St. Louis's Lung Block - Carr Square

I wrote about the neighborhood my second great-grandfather Selig Feinstein lived in, which was known by several colorful names due to a reputation for criminal activity - Eighth Street Yard, Castle Thunder, and Wild Cat Chute.

He is not the only ancestor who lived in a locally well-known neighborhood. My second great grandparents Sam and Rose Newmark, and their family lived in the 1600 block of Wash Street in the 1910 census, and the 1500 block in 1920. (I have marked in blue where they lived.)

The 1908 Housing Report ended at 14th Street, on the other side of Carr Square, but I have a feeling their conditions may have only been slightly better, if at all. The neighborhood became known as The Lung Block. (A term possibly borrowed from New York City.)

From Rediscovering St. Louis's Lung Block

In early 1940s, well before the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing complex would be built and destroyed just a few blocks south-east, another North Central St. Louis neighborhood stood condemned. Carr Square was known by its nickname “the lung block” for its high rates of tuberculosis deaths, and had been designated a blighted neighborhood to be torn down in one of the first slum-clearing projects in St. Louis made possible by the federal New Deal.

The article states that the reputation for high levels of tuberculosis in the neighborhood date back to the early 1900s. The below WPA map from the article visually illustrates the concentration of tuberculosis deaths in the city in the early 1930s.