Friday, June 30, 2006

12th Street Relic Rising

In front of the new King Louis Square neighborhood on the city's near south side, construction crews are removing the pavement down the center of 12th Street, making way for what appears to be another of the city's new attractive landscaped medians.

With the old pavement being removed by a depth of about 9 inches, workers are exposing the old streetcar tracks that once served south city. Head south from downtown on 12th Street (Tucker) toward Soulard to catch a rare glimpse of a (temporarily) visible relic of old St. Louis.

5 comments:

Travis Reems said...

I was down there this morning on my way downtown. I wondered what was going on with just the centers of the road broken-up. Now, I wish I had stopped to look at the construction.

Anonymous said...

they must be copying off the suburban medians, ya think?

Travis Reems said...

Or the new ones along south Grand near Towergrove Park. Or the ones along south Broadway near Chippewa. Or the ones downtown.

Anonymous said...

Or the ones on Delmar near DeBaliviere...

Nice!

Joe said...

The old tracks are a fascinating sight. I wonder if they'll just be scrapped, or sold as relics? Today I noticed them being cut up by the work crew from Gershenson Construction.

I believe those tracks went out of service June 6, 1951, when the former #50 Southampton streetcar route was eliminated/converted to buses.

Those tracks on S. 12th were also used by the old #73 Bellefontaine car, converted to two separate bus lines (#73 Carondelet and #74 Florissant) on July 12, 1947.

(The current route of the #80 Shaw-Southampton bus on Mississippi and Park Aves. was once part of the #80 Park Avenue streetcar route.)