Shaw
Tell us the story of how you chose your house. What makes your house your "home"?
I came to St. Louis to visit a friend who had moved into the area, and fell in love, not with a person-that came later) but with the architecture and history that surrounded me. I loved it so much that I decided to leave my hometown of Memphis TN and move here. I rented the downstairs unit of a two-family, with wonderful plasterwork, an oldfashioned telephone nook in the hallway, and lots of "issues" :-). The house next door to the two-family I rented was vacant, and looked like it would fall down in a strong wind. Everytime I walked outside that house called to me! It had such beautiful lines and I could tell that at one time it was a home to be proud of. After about a year and a half, I contacted the owner and talked him into selling it to me and my new husband (I married during the time I was living in the two-family). Everyone thought we were nuts for buying a house where the top floor had been abandoned for 40 years and buckets were placed every two or three feet to catch the water where the roof had collapsed, and the bottom floor had been used as rental property and badly maintained. But we did it, and we've never regretted it for a minute. It has taken several years and lots of hard work, but "this old money-pit" as we affectionately call it, is now becoming a home to be proud of once more. We still have a ways to go, but every day brings us a little closer.
What does your neighborhood mean to you? Why do you stay?
Shaw Neighborhood's proximity to downtown, Tower Grove Park, Forest Park, the Science Center, the Botanical Gardens, and so many other sites and places that are fun to visit, make it the ideal place for us. Combine that with the friendliness of the people here and the true feeling of "neighborliness" that exists on our street, and you have the perfect situation, all the conveniences of a city but with a small town attitude. An added attraction is that we both work in the county, and we can hop on I44 and be at work in 15 minutes with little or no traffic to deal with.
How do you describe the neighborhood to your family? your friends? Are the two descriptions different?
Not at all. I tell my friends and my family exactly the same thing. Its an urban area where there is lots of diversity and lots of interesting things to do, and we couldn't imagine being as happy anywhere else.
Tell us about the ideal snapshot of the neighborhood in 5 years. In 10 years.
In five to ten years I can't see the neighborhood changing to any large degree other than getting even better than it is now. There are still a few "rough" pockets here and there that will hopefully be gone in that time frame, but other than that I can see the neighborhood just continuing to be a place where people are accepted and welcomed without reservation.
