Hyde Park, St. Louis
Hyde Park is a neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. An historic North St. Louis neighborhood, Hyde Park is bound by Ferry to the North, I-70 to the East, Palm Street and Natural Bridge Avenue to the South, and Glasgow to the West.
The once-prosperous neighborhood suffered from the industrial disinvestment following World War II. Harland Bartholomew included Hyde Park among the neighborhoods destined for "slum clearance," and with the departure of General Motors, the North Side fell on its way to becoming a "ghost town." Racial conflicts were apparent. The mostly Caucasian leadership referred to the plans for Hyde Park and other neighborhoods in the urban core as "urban renewal," while the African-American leaders within the community referred to it as "Negro removal."[2]
According to one local resident, the well-intentioned efforts to create a mostly pedestrian zone on North 14th Street had the opposite of its intended effect. By removing access to cars, the neighborhood was cut off from all traffic. This hastened its decline.
