BEVO MILL (5)
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LOCATION
Located at the heart of South St. Louis, Bevo is bounded by Chippewa to the north, Missouri Pacific Railroad to the east, Bates and Leona to the southeast, Holly Hills Boulevard to the south, and Christy and South Kingshighway to the west.

HISTORY
Originally an Indian trail to a salt spring, Gravois was the public road to Fenton and its ferry. By 1914, the state-maintained portion outside the city became the first concrete highway. This thoroughfare remains the Southside's widest arterial but is less traveled since the construction of Interstates 55 and 44.

The area remained rural in character, with the largest owner being the Christys, until the discovery of clay deposits in the 1830s. The Christy mansion is today a nursing home at Alfred and Taft.

Along with the opening of clay furnaces and product plants came the alignment of the Oak Hill rail line, connecting Missouri Pacific's mainline in Mill Creek Valley with its Iron Mountain Railroad along the Mississippi in Old Carondelet. German immigrants who worked the mines settled in Bevo and started businesses at the crossroads along Gravois and Morganford, the street connecting running between subdivisions on its east and mines on its west.

The Busch family saw this crossroads as the halfway point between their Soulard brewery and Grant's Farm estate, when a track out on Gravois was quite the journey. As a result, the Busch family built Bevo Mill for their own pleasure and as a tourist attraction. Today, this mill continues to be the focal point and symbolic pride of the neighborhood, with its connections to the area's German heritage.

CHARACTERISTICS
While most neighborhoods have major arteries at their edges, Bevo has two that intersect at its very center-Gravois and Morganford. The neighborhood's sidewalk storefronts are located about this focal interchange, going all along Gravois and Morganford north of Gravois. Large retail-box stores are concentrated along South Kingshighway, and light-industrial businesses are at the eastern edges of the neighborhood along the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

No major parks are within Bevo, though Christy Park borders the southeast edge of the neighborhood. Built as part of a parkway system, Christy Park is a linear park running from South Kingshighway to Holly Hills. Two cemeteries are also located on the south side of the neighborhood but obviously do not provide recreational space. Fortunately, Carondelet Park is nearby.

Bevo features a diverse housing stock of styles and sizes. Single-family homes include simple shotbacks, brick and frame bungalows, Dutch-colonial, and large two-story brick homes. There are a number of two and four-family flats throughout the neighborhood, but Bevo remains predominantly single-family residential.

Though mostly comprising single-family homes, Bevo's housing is very modest. The area has continually been a working class neighborhood. Given this history and reflective housing stock, the area depends greatly upon continued family traditions, social institutions, and owner-occupancy by modest yet extremely proud families to maintain the neighborhood.

INSTITUTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Like many Southside neighborhoods, Bevo's most crucial assets are its businesses and parochial schools. After open enrollment occurred at its neighborhood schools, Bevo turned to its K-12 parochial school system through St. John the Baptist parish.

Despite modest housing and past business decline, Bosnian immigrants have been a stabilizing force in the neighborhood, serving as good landlords and new business owners. New or old, all of Bevo's residents take pride in their owner-occupied homes, and neighborhood pride shows in the annual Bevo Day put on by Bevo 2001, which operates a community center and senior programs.

The various subdivisions of Bevo, Chippewa Park, Newport Heights, and others, each have their own homeowner's association, working hard to each maintain their residential properties.

PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT
The future of Bevo will depend on younger families buying homes in the area. Many of the homes have ample room for a family, yet some-especially the shotbacks concentrated on the eastern side of Bevo-have little market appeal and are too small for the modern family. Starter home sales are lingering since many are beginning to doubt that equity can acquire value through Bevo's smaller properties. Thus, unmarketable homes are rented or sold to lower-income families, who really need a newer, larger house to maintain and raise their kids.

The worst blocks are Schiller and adjacent Eichelberger. With their narrow, endless streets, these longest blocks in the City of St. Louis are jammed with numerous three-room shotbacks and structurally deteriorating frame tenements. A housing corporation and gap-financing are needed to tear down the worst lots and offer them to adjacent maintained properties for expansion or consolidate properties into new homes for moderate-income families.

In addition to dense, outdated housing stock, Bevo lacks any recreational park space. Christy Park is on the area's edge and serves more as a linear parkway despite its limited playground and ball fields. A park is needed on each side of Gravois in the neighborhood. Prime locations would be near existing community and educational facilities, such as Bevo 2001 Center and Woener or St. John's schools.

Finally, the heart of Bevo is its commercial businesses along Gravois and Morganford. Most need façade improvements, and those about the mill have already started as a priority. Parking is needed in pockets between businesses, but the streetscape needs to stay intact. Banners have helped to link the businesses' appearance to passersby, but further streetscape improvements would enhance the area's solidarity.