Covenant Blu Grand Center

Covenant Blu–Grand Center is the city neighborhood bounded by Dr. Martin Luther King Drive on the north, North Compton Avenue on the east, Olive Street on the south, and North Vandeventer Avenue on the west, with Grand Boulevard running through it. Grand Center, St. Louis's arts and entertainment district, lies within it along Grand. Saint Louis University moved its campus to Grand Boulevard in 1888, and well-to-do families built mansions nearby. Between 1900 and 1920 a run of theaters went up along Grand, among them the Odeon, the Princess, and the Victoria, followed in the 1920s by the St. Louis Theatre (now Powell Hall), the Scottish Rite Cathedral, and the Coronado, and in 1929 by the Fox. The area became the city's main center for the arts and entertainment and a major public-transportation hub, and it stayed busy through the 1940s. After World War II, as residents and businesses left for the suburbs, businesses closed and theater audiences dwindled. Revival began with the Fox's reopening in 1982 and the Sheldon Concert Hall in 1986; the residential Covenant Blu blocks have not seen the same reinvestment as Grand Center.