AMERICAN SCENE: St. Louis: Pride on the Hill

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Many of the small and tightly knit ethnic communities that once dotted virtually every U.S. city have crumbled under the planner's rezoning and renewal schemes and the bulldozer's giant blade. One community that has successfully resisted the encroachment of urbanization is "the Hill," a 56-block, largely Italian area on the south side of St. Louis, where Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola grew up. After a series of fierce, emotion-charged struggles with local, state and federal officials, Hill residents now boast a model community that has the lowest crime rate and the highest property values in the city. TIME Correspondent Marguerite Michaels recently visited the Hill. Her report:

In the afternoons around 3:30, Joe ("Green") Verdi, Angelo ("Foots") Colombo, John ("Detroit") Agresti and other properly and not-so-properly nicknamed neighborhood men gather at Rose's Tavern for a glass of beer from the 7-ft. wooden cooler. Then they drift out back toward the grape arbor for a game of boccie. On Wednesdays, Amelia Garavaglia, 76, flours her plump, competent hands in the back room of Gioia's Corner Market and begins rolling out 5,000 ravioli for sale hi the front room. Each evening, Ida Galli switches on the spotlight hi her front yard-not to scare away burglars, but to illuminate a 3-ft.-high statue of the Blessed Virgin. It is all part of the pleasant, unhurried flavor of life today on the Hill.

Italian Sausage. There is a strong sense of ritual, both religious and community, on the Hill, where 90% of the population of 6,500 is Italian and 95% Catholic. There is also a bursting pride in the rows of narrow, well-scrubbed houses and in the family-run corner stores, where links of fat Italian sausage dangle in long rows. Many residents are direct descendants of the immigrants who left Lombardy at the turn of the century to work the clay mines of St. Louis under the hill that gives the section its name. Life on the Hill is as finely woven as Ann Reistino's brightly colored, crocheted afghans.

It was not always so. In the '60s, the neighborhood's youth began to drift away. Federal and state highway officials designated the path of Interstate Highway 44 through an area of the Hill. Assuming that land values would plunge with the construction of the road, many homeowners stopped maintaining their property. A local lead company began pumping slurry into the abandoned clay mines, threatening to undermine foundations. Explains Father Salvatore Polizzi, 43, associate pastor of St. Ambrose toman Catholic Church: "The Hill was becoming a blighted cemetery."

Polizzi determined to change things. e began delivering sermons urging the residents to regain their lost sense of spirit and pride. He also made a point of cultivating leaders of the area's strong Democratic organization.