St. Louis roadie Kip Welborn has alerted me to the Baden Taste, a festival that will take place from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday in the Baden neighborhood in the 7900 to 8300 blocks of Broadway in north St. Louis.
That’s on a section of old Route 66 south of the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. Baden Taste is a modest attempt to revive the spirit of the neighborhood’s annual Badenfest street fairs that once drew crowds as large as 100,000 before the it was discontinued in 1984.
Welborn said in an e-mail:
Baden was settled in 1833, that is working very hard to rebuild and maintain itself. There will be food, music, a car show, children’s activities and more! … If you have the opportunity, it would be a great way to see a part of Route 66 in St. Louis you might not often see, and patronize some folks on Route 66 who are trying to keep their Route 66 neighborhood alive!
The Baden neighborhood, unlike much of the rest of St. Louis city, actually saw a population increase in recent years. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a good article about Baden and its tenacity.
What was the name of the small airfield that was near east railroad ave. In Baden?