1639 Biddle St
St. Louis, MO 63106
The Youth and Family Center serves children and families mostly living in the challenged St. Louis Park Place, Old North, Carr and Columbus Squares neighborhoods in the City of St. Louis' 5th Ward. In recent years, the Youth and Family Center has served nearly 4,400 youth and adults. The largest programs at the center of the Youth and Family Center’s mission are the Afterschool Program (Monday- Friday 2:30-6:30pm) and Teen Outreach Program (Tuesday-Thursday 4-5pm). These involve serving a snack and warm meal, tutoring/homework assistance, computer education, arts & crafts, sports teams, fitness and nutrition classes, and programs focusing on the development of self-esteem and life skills that prevent bullying, drug use, and teen pregnancy. The center offers both a Spring Break and Summer Day Camp experience that involve cultural outings and field trips. For the Afterschool Program contact Viola Oden at [email protected]. For Teen Club information contact Kayla Bryant at [email protected]. The center’s Jazzy Senior Program (Mondays and Thursdays 10-1pm) is designed to combat hunger while providing social interaction, health and wellness activities, and address end of life concerns for adults 55 years and older. Contact Sam Carpenter for information at [email protected]. The center supports a Sickle Cell Disease Awareness, Education, and Support Program as well. Contact Tanjila Bolden at [email protected] for more details. On behalf of the youth and families we serve, our staff, and board members, thank you for all of your support and donations.
St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment (SLATE), in coordination with the Missouri State Department of Economic Development (DED), Division of Workforce Development (DWD), the City of St. Louis Mayor's office and a number of partners, operates SLATE Missouri Career Centers, which connect employers to a skilled workforce and provide training and placement services to the City's adult workforce.
The Orpheum Theater in St. Louis, Missouri is a Beaux-Arts style theater, built in 1917. It was constructed by local self-made millionaire Louis A. Cella and designed by architect Albert Lansburgh. The $500,000 theater opened on Labor Day, 1917, as a vaudeville house. As vaudeville declined, it was sold to Warner Brothers in 1930, and served as a movie theater until it closed in the 1960s.It was restored as the American Theater in the 1980s and was listed under that name on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. It was later sold to local businessmen Michael and Steve Roberts, who renamed it the Roberts Orpheum Theater. The Roberts brothers sold the theater in 2012, and it closed. The Chicago developer, UrbanStreet Group, plans to restore the theater.
Pruitt–Igoe was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954 in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri. Living conditions in Pruitt–Igoe began to decline soon after its completion in 1956. By the late 1960s, the complex had become internationally infamous for its poverty, crime, and segregation. Its 33 buildings were demolished with explosives in the mid-1970s, and the project has become an icon of urban renewal and public-policy planning failure.The complex was designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the World Trade Center towers and the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport main terminal.HistoryDuring the 1940s and 1950s, the city of St. Louis was overcrowded, with housing conditions in some areas resembling "something out of a Charles Dickens novel." Its housing stock had deteriorated between the 1920s and the 1940s, and more than 85,000 families lived in 19th century tenements. An official survey from 1947 found that 33,000 homes had communal toilets. Middle-class, predominantly white, residents were leaving the city, and their former residences became occupied by low-income families. Black (north) and white (south) slums of the old city were segregated and expanding, threatening to engulf the city center. To save central properties from an imminent loss of value, city authorities settled on redevelopment of the "inner ring" around the central business district. Decay was so profound that gentrification of the existing real estate was never seriously considered as a possibility.