This Once Was: Stix, Baer & Fuller at River Roads Mall

This Once Was Stix Baer & Fuller at River Roads Mall

DJ Kut’s afternoon mix on 95.5 The Lou inspired me to “bring home” the pieces I salvaged from the River Roads Mall demolition in 2007.  DJ Kut introduced a song (which one? wish I remember!) as a favorite of the River Roads Mall Arcade crowd, and that kind of nostalgia is intoxicating.

So I took a few of the ceramic tile pieces that once graced the River Roads Stix, Baer & Fuller/Dillard’s building back to the spot they formerly occupied. It was easy to set them up in the place they once stayed because the spot remains an empty field, which is both depressing and annoying.

1961 stix baer & fuller

This Once Was What Was Here
The photo above is from 1961, while River Roads Shopping Center was still under construction. Wikipedia fills in some key facts. But even better is where I borrowed this photo from.

Dwayne Pounds has the River Roads Mall historical photo hook up! I encourage you to check it out here, and understand that I’ll be borrowing from this man’s excellent archival work. Dwayne even put them into YouTube format.

river roads demolition

I took this photo in May 2006 just as demolition was beginning. There was nothing to be done about the destruction other than document what was left, which remained beautiful in decay.

River Roads Sunken Garden

Those of us who respectfully trolled the demolition site began referring to this lower level outdoor plaza in front of the former Stix as “the sunken garden.” On the left of the frame is what once was The Pavilion restaurant.

Pavilion Restaurant at River Roads Shopping Center

The Pavilion in 1961 before it opened, courtesy of Dwayne Pounds.

October 2006 Pavilion Restaurant

And what remained during demolition in October 2006, when destroyed walls made the interior visible once again. Lost Tables shares the ghost of Ladies who Lunched:

When the River Roads store opened in 1961, a separate adjacent building housed the Pavilion Restaurant, open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. Two live trees, eight feet and twelve feet tall, were featured in the glass-walled center section. A pool, with a sculptured marble fountain, added to the garden atmosphere. The main dining room was French Provincial in feeling, with antiqued walnut chairs and star-flecked, deep blue carpeting. An informal patio area had a flagstone floor and wrought iron furniture in pale blue. Lighting was rheostat controlled and could be focused on models when a fashion show was in progress.

Stix price tag

The Ghosts Are Watching
After visiting the site with architecture in tow, I ran across this photo album with the Stix, Baer & Fuller price tag still in place.

My best guess of when River Roads changed from a Shopping Center to a Mall is the mid-70s, shortly after Jamestown Mall opened. They stilled billed it as Shopping Center when JC Penney opened in 1972; Jamestown Mall opened in 1974. The history of Stix, Baer & Fuller confirms they officially morphed into Dillard’s in 1984.

1983 North County Map

Though the corporate wheels were already churning, as this advertisement on a 1983 map of North St. Louis County shows River Roads splitting the difference between both Stix and Dillard’s. The actual map still names the site River Roads Shopping Center because cartographers are not required to keep abreast of the retail marketing landscape.

Also of note is that River Roads Mall only had Dillard’s for roughly two years before it permanently closed at this location. Seniority is why I continually refer to this building as Stix, Baer & Fuller.

May 2006 River Roads demolition photo

I do believe (and please fill me in otherwise) this was formerly the exterior of Walgreens. This photo shows it on the far left in 1961. And while traipising around the demolition site in July 2006, I walked around the corner and saw…

2006 interior of river roads mall

…a good view of the interior of the mall promenade, without having to break in. The Walgreens signage is still hanging. And the clock tower remains!
River Roads demolition and debrisI loved the architecture of the entrance into the mall between the Stix building and JC Penney addition (above). Whomever the project architects were (and that information has yet to surface) were liberally borrowing and paying homage to the Bauhaus modern masters, disguised as a way to keep shoppers dry as they hurried into the mall for new shoes.

As demolition began, they dragged the long-buried contents inside the Stix building out into the light. Like this pink chair from the beauty salon. I have shots of rusted hair dryers in the brutal summer sun that still delight.

River Roads Mall Demolition Abstract

This entrance on the northern side of the Stix building had become abstract art by May 2006.

October 2006 River Roads demolition photo

When the demolition crew punched a hole in this same wall in October 2006, some of us were able to grab a few pieces of those gray and turquoise tiles. I deeply loved those architectural elements, and eventually turned them into borders for flower beds, which I dubbed the River Roads Memorial Garden.

Redeveloping River Roads Mall in 2009

Because I visit NoCo on a regular basis, I kept track of what became of the River Roads Mall site. By July 2009 (above) they’d cleared the western portion of the lot, and since the Food For Less (formerly Krogers) was now closed, it was moments away from being demolished.

This Once Was River Roads Mall

9 years later on August 2018, Dollar Tree and a couple of other stores have taken their place, while the western edge remains empty and grassed over.

There had been all kinds of grand plans for the River Roads Mall site. During demolition, they erected senior living apartments along Halls Ferry Road, on the site of what once was parking for the mall. Then came the 2008 Economic Crash, and the original re-developers going bankrupt, and there’s White Flight Economics which neurotically devalues anything white people abandon, and…

Elliot Davis caught up with another thwarted development of the unused property in February 2017. It’s depressingly ironic that Kroger – who was the original grocery store at River Roads Shopping Center – wanted to come back and couldn’t.

The old Boatman’s (ghost) Bank at Halls Ferry Road and Cozens Avenue was demolished in Spring 2008. But the vast majority of the River Roads Shopping Center site remains a field of grass.

Bring the pieces back home

Stix, Baer & Fuller is a field of grass, making it easy to pull up to an unused curb and prop up old portions of the building that once was.

I understand the economic theory that decaying buildings have to come down to make it easier to entice new developers to the land. Though I dearly wish North St. Louis County would try out Historic Tax Credits for their iconic properties that now qualify rather than tear it down for a ghost town.

Think about this: if the Stix River Roads building remained standing until 2011, it would have most likely qualified for Historic Tax Credits and could have been remodeled into apartments. Which is a far better outcome than having remnants of what once was serving as ornaments in my carport container garden that took a nostalgic ride back in time.

What once was at River Roads Mall

The River Roads Memorial Garden

river roads demolition

River Roads Mall, Jennings MO
River Roads is now, for all worthy detail, gone. A vertical ruin of what was the JC Penney building still stands, and the grocery store (which started life as a Krogers) is still open for business. Everything else is a mound of debris or a throbbing hole in the ground. This has been a leisurely demolition, lasting about 18 months with still more work ahead before any new construction can happen.

river roads architectural pieces

My anxiety over the River Road Ruins is officially over. The white, turquoise and aqua tiles littered all around and always just out of my reach (photo above) are now gone, there’s nothing left to save. So, that chapter of the River Roads story is done, but I’ve had a new chapter of the story writing itself in my backyard.

dillards architectural pieces

With several pieces of the former Stix, Baer & Fuller building piling up in my yard, the idea to use them as a garden border popped up. After cutting through backbreaking zoysia to create dirt beds, it was a strange thrill to layout the River Roads pieces into a whimsical, mid-century modern garden chain. By the middle of May, perennials and annuals had been planted, and it was just a matter of watching it grow.

river roads mall leftovers

river roads memorial garden pieces of dead mid-century malls in St. Louis County A sidebar to the River Roads Memorial Garden is shown above. The hexagon is part of the interlocking Stix wall that faced Jennings Station Road. To its left (in front of the hosta) is a piece of the original Cross Keys Shopping Center in Florissant MO  that was demolished in 2003. What looks like a “P” to the untrained eye is actually the mangled “R” rescued from the main Northland Shopping Center sign in 2006. There are also various other pieces of Northland in this tableau, which underscores why I had to do something vaguely useful with all these pieces junking up my backyard.

stix baer and fuller architectural tiles with zinnia

sunflowers

This has been my first true flower garden, so it’s been an education. One thing I’ve learned: sunflowers are scary beasts. They are too tall for comfort, and too heavy for their own stems to support them. Once the flowers finally arrive, they offer about 5 days of gorgeousness before morphing into bedraggled UFOs that become dangerous projectiles in summer thunderstorm winds. This is the debut and finale of sunflowers in my yard.

river roads memorial garden

A round of applause goes to Wendy Fischer for helping to dig the flower beds and providing much-needed enthusiasm to make this project happen, and to Cyndi Woollard for adding pieces of her world-class garden to my starter kit.

River Roads Bulletin

River Roads Shopping Center (remains)
Jennings, MO
If you’ve been patiently waiting for a chance to nab one of those aqua bow ties off the former Stix, Baer & Fuller store, better hurry.

It’s taken well over a year for them to get to it, but now less than a quarter of this section remains, and the bow ties, hexagons and triangles litter the pit of the demolition site.
Above is what I was able to take with me, and the gathering of just these 2 pieces was accompanied by a constant hissing of “shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!”
Why?

Because having come from a birthday dinner, I was in no way dressed for spelunking into a pit of construction debris. I had on the completely wrong shoes for climbing over fencing and hopping over large chunks of building guts. I was freaking out as I took photos and saw hundreds of pieces of that sophisticated, geometric marvel of wall scattered below. So the wrong shoes be damned, down I went.

One has to park rather far away from the demo site, and when carrying armfuls of heavy ceramic tile, the walk is noticeably long (especially in the middle of July, trust me). And there’s only me, and I’m hopelessly inappropriately dressed. So, I could only salvage the two pieces shown above.
But this is the kind of stuff I had to walk away from! Look, a section still intact enough to get the full picture of how they puzzle-pieced the facade together. It’s sublime! And take a look at that hexagon piece. Dozens of them are lying – intact – all over the ground, looking like MCM birdbaths. I was losing my mind at how much stuff survived the fall, and how little I could save. That piece shown above? Way too heavy for me to carry that far by myself in heels….shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!!!!

So, if you want some shopping souvenirs, please hurry, because as the demolition work week continues, more and more of it goes into a trash dumpster.