A WALK from the history museum on the edge of St Louis’s verdant Forest Park, past grand faux-Tudor mansions on Lindell Boulevard, leads to the wealthy white neighbourhood of Central West End. Turn left on Euclid Avenue and you pass the Drunken Fish sushi restaurant, Golden Grocer Natural Foods, trendy espresso bars and Left Bank Books, displaying titles thoughtfully chosen by bibliophile shop assistants. Then these businesses suddenly stop, a block or so away from Delmar Boulevard. This is the city’s unofficial demarcation line.
The area directly to the north of Delmar Boulevard is 99% black, according to Washington University and the University of St Louis. Boarded-up and crumbling houses, dollar shops and fried-chicken outlets dominate the picture. The median home value north of Delmar is a quarter of the value of houses south of Delmar. Only 5% of residents who are 25 or older north of Delmar have a bachelor’s degree, compared with 67% south of it.
Situated on the banks of the majestic Mississippi on the boundary of Illinois and Missouri, St Louis is a border city still shaped by the racial attitudes of the old South and the property arrangements of...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2ptzAb0
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