A Street-scape Named Remembrance

On May 21, 1996, streetcars rattled through the West End neighborhood for the very last time as #15 Hodiamont line, the only remaining streetcar route in St. Louis, ceased operation. Memory, however, persists and this intervention honors the Hodiamont service by creating an ecologically rich trailhead to the track's new life as a Greenway. Streetcars are celebrated through embedded track lanes, vertical handhold like insect hotels, and transformable furniture along tracks inserted into Gwen B. Giles park. Existing pavement cracks at the intersection of the Greenway and Hodiamont Avenue are seeded with Virginia mountain mint. As the mint spreads the habitat it produces supports a variety of solitary insects such as the harmless grass-carrying wasp, which, in turn, brings birds and other species. Seating facilitates encounters between people and this enriched ecology.