So, St. Louis County green-lighted developers to begin creating large apartment complexes in Spanish Lake, and low-income, African-American families flocked to them. Unfortunately, the sudden concentration of large numbers of low-income families into a small area, an almost complete lack of social services, and geographical isolation combined to turn the apartment complexes into something resembling the next generation of the failed Pruitt-Igoe project.
“Spanish Lake” is a new documentary film [June, 2014] that looks at the physical, economic and social decline of a suburban neighborhood just north of St. Louis, Missouri. It’s told from the perspective of former “Lakers” at a neighborhood reunion, newer residents, and people who have stayed through it all, bucking the white-flight stampede of the 1980s and 1990s. It’s a sad story of the downward trend of a once-thriving neighborhood, as a result of a toxic stew of callous governmental and commercial practices, and racial mistrust and misunderstanding. It may sound like a local story, but change the names, dates, longitude and latitude, and you’ve probably got a scenario that fits many other areas in the U.S.
Spanish Lake, we learn at the beginning of the documentary, was first settled as a military outpost near the strategic confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. In the 1800s, it was the jumping off point for many military expeditions, as well as the first overnight stop on Lewis and Clark’s journey to map the Louisiana Purchase.
Fast forward to the 1950s, when Spanish Lake’s pastoral environment, within reach of the amenities of urban St. Louis, became a haven for the post-World-War-Il housing boom and the young [white] families who fueled it. In the film, “Lakers” who grew up in the area reminisce about their idyllic childhoods in two-bedroom, one-bath bungalows, running free along lakeside and riverside paths, helping out on farms, and riding their bikes to the neighborhood pizza shop. [It could not possibly have been that idyllic, of course.]
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