6160 A Diary of the Urban Gardener and Cook

So many questions arise with regard to the name of the little neighborhood in St Louis called Dogtown. Oftentimes children giggle at the mere mention of a place called "Dogtown", while adults get a more quizzical expression. I would be embarrassed to state I could ever provide a complete, lengthy, and thorough history of the area. But I can certainly take a stab at a condensed "Dogtown for Dummies" approach, so here goes...

Dogtown is a small enclave within the City of St Louis; it is quite small - just over 0.3 square miles in size and around 2,000 residents. It is bordered by Hampton Avenue to the east, Manchester Road to the south, McCausland Avenue on the west and the wide expanses of Forest Park to the north.

Known as "Cheltenham" for decades (the name "Dogtown" did not actually enter the vernacular until the World's Fair), the area has a history dating back to the 1780's. At that time, Charles Gratiot requested the land from the Spanish (and then reconfirmed with the US after the Louisiana Purchase) to cultivate wheat, corn, hemp, and tobacco for the fast growing City of St. Louis, which sat less than five miles to the east. In the early to mid 1800's, St. Louis began to grow at a much more rapid pace; the need for building materials to fuel this growth grew concurrent. The primary building material of the time was brick, and Dogtown was a vast expanse of land outside of the City proper that was rich with clay (all gardeners please take note of this - what a struggle...). By the mid 1800's, Dogtown was riddled with 24 different clay mines and 14 brick factories. The quality of St Louis brick from this era is so reknowned that even today, post-Katrina New Orleans exclusively purchases St. Louis brick for it's rebuilding efforts (which is somewhat of an unfortunate statement about St Louis' interests in preservation...).

Dogtown came into it's own at the end of the 1800s - with St. Louis hosting the World's Fair in Forest Park and Cheltenham being adjacent to the park, the area became a hotbed of both residential and commercial growth. Lovely brick homes, including 6160, were constructed at that time. Even a railroad was introduced (the Taylor City Belt Line which covered a whopping 1.5miles), initially to freight in fuel and materials for the Fair but later, visitors themselves (newspapers from that time indicate that upwards of 25,000 people daily rode this rail line).

And we arrive at how the Cheltenham neighborhood was renamed Dogtown... The St. Louis World's Fair is still considered the grandest of all World Fairs that were conducted; the Philippine Exhibit took the honor of being the largest and most popular. It occupied a 47-acre site that for seven months in 1904 became home to more than 1,000 Filipinos from at least 10 different ethnic groups. The biggest crowd-drawers were the so-called primitive tribes — especially the Igorots, whose appeal lay in their custom of eating dogs.

The City of St. Louis provided the Igorots with a supply of dogs at the agreed amount of 20 dogs a week; however, this did not appear to be sufficient - as such, the City encouraged local residents to bring them dogs which the Igorots could purchase to supplement their daily needs. Poaching of dogs quickly became so commonplace in the Cheltenham neighborhood that warnings were posted across the area; even still, dogs were disappearing from Cheltenham throughout the exposition...

The St. Louis World's Fair had many firsts - the first ice cream cone, the first iced tea, the first Olympic Games in America (third for the world), the first sliced bread, and the first coin changer. Interestingly, the hot dog, one of the most popular American foods, is yet another legacy of the dog eating Igorot presence at the St. Louis World's Fair. Despite the fact that in the late Middle Ages in Europe a German butcher (Johann Georg Lahner) developed sausage prototypes in Frankfurt and later Vienna (called frankfurter and wiener respectfully), it was not until the St. Louis World's Fair that a sausage-on-a-bun was called a "hot dog" - the entire nation, riveted by the marvels of the World's Fair, had a horrified fascination with the dog eating Igorots. It was during this window of time that the Cheltenham neighborhood began to be referred to as "Dogtown". And the name has stuck ever since...

For those of you who have gardened for awhile, and for anyone who has dived into herb gardening at any level, the name of Adelma Grenier Simmons strikes a harmonious bell. Having had an profound impact on the herbing and gardening community, Adelma was unique. Her sprawling farm, Caprilands, stretched across some fifty acres in the quiet corner of Connecticut (although with the UofC Huskies there one could hardly refer to it as "quiet"...).

I am extraordinarily fortunate in my career choice as it has afforded me much travel; however, I will never forget the trip I made again to Caprilands in 2005. Adelma had passed in the late nineties, and as many estates go, legal battles ensued between her second husband and her children. This never bodes well for a property's well being...

I pulled into the familiar Caprilands lot one late summer morning, having pulled nearly an all niter in order to wrap up the bulk of my work for this specific New England trip. The air was cool, with pockets of fog in the hilly woods that abutted Caprilands; as I began marching towards the drying barn and talk to the staff and smell the harvest drying in the cool, dark barn air, things quickly began looking not right... Herb beds that sloped towards the barn were overgrown; in fact, nearly all the beds were thoroughly overrun with Spiderwort. A glance at the farm house said things weren't right there, either - books and old bottles were piled in the windowsills, like a bad episode of Hoarders on A&E. The path to the barn which was pictured many atime for her books was now just a single mown strip, either side of which was grass and weeds which stood to my chest. Occasionally, a UofC student would appear like a shadow, then flit away just as quickly, looking more like they worked at Whole Foods than on a farm.

I entered the drying barn - herbs that had been hung back in 1997 for onrush of Holiday traffic still hung there, covered in webs and shriveled beyond usage. Various crafting items, such as baskets and even wreaths, looked frozen in time; one expected Ms. Haversham to decend the barn ladder, discussing how life, her wedding cake, and the drying herbs and crafting materials had all passed her by.

I discovered an equally stunned couple in the barn, staring in disbelief around them; they looked at me and asked "do you work here?" "No" I replied, "but I'm wondering if anyone works here. What has happened to this place?" I responded. In walked an overly pale UofC student, her hair slopped into a bandana and done rastafari style. "Hi there" she said cheerily; "we're trying to work on the place, but feel free to look around the farm" she said and breezed past us towards a filthy, ancient hoe. Just as quickly as she appeared, she left; I didn't want to continue talking to the flabbergasted couple, so quickly slipped out the door towards the old bookshop. It had been long since shuttered, a bookmobile like building that was no longer in service. I kept meandering towards the house, knowing I would stumble on the Greenhouse. It was long a source of inspiration, where Adelma taught countless classes on how to grow virtually any type of herb and more important, how to use it afterwards. I felt like I was trapped in a time bubble; as I waltzed into the Greenhouse, I found panes of glass cracked, shattered, or outright missing, yet all the actual teaching materials from crafting to herb gardening sat frozen in the space - baskets, planting pots, wreath bases, benches all sat covered in cobwebs and dust. I wandered deeper into the dark of the Greenhouse unsure what to think; two cats, mousers obviously, stared at me in disappointment as I interrupted the still of their morning stalking session. A chicken sat atop a scrub table that years past was the checkout lane. Potpourri and Teas sat in dusty glass cannisters in the deep of the room, near an extensive collection of wreath making materials long past their prime.

The overwhelming sense of sadness and gloom propelled me from the Greenhouse like a rocket. I reached into my small backback and found a couple of the old herb books I'd purchased from Caprilands almost fourteen years prior, one of which Adelma had actually signed for me. One was, and should be, an herb gardener's bible (Herb Gardening In Five Seasons); the other explained her obsession with Catholic saints (Saints In My Garden). Having traveled extensively through England, France, Italy and Belgium, I was long acquainted with cloisters and monasteries and knew fully well why Adelma had an entire segment of Caprilands morphed into a Saints Garden. When traveling in Europe, I actively sought cloisters and monasteries out due to the calm and serene beauty they delivered, which is unparalleled.

I reached Adelma's Saints Garden, or at least the remnant of it. The herbs and plantings, untended for nearly a decade, had evolved into a sad memory of what had been a gloriously planted garden. I stood there, at the cross which had previously formed the center motif, searching in vain for the Thyme which had blanketed the area; the Santolina and Germander which had edged the entire area had long since disappeared.

I didn't stay at Caprilands much longer, but made an active attempt, and ultimately found, the portion of the Saint's Garden dedicated to St. Fiacre, the French saint who is patron to all gardeners. It is to him, and the memory of what the St. Fiacre portion of Caprilands' Saint's Garden used to look like, that I dedicated the Orchard at 6160. His statue stands like a sentinal at the farthest southern end of 6160, watching all who pass through an arbor smothered with President Clematis.

If you read nothing else in 2011 (or later, depending on how long this diary goes on), go to Amazon.com or even Ebay and purchase "Herb Gardening In Five Seasons". The whopping $2 you will spend will be far outweighed by the knowledge and wherewithall you will gain. It is this legacy, Adelma's expert writings, that ensure that her impact will be felt by true gardeners for generations.