When searching for cultural or historical significance within a particular site there are two avenues that beckon immediate investigation. The presence of significant built places and the existence of rare, endangered, or otherwise unique plant or animal life. Our investigation followed these avenues. Significant Built Places A built place can be significant for a number of reasons. Age, architectural qualities, notoriety of designer, and particular uses all are determining qualities with regard to the determination of significance. These factors were the foundational elements of our inquiry.
Significant Plant or Animal Life
Plant and animal life is ever significant. To develop an exclusionary category of significance seems to belie this. However, being that the further existence of many species of organisms is at risk or endangered, it is necessary. It is these organisms which deserve attention (to protect them if nothing else) and also signify quality of place. This consideration guided our search as well.
Cahokia
Cahokia was an immense settlement of indigenous peoples in the Mississippi Valley near East Saint Louis. Perhaps this people's most visible legacy were the great earthen mounds built in Cahokia and its satellites. Most of these mounds supported civic structures or the dwellings of Cahokian societal elite. Other mounds served to provide a place of burial for peoples that died under diverse circumstances. As an interesting aside, found all in one mound, called number seventy-two, there is evidence of a rulers opulent burial, mass graves of women believed to have been involved in a mass suicide, and also bodies with head, hands, and feet removed. The latter are believed to be vassals of the buried ruler who sacrificed themselves after his death. Other artifacts of this settlement can be found as far north as Minnesota, in eastern Kansas, Arkansas, and some eastern coastal states. Although what is now East Saint Louis was only a satellite of Cahokia, nonetheless it has proven itself a fertile archeological study region. The work of John Kelly and Bonnie Gums is an effective witness to this.
The Greenway
The suggested site for our strategic greenway is near the Winstanley Neighborhood and Industry Park area. The context is difficult and maligned. There is scarcely more than derelict industrial properties within the scope of the purposed greenway development. The idea of significance is not met by the site's current built elements. This feature is surely not one which will preserved. Rather, this will all be done away with in the hopes that our development will become a cultural-historical magnet for East Saint Louis. Through creative business ventures, investment in greenspace, and sheer immensity the greenway as a strategic investment in East Saint Louis will achieve the goal. There are, as mentioned previously, significant historical/cultural elements in our area of development. Under other circumstances our direction of design would be quite different. The presence thereof, however, does not mitigate the need for dynamic action to reclaim the area for the betterment of the people of East Saint Louis. The first concern of this initiative is to preserve the community that presently inhabits East Saint Louis. Secondly, the immense scope of Cahokian settlement allows there to be maintained a balance between important development and also important research. The area which this development takes can easily be given in another section of the Mississippi Valley region.
The area of potential (present) historical/cultural significance near our development is the Jackie Joyner-Kersey Youth Center. It is a project not unlike ours in that it quite new and it falls into the becoming category with regards to cultural/historical significance. The presence of a greenway quite near to the center only enhances it. People are more likely to spend time in a place that exists within a pleasant context. The individuals that will be the focus of the youth center's energy will have further safe refuge from what might otherwise be a life under the most difficult of circumstances.
Plant and Animal Life on our site is neither special nor incredibly valuable to its surroundings. With new, diverse plantings the hope is to not only provide ornament to a desperate site, but also to provide an elixir to an area tortured by industrial waste.
Culture magnet
Image 1 = Historic Sites
Image 2 = Schools
Image 3 = Churches
Image 4 = Cultural Magnet
Last modified: Dec.18, 1997
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