r/StLouis • u/binaryodyssey • 10h ago
Things to Do St. Louis neighborhood map (unofficial)
I've been working on building out a St. Louis neighborhood map that expands upon the 79 official neighborhoods. Official boundaries (of any city) don't always capture the whole picture of how people think about and interact with the city, so I've been documenting all I've discovered on this map, along with points of interest like book stores, game stores, markets, restaurants, etc.
A few examples of fuzzy neighborhood definitions:
- Dogtown is not an official neighborhood, but everyone refers to the combined area of Cheltenham, Clayton-Tamm, Franz Park, and Hi-Pointe as "Dogtown", so I made it one unit on the map.
- Downtown and Downtown West are officially two separate units, but generally from what I've noticed, if someone says they're going to Energizer Park, City Museum, or Union Station/the aquarium they say they're going Downtown, so I combined them into one "Downtown" unit on the map.
- Dutchtown is one neighborhood, but on the Dutchtown website they refer to Dutchtown, Mount Pleasant, Marine Villa, and Gravois Park all together as "Greater Dutchtown", so that's how I combined it on the map.
- Midtown is one neighborhood, but most of the arts district of that area is in the Covenant Blu-Grand Center neighborhood. People usually just say Midtown so I combined them. The Cortex is actually not part of Midtown (it's in Central West End) although I've often seen it referred to as being in Midtown, so I included the Cortex on the Midtown page.
- Carondelet and Patch are combined on my map, as I think both neighborhoods are closely linked.
- The Grove is only a stretch of Manchester, not a whole neighborhood, but I've noticed people are more likely to use The Grove to refer to the whole area as opposed to Forest Park Southeast.
- Delmar Loop likewise is a stretch of Delmar that goes across city lines from Skinker-DeBaliviere to University City, but often that whole general area is referred to as the Loop.
These were most of the ones I've noticed. The Hill and Southwest Garden also have some overlap, and St. Louis Hills/Southampton/Princeton Heights as well all three sharing the Hampton retail corridor.
As a note, I'm not trying to erase the identities of any of these individual neighborhoods, just making a colloquial map of the city and linking areas together that are culturally similar and trying to place points of interest together in related groupings. This map is opinionated, whereas the official map has fixed, defined, administrative boundaries, so there's bound to be some disagreements with what I came up with here.
Anyway, I've had fun learning about all the neighborhoods and exploring as much as I can, I'll be continuing to document spots I find, fix mistakes I've made, and take pictures and fill out the site more. Hope you find the project interesting or useful!
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u/SeveralHunt6564 9h ago
As someone who has lived in Marine Villa for 14 years and also lived in Old North for almost 4 before that I’m feeling a bit slighted by this map 😂
When I have a moment, I will revisit this post with some suggestions
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u/binaryodyssey 9h ago
I’m working on it! The whole Dutchtown area and nearby neighborhoods are showing a big gap in my knowledge right now. Hope to hear some suggestions.
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u/EmseeEsquire Carondelet 8h ago
You should for sure carve-out the patch from Carondelet - these are distinct official city neighborhoods with distinct neighborhood associations, cultures, and identities. Combining them because you "think both neighborhoods are closely linked" seems like an overstep.
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u/binaryodyssey 7h ago edited 5h ago
They are definitely two distinct official city neighborhoods, which I noted in my message and on the page for the neighborhood. However, is it that much of an overstep to say that colloquially people refer to the whole area as the Carondelet area? The Patch neighborhood Wikipedia page lists it as part of the Carondelet neighborhood twice.
The Patch neighborhood forms the southern tip of the Carondelet neighborhood…
This section of the Carondelet neighborhood is historic…St. Louis City Talk as well referred to it:
First of all I always thought this area was Carondelet. ... Everyone I talked to on the street and in the businesses I entered consider this place Carondelet. ... I waffled on whether this is Carondelet or not, historically it is, but since 1971 it has been carved out as its own neighborhood. So in the spirit of modern day accuracy, it is the Patch dammit.
Or St. Louis Patina:
An eclectic area of South City, the official City of St. Louis neighborhood name for this area is Patch. However, many people I talk to simply consider this Carondelet, if the very southern tip of it.
Based on this research I did, and knowing that Patch was historically part of Carondelet before it got annexed by St. Louis, and that many points of interest throughout the neighborhood still have Carondelet in the name, are all part of the reasoning of why I put them together on this map. Stacked refers to itself as Carondelet despite technically being in Patch. In the same way, I'm sure some people in Marine Villa don't consider themselves part of Dutchtown even though the Dutchtown Proud project does.
So, there is no intent to offend, overstep, or attempt to redefine the city or take away from the individual institutions in each neighborhood, I'm just trying to make a colloquial map that makes it easy to link neighborhoods and places of interest for locals and visitors. Maybe if I show the sub-boundaries of each neighborhood that will seem less offensive.
However, if the people of Patch feel strongly that they do not want to be lumped in with Carondelet, I'm happy to keep them separate.
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u/Lucky-Bee9117 4h ago
As a Gravois Park resident who previously lived in Dutchtown, I’d say it’s definitely a separate entity with its own neighborhood association, interests, and issues.
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u/CosmoBiologist 9h ago edited 9h ago
North city looking incredibly barren on this map. ☹️ There's so many cool things you're missing!
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u/binaryodyssey 9h ago edited 9h ago
Yeah 😞 it is an unfortunately stark contrast. I am not sure what to do as far as exploration into that area as someone who is not from the St. Louis area. The STL Vacancy Map also tells a story about a large vacancy rate. I have some spots in the far north such as Pirrone’s pizza or more north west such as Woofie’s.
I’m happy to hear suggestions! Most of what I put is just places I’ve heard about on the sub.
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u/Empty_Blackberry977 9h ago
As someone who loves maps, this is right up my alley. You did an incredible job. Curious if you grew up here, or are you a transplant to the city?
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u/binaryodyssey 9h ago
Awesome! Glad you like it. It’s been consuming all my free time for the past few months but has been a fun project!
I’m a transplant.
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u/Empty_Blackberry977 8h ago
This is opening up a can of worms but you are a transplant and like St. Louis style pizza? That’s very unusual.
Possible discussion topics:
- how transplants view the city vs locals?
- Recommendations for self guided walking tours in each neighborhood.
And I would prefer not to compare STL to Chicago. I think Chicago is too big to for that. I would rather see STL compared to/ contrasted with KC, Cincy, and Indy as to what we do well or what we can learn from those cities.
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u/binaryodyssey 8h ago edited 7h ago
It was an adjustment period, but I do like the pizza!
For the walking tours, I actually did write Most Walkable Streets in St. Louis which includes many maps so you might like it. It at least highlights the main retail strips but would need to expand more if someone wanted a home architecture tour or something, but I think it’s a good start for people looking for places to explore in STL.
I agree that Chicago and St. Louis is not a comparison that makes sense. Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, etc. would be better for apples-to-apples comparisons, although I’d have to rely entirely on aggregated data for those comparisons.
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u/soljouner 9h ago
I know this is a work in progress, but for downtown you are missing the Central Library, Soldiers Memorial, and surrounding park, Campbell House Museum, Stifel Theater, Old Courthouse, Basilica of St Louis, just to name a few.
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u/binaryodyssey 9h ago edited 4h ago
Agreed, Downtown is a bit neglected on the map because I feel like it’s one of the more well-known and documented areas and less “neighborhoody”, but I’ll definitely add those spots and build it out more.
edit: added those spots!
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u/Interactive_CD-ROM 9h ago
So what neighborhood is “South City”?
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u/binaryodyssey 9h ago
Everything red on the map is “South City”, yellow is “Central Corridor” and blue is “North City”. I think these are mostly colloquial, but I know the police department has north, south, and central divisions so maybe there are some official definitions for them.
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u/bradleysballs Shaw 10h ago
How did you determine which restaurants/bars to include on the map and which ones to not include?
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u/binaryodyssey 9h ago edited 9h ago
It’s a combination of places I’ve been, and places I’ve seen recommended, mostly on Reddit but also just from perusing Google Maps and reading reviews, or looking at “best of” lists.
So basically it’s just a curated list of places I want to try from lots of aggregating and exploring.
As far as what to not include, I left off fast food and chains (for the most part), spots that didn’t feel notable, or that I’ve tried that were not very memorable. A lot of standard bar-and-grill places don’t really interest me if the food is a standard deep fried menu with burgers and they’re not trying something different, so I tend to skip them.
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u/Fearless-Weird-4307 6h ago
Growing up in StL before 1970 I never heard of most of these and couldn't tell you where they are. There was Dutchtown and the Hill but then it was mostly landmarks like Bevo or a park or church.
People here complain about all the towns in the county but the city looks just as divided with this.
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u/HoosierLove314 Bevo Life 6h ago
St Louis has always been a “City of Neighborhoods”, most people who grew up here post white-flight didn’t know about them because they were either told that the whole city was a war zone, or they were told that South was good but the entirety of north was a war zone.
All of our neighborhoods have a distinctive culture and look of their own, and there are great neighborhoods in north and south parts of the City. Get out and explore them, I bet you’ll really enjoy what each has to offer.
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u/Fearless-Weird-4307 4h ago
I don't live in the city anymore but I go through often and it's all the same to me. I go by Tower Grove Park where a girlfriend lived and the carpenter branch library on Grand but don't ask me what neighborhood they call that now. I lived by Grand and Chippewa. What's that? But everyone knows where those are and not by some neighborhood name
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u/well__enough 9h ago
Just submitted a bunch of suggestions for my neighborhood!