Friday, November 18, 2005

FOUND: Kitten

FOUND: Kitten

(In the spirit of being proactive...)

Small orange kitten found. Probably 6 months old.

Around 10 PM Thursday, November 17, 2005.

* this is in or around Wyoming and Nebraska, Benton Park West, 63118

Contact me with any info.

(Cross-posted on Craigslist)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I never liked the name Benton Park West, since it seems overshadowed by Benton Park.

Sure, folks in Southampton market their homes as St. Louis Hills East, but really, it's uplifting to have an independent identity as well.

What about renaming Benton Park West as the "Cherokee" neighborhood?

Anonymous said...

That's not a bad idea.

There are a few other place names that might be worth changing.

How about "Carondelet River" instead of River Des Peres?

There's got to be something better than "Boulevard Heights". How about Wilmore Heights?

And Southampton's pretty weak, but North Hampton is downright pathetic, especially when the neighborhood's themselves don't even recognize it. They call themselves "Tilles Park" and Kingshighway Hills.

Maybe there should be a commission on city place names.

Joe said...

Well, the neighborhood names and boundaries as defined by CDA around 1989 are often kind of silly and arbitrary.

Because of demographic trend data considerations, changing the boundaries would be hard. But, changing the names might be do-able.

McKinley-Fox a few years back changed to McKinley Heights. I'm not sure about changing Benton Park West - it's actually sort of good for marketing purposes to be associated with Benton Park.

During the 1970s, for Neighborhood History purposes, the city defined the "Marquette-Cherokee" neighborhood, bounded by Arsenal, Grand, Bates, and the Mississippi River (but excluding Benton Park neighborhood). This area included all or parts of what are now called Tower Grove East, Benton Park West, Marine Villa, Gravois Park, Dutchtown, and Mount Pleasant.

Then you have the neighborhood areas identified in the 1947 Comprehensive Plan, which were completely different. I think Benton Park West was divided into a couple different zones, one of which may have indeed been called Cherokee.

So, the name game is something we've been playing for a long time.

But, why in the world would you want to change the name of the River des Peres? That name actually has historic basis - the Catholic mission set up in the 1700s at the mouth of the RdP where it enters the Mississippi made it known as the "River of the Fathers" And, besides, RdP flows through a huge area, starting in Overland, thru U City and Forest Park, and then into SW and SE City. It's not the "Carondelet River."

Southampton, meanwhile, has been a recognized identity since 1922. The streets were named on a British place-name theme there first; it was continued into St. Louis Hills and Shrewsbury later.

Changing names that have existed for 75+ years is silly. But changing those that are irrelevant (like North Hampton) would not be a bad idea - if anybody could agree on a new name!

Anonymous said...

North Hampton could become Tilles Park - Kingshighway Hills, but that's definitely not streamlining things.

As for River Des Peres, I don't think that should be changed either. But it's actually creek of our fathers (priests), not river, since "riviere" is French for creek. And the RDP is certainly more of a creek than a river.

Claire Nowak-Boyd said...

Uh oh! We found some small orange kittens in "transitional" city neighborhoods on two separate occasions this year, and long story short, we own three more orange cats than we did when spring began (bringing the grand total to four).

I hope you find the owner and I'm really glad you're trying, but don't hold your breath.

As for city place names, I do think that naming a neighborhood after another neighborhood is kinda lame (our apartment in Humboldt Park in Chicago was advertised as "Wicker Park West," and that got me started thinking about the kind of thinking such labels entail. Why pretend that an interesting, majority Latino, working class neighborhood is named after its blander, richer, whiter neighbor to the east?). However, I'm wary of just going through and renaming things without any care. Forest Grove ain't any better than Forest Park Southeast (It was fine as Adams Grove and Gibson Heights, not as some vague subdivision-sounding place.), McRee Town was not better than the original McRee City (and Botanical Heights is ridiculous), and the River Des Peres is the River Des Peres!

I guess ultimately I agree with Joe when he said:
"Changing names that have existed for 75+ years is silly. But changing those that are irrelevant (like North Hampton) would not be a bad idea - if anybody could agree on a new name! "
...exactly. Irrelevant names I can part with. But even with those, I'm not convinced that the current administration would produce anything better; I think the painfully bland, suburban names Botanical Heights and Forest Grove show their track record on that one. But I guess they could throw us all for a loop--there is going to be a new subdivision named Bosley Estates, after all....