Rick Rosen
Address: 30 Plaza Square, #304, St. Louis 63103
Phone Number: (314) 436-9155
E-mail Address: RARstl2@aol.com
Present Occupation: Urban Planner
University City, Missouri, was founded by a charismatic and visionary genius at the beginning of the 20th century. Progressive from its inception, this St. Louis suburb was always a magnet for the region’s creative people and liberal thinkers. Fifty years after its birth, “U City” was to leave a deep impression on me and the kids with whom I grew up. Our parents were activists, deeply engaged in the community, nation and world. Concerned about racial prejudice, poverty and social injustice, we reflected their idealism, and as teenagers, we thrived on the intense intellectual life that animated this remarkable place. Naturally, we did what activist students did in the 1960s. We tutored children at Trinity Church in the Central West End. And we attended a weekend seminar at Grace Hill Settlement House just north of downtown St. Louis, to learn about poverty in one of the city’s oldest and most rundown neighborhoods.
Urban Education
Originally laid out by middle class town builders in the early 19th century, this near north side neighborhood became home for generations of immigrants. When we arrived, poor white families from Missouri’s “boot heel” filled the houses, which had been divided and subdivided over the years to accommodate the succession of ethnic groups.
We spent the last day of the weekend with one of those families in their apartment at 1124 Madison Street. As we were to learn, the Morrisons—Paula, Brenda, Bobby, Debbie, Richie, Peggy, Baby John and their mom, Sylvia—were very warm, alive people, despite their burdensome poverty. But just a few weeks earlier the father had abandoned the family, and the kids were emotionally hungry when we came along. They fell in love with us—and we with them. The weekend, which had started out for us as a teenage bonding and learning experience, became something altogether different, something fundamental, shaped by deeper human needs that transcended everything else.
Our close friendship with the Morrisons lasted all through high school and beyond, and we came to know their neighborhood well. What a contrast between suburban U. City and the very urban form of the near north side. Row houses, corner stores, factories, churches—everything built right up to the sidewalks and right next to everything else—lined the streets of the 19th century community. Layers of history and generations of human experience were manifest in everything we saw, smelled and touched. The very urban density of things, in contrast with University City’s suburban spaciousness, was a revelation to me. Intuitively, I understood that the near north side’s history and importance were far deeper than its visible poverty. Moreover, although its urbanity was something completely new to me, it struck a harmonic chord at every level. In “discovering” this ancient neighborhood, and through that discovery, in forging a lifelong bond with the Morrisons, I learned that I was made for city life.
College in Philadelphia
Then in 1966 I went away to Philadelphia to go to college. Classes with outstanding professors provided a lifelong framework for learning about cities, culture and the human condition. All night conversations with new friends anchored this framework in personal experience. Just as important, I had the opportunity to explore, first hand, Philadelphia’s vibrant downtown. I became familiar with its nearby, elite 18th century Society Hill neighborhood, which had been restored in the 1950s, as well as its adjacent 19th century counterpart, Rittenhouse Square, which had maintained elite status throughout its history.
Back home, my family sold our house and left the St. Louis area, eventually ending up in Southern California. Still, I remained attached to the region, and I stayed in touch with its development through a subscription to the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Along the way, I came to know the big cities of the east coast, and to compare them with St. Louis. I learned that the vibrance of the eastern downtowns was related to the vitality of their surrounding dense, row house neighborhoods. And I began to wonder why those neighborhoods had been restored and cherished, rather than neglected and forgotten like their counterparts in St. Louis. A 1967 article in the Post Dispatch (enclosed) framed the question clearly. With regard to St. Louis’s derelict near north side, the article asked “what are you waiting for?”
What are you waiting for? The question has remained on my mind ever since. It firmly established St. Louis as my point of departure and laboratory for understanding American cities. And it has guided my professional development in architecture and urban planning ever since. I would acquire the knowledge and skills to help address the problems of the American inner city—in order to make its neighborhoods once more a vital part of American urban life, and by so doing, to revitalize the American downtown.
Gay Rights
I graduated from college in 1970, a year after the gay “Stonewall Riots.” I came out as a gay man, became a gay activist in Philadelphia, and met Frank Lonabaugh. Frank and I were together for a decade. His family welcomed me, and we watched his younger brothers and sisters grow up, much as I had done with the Morrisons. But professionally, I found myself stuck in a job with no opportunity to move in the direction I wanted. My best energy went into gay activism and the relationship with Frank.
Those were exhilarating years—at the dawn of the modern gay rights movement—and I met exceptional friends through the lesbian/gay community. However the relationship with Frank ended in 1980. Not because of any betrayal of trust, but by mutual consent. We loved each other no less than when we had met, but a basic incompatibility of expectations had worn us both down. Breaking up seemed like the right thing to do. Still, because the relationship had been so positive, there was one thing I knew for sure. An intimate relationship and domestic life with another guy was what I wanted more than anything else.
In April 1981, I traveled to Southern California to be with my family for Passover. While there, I met Dan, a member of the lesbian/gay Long Beach Lambda Democratic Club. We talked all night. I was convinced that Dan might be the one for me. In January 1982 I moved to Long Beach to pursue a relationship with him. I joined Lambda and began a decade of gay activism in my new home, once again making wonderful friendships along the way. Dan and I, too, became close friends, but not spouses.
Remaining single was a big disappointment to me, but professionally, good things began to happen. I joined a small architectural firm doing important adaptive re-use and restoration projects in downtown Los Angeles; I became a leader in the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Downtown L. A. Walking Tour program; I served on the board of directors for the wonderfully offbeat L.A. chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and I was accepted into the masters degree program in urban planning at UCLA. Graduate school began in September 1985.
UCLA
UCLA was a phenomenal experience. Surrounded by gifted faculty and students, I performed at a level I’d never before achieved. My studies, organized around the subject of inner city residential abandonment, culminated with a masters degree thesis. The subject? St. Louis’s Lucas Place—the city’s first elite neighborhood—which developed adjacent to downtown in the 1850s but which was abandoned by the end of the century. It was my remarkable good fortune to choose that subject, for it led to amazingly clear and verifiable answers to the question I’d been pondering for decades, “What are you waiting for?” The reasons for the abandonment of Lucas Place explain at once both the subsequent widespread abandonment of St. Louis’s inner city row house neighborhoods, as well as the singular grandeur and staying power of the Central West End. What a gift—an MA thesis that uncovered real answers to a genuinely significant question! I graduated UCLA in 1988, and thus began the rest of my life.
It certainly had its ups and downs, but it reached a high point in 1992 when I was chosen by a newly elected Long Beach city councilman to serve as his deputy. His district incorporated most of downtown Long Beach as well as its surrounding neighborhoods—which included the heart of the city’s lesbian/gay community. No question but that job was the most satisfying employment I’ve ever had. Although I had a rough start in such a high stress position, ultimately I was able to serve the councilman well.
In 1994 a second high point came along. I’d been single ever since 1980, but eventually had come to accept it. Then, beginning in 1990 Frank and I re-established a long distance friendship. Only when Frank “proposed” to me in December, 1993, did I realize how much this friendship meant to me. Of course I said “YES!” and arranged to take a month off work in the summer of 1994 to drive to Philadelphia, have a union ceremony, and return with Frank to live in Long Beach. It was a year after Frank had proposed to me that I last sent a note like this to friends, scattered as they were across the country. The note talked of joy and satisfaction, of hopes and dreams realized.
But it all unraveled in early 1996. With Frank, the old incompatibility of expectations exploded suddenly and unexpectedly. The next thing I knew, Frank was gone. With my job, something ugly was happening at city hall—though not with my boss, the councilman. The ugliness was tearing me apart and the councilman did his best to correct the problem. But the other council members didn’t have a clue. As the councilman’s employee I needed to let go of the situation. But I was unable to. I walked out of city hall in February—intending to attack the problem as a citizen—and never went back. Still, I ended up being powerless to do anything about it. I was devastated.
Gradually it occurred to me that I’d never accomplished what I’d set out to do professionally so many years before. I’d never played a major role in city planning and design, in shaping the architectural setting for urban community life. Perhaps it was time to focus clearly on that goal. If so, the Los Angeles area—where community life is such a low priority to most people—was not the place to do it. But back in St. Louis, exciting things were happening in anticipation of the year 2004—the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase and the 100th anniversary of the St. Louis World’s Fair. Although community life in St. Louis is deeply fractured, people most definitely care about it. So I moved back to St. Louis in May of 1997. I’ve never regretted it for a moment!
Update, May 2004
In 1997 I moved from Long Beach, California back to the place where I was born, St. Louis, Missouri. For these past seven years St. Louis has been a serene and beautiful setting for an inner journey that has been, at times—well, very intense.
Each of these years, as the winter holiday season has approached, I’ve thought wistfully of sending greetings to many friends who live far away but who remain vivid in my thoughts, and for whose friendship I’m grateful. I’ve not been able to get it together to do so until now.
Seven months ago I had to move again (happily just a few miles.) With this move, the convergence of the season and the desire not to lose contact with people I know, seems to have carried me beyond inertia and into the realm of actually doing this thing!
It’s been a slow process, and the holidays are far behind us now. But, perhaps it’s still not too late to wish you the best for the remainder of 2004!
This address is in the middle of a neighborhood called the Central West End of St. Louis. It’s a singular neighborhood—as grand, as beautiful and as fascinating as any I’ve seen in the United States. What an odyssey it’s been that brought me here! Although the story spans 55 years, its elements are so clear and striking that they collapse time and space into a simple narrative. (Note: As you'll see above, Rick has since moved from the CWE)
