JEFF-VANDER-LOU (59)
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LOCATION
The Jeff-Vander-Lou (JVL) neighborhood is situated between North Vandeventer Avenue on the northwest, Natural Bridge avenue on the northeast, North Jefferson Avenue on the East, Delmar Boulevard on the south, and North Compton Avenue and Martin Luther King Drive on the Southwest.

HISTORY
Historically, the majority of the JVL neighborhood is part of an area referred to as the Yeatman area. The area is named for a prominent Tennessee native who relocated to St. Louis in 1842. James E. Yeatman was among the founders of the Mercantile Library Association, a previous president of the Merchants bank, and director of the Western Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. He was well-known among St. Louisans as a philanthropist and civic leader. He resided on East Grand Avenue near Bellefontaine Road.

Since its inception, the area has had a mixture of residential, commercial, and recreational uses completing its character. Past commercial giants that operated facilities in the neighborhood include the Coca-Cola Company, Brown Shoe, and the American Wine Company. Many of the industries once located in the neighborhood are gone today, leaving behind empty shells or vacant sites of demolished buildings. With a majority of its housing of multifamily flat construction having been built in the early part of the 20th century, most of what remains has a serious deterioration problem.

During the days when the JVL neighborhood was on the edge of urban St. Louis, as opposed to being in the thick of it today, it was home to one of the city’s elite private streets, Vandeventer Place. After years of loss due to disinvestment and neglect, the homes on Vandeventer Place were sacrificed and replaced with public institutions. On the eastern edge is the VA Medical Center/John Cochran Division, built in 1947. The city acquired the western portion in 1947 as the site for a children’s detention home. It is also home to one of the area’s most notable historical landmarks of the past: Old Sportsman Park, former home of the St. Louis Browns and the St. Louis Cardinals (currently the site of Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club).

CHARACTERISTICS
With Grand Avenue serving as its central corridor, any resident or visitor has easy access to highways 70 and 40. Just north of the neighborhood boundary is Fairground Park, and within the neighborhood are several parks: Jordan W. Chambers Park (or just Chambers Park), Yeatman Square, and Garrison-Branter-Webster Park (next to Dunbar elementary).

The lack of adequate housing in Jeff-Vander-Lou is a critical issue in the neighborhood’s health. Jeff-Vander-Lou has suffered more demolition than any other neighborhood in St. Louis. The real sign of the stress in the neighborhood housing, though, is that despite all the demolition, the neighborhood still ranks second in the city for the number of vacant buildings and third for those that are condemned. A concentration of intact homes are located roughly in the northern and northwestern section of JVL. The northern section located north of St. Louis Avenue, west of Glascow Avenue, south of Natural Bridge Road, and east of Prairie Avenue is referred to as Lindell Park and constitutes the majority of owner-occupied homes in the neighborhood. Housing in the northwestern section, though having a large concentration of single-family homes, is not as highly owner-occupied or well-maintained. The east-central cut of the neighborhood has a light industrial and commercial focus, with companies such as Warner Jenkinson Company Inc., Buxton & Skinner Printing Co., and the Sentinel newspaper. Another locus of industrial and commercial activity is located at the site of the old Carter Carburetor campus. Currently there are four businesses sharing the space.

Most likely intertwined with these housing concerns is the great social deficiency in JVL. The JVL neighborhood ranks third in St. Louis’s 79 neighborhoods in the number of Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) cases. Accordingly, by the 1990 statistics, 70 percent of JVL’s population is living in poverty.

INSTITUTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS
On a drive down North Grand, one is bound to notice the Herbert Hoover’s Boys and Girls Club and all the streetlight banners flagging the surrounding area that celebrate its history. As an anchor in the JVL neighborhood, Herbert Hoover provides vocational and career counseling and on-the-job training for youth members. It also provides youth ages 6-7 with physical education/athletics, tutoring, cultural exposure, counseling, music, special interest clubs, computer lab, and arts and crafts. In addition, it houses a branch of the St. Louis Symphony Community Music School, which offers music instruction for children and adults.

Educational institutions in the neighborhood include Beaumont High School, Vashon High School, Banneker and Dunbar Elementary School. The Central Visual and Performing Arts School offers alternative educational curricula to the area’s youth who are particularly interested in the arts.

JVL also has a multitude of community centers offering a variety of educational and recreational programs as well as a number of social services. The Gamble Community Center is owned and operated by the city. It offers recreational activities for residents of all ages. The George Washington Carver House similarly offers recreational activities as a part of its wide array of social services. Neighborhood residents who are in need can find help at the GWC House if they need food, clothing, or crisis financial and counseling assistance. They offer educational, cultural, and self-development activities for youth both after-school and during the summer. They also offer youth development programs and general as well as specialty counseling for neighborhood residents. Both the Columbia and the Carver Community Education Centers offer continuing education courses for youth and adults, such as literacy, job training, and art courses. School-beat and neighborhood stabilization officers are headquartered at community education centers and a variety of other social services are also offered. For seniors they also offer a variety of recreational and social programs, as well as meals during the summer on select days. Their many youth programs include Head Start, summer day camp, and an after-school rec program. For the family, they offer counseling and emergency food and utility assistance.

Major health institutions in the neighborhood include the VA Medical Center/John Cochran Division, St. Louis Department of Health, Missouri Division of Family Services, Ferrier Harris Residential Care, and Grace Hill Neighborhood Health Center. Major municipal facilities include the St. Louis Fire Department Fire Academy and Headquarters and a St. Louis Police Department Super Station.

The neighborhood is also home to approximately 54 religious institutions representing a wide spectrum of religions, including Catholic, Baptist, Mennonite, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostal, and nondenominational. Also very active in the community is Father Tolton Catholic Community Services, which provides emergency relief in the form of financial aid and clothing, employment services, home health care for pregnant women and newborns, and self-help groups.

Three neighborhood associations are organized to bring a voice to the needs of the neighborhood residents and businesses: United Neighbors of Lindell Park, Whole New Area, and North Grand Business and Merchants Association. The United Neighbors of Lindell Park exists to promote and create a viable, productive, and conducive living environment for its residents through continued neighborhood stabilization. The Whole New Area Association exists to further increase educational opportunities for residents of the area and to promote the improvement of quality of life for its residents. Representing area businesses, the North Grand Business and Merchants Association is a non-for-profit organization created to enhance the community’s image, beautification, and appearance.

PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT
The JVL Housing Corporation has been at work promoting better housing for low-income African-Americans since the late 1960s. The Arthur A. Blumeyer public housing project, a combination of high and low rise buildings, is in the process of revitalizing the housing with both a demolition and rehabilitation approach.

The Danforth Foundation is currently funding a comprehensive planning effort for the JVL area. Housing, economic development, social services, and education are among the main areas of focus in this planning. At the time this description is being written, McCormack Baron has been selected as the financial manager of the project, but it is still in the process of forming a team of consultants. Some initial surveying of current conditions has taken place and plans to include future community meetings have been established. McCormack Baron has also been in communication with the developers of the new Vashon High School that is being built. To replace the worn-out industrial type school structure, previously home to the Hadley Technical High School, ground was recently broken on a new school to be located at [to be inserted].

In December 1994, portions of the City of St. Louis and the City of Wellston were awarded $2.95 million as part of a HUD Urban Enterprise Community designation. The JVL neighborhood is one of the neighborhoods included in the Enterprise Community (EC). EC funding is being used to implement 14 action plans subdivided into four categories of need. These action plans are designed to improve the quality of life in the EC. They include career training and business development (job readiness training, micro-enterprise development, business education), human development (life skills, youth activities, leadership development) and community development (crime deterrence, beautification, public access to computers, and strategic planning). The goal of this project is to catalyze sustainable economic and community development in the Enterprise Community through the development of community based partnerships. Specifically in JVL, the following projects have been targeted:

• Expansion of Herbert Hoover Boys Club, including the services it provides.
• Implementation of plans for the Grand/Natural Bridge Retail Center.
• Continued expansion of services provided by the Columbia Community School.
• Renovation of the Arthur J. Kennedy Skills Center and development of neighborhood-based retail and service activities in the blocks surrounding the Center.
• Development of a public services area along Jefferson Avenue in an area between the St. Louis Fire Department Fire Academy and Police Super Station.
• Proposed residential rehabilitation and new in-fill housing projects in four separate locations in the neighborhood.

Progress has been made on some of the above projects. For example, a new Aldi grocery store is currently being built at the corner of Grand and Natural Bridge Road. Pyramid Construction is continuing to build new in-fill housing construction in the area after its successful development of new homes over the past few years.