. Some commercial activity extend northward along Grand Boulevard and along Chippewa but there are a lot of autocentric spots along these blocks. Dutchtown is still an incredible affordable place to rent or buy. One can purchase a nice home here for 200K and rent a nice 2-bed apt for around 1 K. What the district needs is an influx of more households with income to help fill out many of the vacant retail spaces along with quality urban in-fill along Grand Avenue (north of Meramec) and Chippewa St. Hopefully this can be done with an anti-displacement model of encouraging homeownership for existing residents and allow more density in the community for newcomers to arrive.

Click here to view my Dutchtown neighborhood on Flickr

URBAN STRENGTHS:

* Solid density at just under 11K residents per square mile.
* While most of the housing is working class housing, a very interesting mix of typology spanning from the 1880s-1930s from late 19th century Italianate styles, early 20th century 1-story shotguns in a unique brick St. Louis Style, larger vict A frame homes from the 1910s but in brick, many different types of apt bldgs,  1920s-1930s bungalows and tudors from the , and even some 1940s brick range homes.
* Sidewalk infrastructure is fine but ADA curb cuts only include about 40% of all intersections.
* Solid public transit access.
* Solid park amenities starting with Marquette Park which includes an outdoor pool, playground, and recreation center. Several other small-medium parks concentrated in the northern half of the district.
* Excellent diversity  indicators esp. racial and economic. The district is about 45% Black but large White, Hispanic, and Asian populations.
* Decent schools including a couple public elementary schools with a 5 rating and several smaller private schools and a large Catholic HS.
* Decent retail amenities including an Asian grocery store, a dollar store, a couple drug stores, several clothing & consignment stores, a couple home good stores, several dessert joins, a couple banks, a book store, a public rec center, a local post office, and a couple churches.

URBAN WEAKNESSES:

* Limited bike lanes within Dutchtown but there are two lengthy bike lanes on the western and eastern edges of the neighborhood that connect all the way to dwtn.
* Lots of rentals and very affordable. Some studios that lease btwn $500-$800, 1-beds lease btwn $600 to the low 1Ks, 2-beds btwn $800 to the low 1Ks, and 3-beds in the 1Ks.
* While its block by block crime is pretty high in Dutchtown still, especially for south St. Louis.  Some abandonment and grid, especially in the commercial areas, but limited abandonment with residential structures.
* Modern in-fill is pretty much non-existent other than autocentric crab concentrated along the northern extent of Grand Blvd.
* Good urban form and streetscaping is concentrated along a couple blocks of Meramec a couple blocks east of Grand Blvd. Grand Ave is hit or miss but becomes very autocentric and blighted near Chippewa. Chippewa is very hit or miss.
* Cultural amenities are not inspiring but a decent number of restaurants (several ethnic ones), some bars but very divy, and a handful of cafes. Not much else.
* For-sale options are affordable but limited diversity. 1-beds are very limited. 2-beds sell btwn 75K-175K, 3 & 4 beds btwn 100K-225K.