Remembering Brentwood’s ‘Garden of Eden’
Date Posted: June 4, 2019
Posted In: Discussion, Ideas,
From NextSTL: More than 20 years ago, residents of Brentwood’s historic Howard-Evans Place were displaced to make way for The Promenade at Brentwood, one of mid-St. Louis’ County’s busiest retail centers. Few who shop there regularly remember the neat frame homes that made up the property for nearly 90 years. Soon, however, they may get a new reminder.
The City of Brentwood is working with a group of former residents and the property managers of The Promenade to design a new commemorative monument that would be placed prominently within the retail center so that those who visit will know the property’s long history. The only evidence that a long-standing African-American neighborhood once stood there is a stone boulder with a commemorative plaque at the Promenade’s rear entrance off of Hanley Industrial Court.
The residents of Howard-Evans Place, formerly at the intersection of Eager Road and Brentwood Boulevard in Brentwood, were remembered and honored in late February as part of Brentwood’s Centennial celebration taking place throughout 2019. The residents remember their neighborhood and community fondly, though not without some sadness. They remember a vibrant neighborhood in which doors were not locked, children felt as at home at a neighbor’s house as at their own, and extended family lived around the corner. Some even called it their “Garden of Eden.” Though they have not been neighbors for more than 20 years, they still maintain their sense of community.
That community began in 1907, predating the Great Migration. In the first half of the 20th century, Howard-Evans Place blended African-American residents born in the Deep South and Missouri; and whites from Europe, primarily Italy. Nearly all of the men —black, white and some as young as 13— worked at the Evens & Howard Fire Brick Co., located in what is now Hanley Industrial Court. Work at the brickyard was hot, dirty and hard. Black workers had the dirtiest jobs and separate eating areas. Many Italians boarded workers in their small homes, and some African-American women worked as maids or laundresses for white families in wealthy St. Louis County neighborhoods.
Since most workers needed to live near their workplaces, Evens & Howard built small bungalows and duplexes nearby, first in Howard Place, established in 1907. Some of the earliest homes built for its workers were called “two by two,” — duplexes with two rooms on each side without a basement, indoor plumbing or electricity. In 1917, a home building company began building a subdivision called Evans Place in the area surrounding and adjacent to Howard Place, which became part of Evans Place in 1923.