Headline: ST. LOUIS NATIVE'S EFFORT ENSURES "OLD" LIGHT WILL SHINE ON
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Tue., Feb. 8, 2000
Section: METRO, Page: B1, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

Barry Williams jokes that he must have been dropped on his head as a child.
  
While other kids were taking an interest in baseball and fishing and other simple pleasures of childhood, young Barry was interested in other things. Like streetscapes. And phone booths. And street lights.
  
"I don't know why, " said Williams, who grew up in the city's West End. "I just always took an interest in such things."

That lifelong interest has now been manifested at Forest Park.
   Thanks to Williams' efforts, the park is now being outfitted with new "old" street lights. Longtime St. Louisans will recognize the lights, which have been installed along the park's Pagoda Circle. The lights are replicas of the old, sandy-brown "granitoid" street lights that dotted the city's landscape from the late 1920s through the late 1960s. The lights were topped with a glass acorn globe, and were unique to St. Louis.

In the late '60s, then-Mayor Alfonso J. Cervantes removed nearly all 50,000 of the old light fixtures in an upgrading campaign, designed to promote safety in the city. The lights were replaced with "cobrahead" lights, that were taller and brighter than their predecessors.
  
Once removed, most of the old fixtures were dumped along the Mississippi River for erosion control.

All the while, Williams retained his interest in streetscapes. As an adult, he'd moved to Washington, and in 1992, he helped found the American Streetscape Society, made up of people who take an interest in urban areas.

When he returned to St. Louis two years ago, he saw a story in the Post-Dispatch about the Forest Park master plan. He immediately thought about the lights.
  
He learned that plans were being made to install new lights that he found to be run-of-the-mill. "There was nothing distinctive about them, nothing that said anything about St. Louis, " he said.
  
Williams contacted Forest Park manager Anabeth Calkins and Daniel J. McGuire, the park's director, and encouraged them to consider use of the old lights, especially since technology can make the lights much brighter than they were originally.
  
Officials liked the idea and took it to the park's steering committee, which recommended it.

But most of the original lights were in the river and had deteriorated so much they couldn't be used.
  
When the Rouse Co. redeveloped Union Station in the 1980s, officials there looked at old photos of the station and saw the granitoid lights. Learning that they were no longer available, Rouse had ordered 20-foot-tall molds of the lights, which are now located outside the station.
  
But those molds were too tall for Forest Park.

Park officials ordered 17- and 13-foot molds of the lights, some with a new twist: twin globes. The lights are now up at the Pagoda Circle and will replace cobrahead lights at Lagoon Drive and along the Forest Park Expressway.
  
"There aren't funds to change every cobra light in the park, " said McGuire. "But we'll make more of the changes if the funding is available and appropriate."
  
Meanwhile, when he learned about the granitoid lights, Robert Archibald, president of the Missouri Historical Society, insisted that the cobrahead lights around the History Museum and in its parking lots be replaced as well. "There's no reason to have metal tubes screwed into sockets -- the cobraheads -- when we can have the granitoid lights, " he said. "Our environment affects how we feel about our city. We ought to pick things that are attractive rather than things that are ugly."

Now that the park has signed on, Williams isn't done. He's become a Johnny Appleseed of sorts, spreading the word of granitoid lights into other neighborhoods.
  
"The lights give St. Louis a special touch, " said Williams. "I'm glad to be involved in it."


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