This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: Sami Bentil and Annetta Bentil-Vickers live on Enright in the West End neighborhood, in the former laundry facilities of ConnectCare. A large complex, the building also serves as headquarters for her office supply company and his art studio.
Sami Bentil was a budding artist when he moved from Ghana to the United States in the early ’70s. His pointillist work has been shown in Europe, the U.S. and Ghana, including a piece commissioned by the Ghanaian government for its 50th jubilee. “My American experience has been heightened by the fact that in my early years I devoted my time to [elementary] teaching,” Bentil said.
Today, both of the Bentils create art -- Annetta was inspired by Sami to take up painting -- and display it throughout the building, but especially in a large “jazz lounge” that can accommodate dozens of guests.
“There's always music and some good food, and I'm sitting in the corner painting or working some glass, and someone says, "It seems so easy, can I do it?" And I say yes, it's really easy, you just have to be calm, so I give them a [ceramic] plate,” Bentil said.
The Loop, as seen in brochures, is nearly a mile away. But the walkable, diverse mesh that is fertile ground for the arts, extends well into the surrounding areas. With a bit of glue -- be it a combination of Bentil’s art, Bill Christman’s park, a grocery store, or growing collaborations between the Skinker-Debaliviere Community Council and neighborhood groups in the West End.
Loop led the way
The linchpin for growth in surrounding areas is the “Delmar Loop.” This is a mile-long stretch of Delmar Blvd. that runs from the University City Lions Gates to a point in the city somewhere east of Skinker Boulevard -- that varies based on who you ask.
The Loop’s story starts at the turn of the 20th century, when streetcars brought city residents west to shop in the newest developments in the area. But the crowds kept going west at least until the 1970s. That’s when Joe Edwards helped start up what has become a strip of eateries, owner-operated boutiques and a vibrant street life.
Edwards, president of the East and West Loop Special Business Districts, opened his Blueberry Hill restaurant at 6504 Delmar Boulevard in 1972. He has continued to open venues on the street, moving eastward in the belief that the Loop’s growth will extend along a planned streetcar line well into the future.
“It makes perfect sense, all the infrastructure's there. In 10, 20 years, I think the inner cities are going to be the best places to be in this country,” Edwards said.
The mesh of walkability, economic diversity and artists that research says are conducive to grassroot arts stretch down Delmar and into neighborhoods to the north and south.
Exporting arts
While Ashley Tate’s Ashleyliane Dance Company practices in a studio in the nearby Central West End, Tate considers the Loop their home, as the company performed its earliest routines in the Loop.
Tate founded the company in 2007, after she graduated from college and “noticed there weren't a lot of outlets for adult dancers who were still in the intermediate-advanced level,” She said.
Today, ADC has seen more than 500 dancers go through its program, and Tate runs both a junior and senior company and performs primarily hip-hop dance throughout the St. Louis area, often for free.
One of the company’s first performances was at the Loop in Motion, a visual and performance art festival, in 2007. Dancers took over space on Leland Avenue, just west of Vintage Vinyl, the record store turned cultural institution. The large audiences of the Loop only boosted ADC.
That same vibrancy, and the readily available audiences, attracted Taylor Gruenloh and his Tesseract Theatre Company to the Loop. Gruenloh said that renting space in the Regional Arts Commission building at 6128 Delmar Blvd., had increased the company’s visibility and even attracted wandering pedestrians into shows.
“We've actually been able to get some people to come in and fill some of the seats because of the hustle and bustle,” Gruenloh said.
A block east of the RAC’s building, foot traffic dies down and the density of restaurants and shops lessens. Nestled to the south, hidden from view in the core of the Loop by the non-stop string of buildings, Skinker-Debaliviere reveals itself.
Skinker-DeBaliviere's diversity
Bounded by Delmar to the north and Lindell Boulevard to the south, Skinker-DeBaliviere is home to a diverse population of long-time residents and students, young families and retired couples.
“Some people have been here forever, and some people cycle through,” said Associate Director Jessica Eiland.
Of the 4,077 residents counted in the 2010 census, roughly 50 percent are white, 40 percent are black, and 10 percent are other races.
Three neighborhood churches and Washington University helped start the Skinker DeBaliviere Community Council in 1966. David Whiteman and Eiland staff the organization.
“We do a full series of community development activities. Some of those are educational things we do, some of those are opportunities for social interaction in the neighborhood. We did, last year, about 30 events, all around building community,” Whiteman said.
The council also serves as a reference point, a sort of crossroads of information and social networking. Whiteman pointed to spontaneous collaborations between the council and Lauren Wilmore, a dance instructor who lives in the neighborhood, which resulted in a neighborhood dance festival and Skinker DeBaliviere dance workshops at Flavor Dance studio, 5860 Delmar, where Wilmore is an instructor.
When a theater group from Crossroads College Prep, an independent secondary school at 500 DeBaliviere Ave., approached Patrick Loberto, the owner of Meshuggah Café in the Loop, about performing at the coffee shop as part of the Shakespeare Festival St. Louis’ traveling Shake 38 festival, the owner referred them to Whiteman and Eiland.
On May 22 last year, the group performed "Love’s Labour’s Lost" to an audience at the Greg Freeman Four Corners Park at the intersection of Kingsbury and Des Peres avenues.
“The best things are when people are spontaneous and we don’t have to plan things,” Whiteman said.
“There’s a sense that people are drawn to the neighborhood because they see it as being a creative quirky place to live, a place to do work and live and play,” Eiland said.
Bill Christman’s studio, which Whiteman described as a “strong cultural resource for the neighborhood,” is a door down from the council’s office and perhaps the most visible proof of this vital spontaneity.
Letting an artistic mind work
Bill Christman, a sign painter by trade, moved into the neighborhood in 1980. Today, Christman’s property is a complex of the arts, akin to the City Museum, if smaller in scale and different in style.
“I was friends with [late City Museum founder Bob] Cassilly for 35 years, and we sort of had a similar agenda, and this is sort of my little arena,” Christman said.
Over the years, Christman molded the space to his evolving needs. He purchased an adjacent building to the west, as well as the vacant lot next door.
What was a sign shop in his first building is now a gallery. Next door is the private music venue, Joe’s Cafe, a tribute to the bygone bohemian Gaslight Square.
And in the adjacent lot to the west, Christman has amassed a collection of sculptures that rivals the Laumeier Sculpture Park in vision if not in aesthetic.
The garden represents a history of the St. Louis area, as he’s salvaged paper mache sculptures from old Veiled Prophet parades, a hot dog truck and even a large structure from a now-defunct public produce market in the Central West End, which he rebuilt as a sign shop in his backyard.
Among his collection are his own works, such as the Fake Tough Guy, a large sculpture of a head that attendees can enter through the back. The whole garden is visible from the street, highlighted by a 15-foot tall pair of trousers on the sidewalk.
“There aren't too many neighborhoods where I could get away with what I'm doing here,” Christman said, wryly.
“This is an interesting neighborhood, and it's changed in the 33 years I've been here, but there is a tolerance. ... The neighborhood, if it became highly gentrified, and people spent half a million or a million dollars on a place, they might turn their nose up on an enterprise such as this and think it was a little too funky, or maybe vulgar.”
Building bridges
Whiteman and Eiland are quick to point out that their work, while in name defined by Skinker-DeBaliviere, extends beyond the confines of their neighborhood; specifically, north to the West End, a large neighborhood that roughly stretches from Skinker Boulevard to the west, Page Avenue to the north and Union Boulevard to the east, with Delmar as a shared border of the two neighborhoods.
Whiteman said that Delmar, a street synonymous with racial and economic divisions, is the meeting grounds of two neighborhoods. Instead of being a de facto dividing line, it has the potential to be a bridging point.
Both areas have a history of neighborhood associations founded in the 1950s and ’60s by black and white neighbors in an era of white flight and segregation in real estate practices. They have found common ground in interests along Delmar, as residents from both communities are active in the commercial committee dedicated to business development along their shared stretch of Delmar.
Whiteman pointed to a shared desire for neighborhood businesses such as a nearby grocery store or “convenience stores that are convenient to both of us.”
"Not that I want to see Delmar become a strip, nightclub area, but I do want to see good restaurants ... things that are of service to our neighbors," said Cynthia Watson, a resident of the West End and the facilitator of the West End Neighbors group for the past three years. Watson has been attending Delmar Commercial District meetings, run by the Skinker-DeBaliviere Community Council, for the past two years.
"I think it was the best move we could have ever made. It's a good thing of Delmar, and they need people on the north side of the street, and we are engaged. And together, we can do good things for Delmar, for the whole area."
Eiland noted that the recent rehabilitation of the Ruth Porter Mall by Great Rivers Greenway, where DeBaliviere ends at Delmar, is a promising point of overlap between the two neighborhoods.
“We have engaged the West End Neighbors group in the whole process to help us envision what Delmar can be like as a place where we all come together,” Whiteman said.
Rebuilding blocks
The St. Louis Beacon has been following the Kresge Arts Community Grant for several months, reporting independently. Four areas in St. Louis City and County were selected by the grant's steering committee: Old North St. Louis, Midtown, The Garden District and The Delmar Loop. These do not necessarily conform to the city's neighborhood map; indeed, the Garden and Loop areas are significantly larger.
The Kresge committee, with DiCentral Client Solutions consultant Kris Lewis, has set up focus groups consisting of neighborhood leaders, long-time residents, artists and interested parties to define needs, desires and general boundaries of each area. With input from these groups, the local group will apply for a Kresge grant to support specific arts and health and human services programming.
This article is part of a four-part series profiling each neighborhood. See: Kresge articles, including Old North: A web of artists, rehabbers and general characters; Midtown: Beneath the glimmering lights, grassroots take hold; Artists at work in neighborhoods around the Loop; St. Louis experiment hopes to use 'embedded arts' to build neighborhoods. Open mics were held in Old North, Midtown, the Loop and Garden District.
The Beacon's reporting is supported by the Kresge grant.