Tower Grove Park East Streams
St. Louis, MO
2022
Returning What Was Taken Underground
Tower Grove Park was established in 1872. Its original plan included a stream that flowed continuously from south to north across the east end of the park. In 1910, that stream was buried — routed into an underground pipe and removed from the park’s landscape for over a century. The Nee Lee Nee project brought it back.
Daylighting a stream that has been underground for 100 years inside a National Historic Landmark is a technical challenge of significant complexity. The design team coordinated with the National Park Service throughout, ensuring that every element of the new stream design respected the park’s historic character and the integrity of the 1870s-era bridges through which the stream now flows. The new alignment closely mimics the original 1876 stream path — threading beneath five of the park’s historic stone bridges as if it had never left.
Client
Tower Grove Park
Size
7 Ac.
Acknowledgement
Work Completed by the Kanopi Gap team while Employed at LJC Design & Engineering
The project was developed in genuine partnership with the Osage Nation, whose people were the original inhabitants of this land. Tribal guidance shaped the design process, and tribal artists have since worked with the park and the design team to develop animal depictions for future integration into the landscape. An ongoing relationship has been formed — one that extends beyond the project itself.
The ecological performance is substantial. The stream and five integrated bioretention basins retain 3.8 million gallons of stormwater annually, keeping runoff from a 43-acre watershed — including neighborhoods that have historically flooded — out of the combined sewer system. The project was funded almost entirely by green infrastructure grants.
