I wrote my first piece on Delmar Avenue for what was then THE PAPER in the spring of 1981 (Vol. 12, #2). I concentrated on the area in the main part of town. This time I want to look at what used to be near Skinker and see if some lessons can’t be learned there.
I received a yellow form requesting thoughts about the current Delmar Avenue expanse in our neighborhood like everyone else. I turned it over and read it several times. I find it hard to look at a current situation without realizing where it came from. The yellow form offered no opportunity to learn from the past. It only offered the chance to comment on the present. Well, I guess the past comes out no matter what we do, so let me rehearse some of it and see what emerges.
When Trusten Polk and John Hogan named the road which divided their properties west of Grand Avenue in 1855, they had no idea of extending the name they gave it beyond Kingshighway. Since Polk was from Delaware and Hogan from Maryland, the name “Delmar” came to these two friends and neighbors easily. The City of St. Louis had just expanded its boundaries to Grand Avenue. Morgan Street was the way into town they were used to using although Olive Street Road ran just to the south of Hogan’s property. Just to the north of Polk’s property ran the Road to St. Charles—historically the most significant road and street in St. Louis, now called Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard, and still called St. Charles Rock Road in the County.
The Bonhomme property is noted in the early St. Louis archives. Numerous transactions were made in that land by those who lived in St. Louis prior to the Louisiana Purchase. It was along the Missouri across from and south of St. Charles. The Bonhomme Road went out to that property from St. Louis. There were quarries, farmlands, and vinelands out there before 1800. The early Americans renamed almost all of the major roads. Bonhomme Road was renamed to Olive Street Road. It was the Road to Olive Street in St. Louis.
Olive Street Road now ends (or begins) at Skinker Boulevard north of Delmar. The coming of the railroad and the end of the World’s Fair of 1904 caused that. Originally Olive Street Road went west to the Missouri on the high ground north around the wetlands at the River Des Peres. After the River Des Peres was encased beginning in 1896 and the wetlands filled in by the debris from the World’s Fair, only the railroad was left at the historic level of the land north of Forest Park.
Delmar, as laid out by Hogan and Polk, went as far west as Walton Avenue—three blocks east of Kingshighway. At that location a jog in the road took the traveler to Olive Street Road to continue west to the River Des Peres where the Road turned slightly northwest, crossed the river, and then turned west again. What is now Delmar from about Hamilton west was only put in after the World’s Fair to hook up with the development begun in University City just prior to the Fair. There are some great old photos showing the mud on Skinker Road (the road to John Keith Skinker’s farmhouse, Ellendale) when it ended at what is now called Delmar. It did not even go through to Olive Street Road which was a plank road paved at the time except via a turn toward the old River Des Peres channel on the north side of the swamp filled in after the Fair.
This means the area of Delmar from the Wabash Station west was originally Bonhomme Road which became Olive Street Road. From this comes the suggestion made at the Skinker-DeBaliviere Council in 1984 that Delmar should again hook up with Olive Street Road. The stretch of Delmar west of Hamilton should be looked upon historically as a pedestrian area with local traffic only, all through traffic historically going to Olive Street Road.
The suggestion to return Delmar to its original location was made nearly 10 years ago. With the current look at the businesses on Delmar, it is clear they come from a slower and a more pedestrian mode. Rather than undoing this, it may perhaps be time to learn from the past.
