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Oh yes, Dan Tyree of 2nd Chance Auto Sales has seen plenty of changes during his 19 years on Morgan Ford Road.

“We used to find a lot of needles on the lot,” he said. “Then it went from heroin to crack.”

Back then, a lot of folks around here needed cheap cars and second chances. Now they want sporty scooters in candy apple red or lime green.

“It’s more scooters than autos these days,” Tyree said. “They tell me they get 75 miles per gallon.”

Morgan Ford Road runs from Tower Grove Park in the city to Bayless Road in south St. Louis County. The Morgan Ford neighborhood contains about six blocks of shops, bars, restaurants and homes clustered along the road’s northern edge. And it is Morgan Ford, not Morganford. The city adopted that spelling in the 1980s.

“I used to live over there and always spelled it as one word,” said St. Louis Sign Shop supervisor Just Sabe (“That’s two words, not one,” Sabe joked.).

“Then a private citizen and historian brought to our attention the history of the name. It was once a rural road to a farm, and the owner was Morgan Ford. That was his first and last name.”

The area even has a catchy nickname — the Mo-Fo — though the moniker Skinny Town also has surfaced.

“I don’t know who came up with that one,” said Bill Waggoner, owner of Grove Furnishings. “Apparently it’s because the street is skinny compared to Grand and Kingshighway.”

For years, Morgan Ford was dismissed as South Grand’s trashy, drug-addled stepsister.

Alderman Joseph Vollmer, Ward 10, explains that the extended closure of the Morgan Ford bridge about 10 years ago killed off many small businesses. By the time Waggoner moved here, not much was left.

Waggoner said: “The only viable businesses were a couple of bars, and they weren’t the sort you’d want to go to. It was not exactly the place where you’d want to hang out or take a walk.”

Today, Morgan Ford draws hipsters, working-class South Siders, and softball and kickball players who pack Tower Grove Park throughout the week.

The Morgan Ford Stumble, a three-mile pub crawl that starts at noon at Three Monkeys and travels all the way to the Hilltop Inn at Loughborough Avenue, marks its 19th anniversary Aug. 22.
“Every 45 minutes or so, someone blows a horn and says, ‘Let’s get ready to stumble,’ and they make their way down to the next place,” Tower Pub owner Erin Merli said. “I’m so excited to show off the area to people who aren’t familiar with what we have here.”

Morgan Ford will debut a street festival Oct. 3 featuring local bands. The neighborhood also hosts the PrideFest Pet Parade in June.

Fueled by the renaissance of the Tower Grove South neighborhood, Morgan Ford started to show signs of life about five years ago.

The Tin Can was among the first businesses to take a chance on Morgan Ford. The tavern specializes in beer in a can, mini corn dogs and grilled cheese. Vintage Haberdashery and the Future Antiques, exiles from South Grand, drew retail customers.

By the time Local Harvest Grocery started to sell organic produce, meat and cheese from local farmers at its market and deli, Morgan Ford had become a lively spot for lunch and happy hour.

“With all of the young people who have moved here, there is this great energy and sense of community,” resident Nick Burgett, of St. Louis Fabrication Arts, said. “It’s not trying to be South Grand. It has its own personality.”

Burgett is the artist behind the neighborhood’s newest feature, 11 brightly colored “bike racks” positioned outside local businesses. We put bike racks in quotes because they look more like cartoonish sculptures.

Highlights include a trio of go-go boots in front of Vintage Haberdashery, a mug of beer outside Tower Pub and an orange carrot at Local Harvest.

“We definitely needed (the bike racks),” Burgett said. “Everyone was chaining their bikes to signs. Hopefully, they are one more thing that helps define us as a neighborhood.”

Amsterdam Tavern
3175 Morgan Ford Road • 314-772-8224 • amsterdamtavern.com

At the Amsterdam Tavern, the English Premier League beats the National League every time. That may seem like sacrilege in this baseball-crazy town, but Amsterdam Tavern is all about soccer, the No. 1 sport everywhere but here.

What’s more, it bans smoking. You’d think the Amsterdam is one Cubs poster away from totally alienating the locals, but business is booming.

“There are a lot of soccer fans in St. Louis, and they are rabid,” said Jeff Lyell, who opened the bar almost a year ago. “We’ll put on the Cardinals, but don’t expect the volume up during a big match.”

Lyell and the two buddies who opened the bar didn’t want to smell like cigarettes after a long shift, so they went smoke-free. But folks are free to light up in a newly expanded beer garden. Half of the garden is covered and heated in cold weather, so no one complains.

“The first three or four weeks, some folks from the neighborhood were like, ‘What do you mean I can’t have a cigarette with my beer?’ ” Lyell said. “But for most of our customers, it’s a selling point.”

Amsterdam Tavern shows English Premier League, World Cup qualifying, Italian Serie A and Mexican League matches as well as Major League Soccer. Fans show up as early as 7 a.m. on weekends to catch the games live.

“They were pouring out the door for that USA-Brazil match,” Lyell said of the nail-biter for the Confederations Cup in June. “Sometimes you can hear the shouts out on the sidewalk. And it’s not always for the goals. Soccer fans will get really excited about a great defensive play.”

The tavern doesn’t serve food, but patrons can bring in fried bologna from the Tin Can or doughnuts from the 7-Eleven. The bar features 50 brands of beer as well as classic European names including Harp and Stella on tap.

“But we’ll take requests,” Lyell said. “At the end of the day, we’re still a neighborhood bar.”

Three Monkeys
3153 Morgan Ford Road • 314-772-9800 • 3monkeysstl.com

On nearby South Grand Boulevard, diners can order pho, qorma and sashimi at any number of St. Louis’ best ethnic restaurants. But diners desperate for good ol’ American triglycerides should head west to Morgan Ford for fried bologna at the Tin Can, scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese at Local Harvest or, coming soon, doughnuts at the neighborhood’s new bakery.

But for maximum artery-plugging pleasure, try Three Monkeys’ Fire in the Hole pizza, featuring wing sauce, pulled pork, jalapeņos, spicy bacon and pepper jack cheese. Three Monkeys serves 2,000 pizzas every week. The dough is made fresh daily with olive oil and sea salt.

“It’s got that chew that’s missing in a lot of St. Louis-style pizza,” said chef Jacques Farache, who bans provel and bakes his pies in a wood-fired oven. “We bring an East Coast flavor.”

The other house speciality is barbecue. Farache believes that pulled pork makes everything better — even salad. He mixes his sauce in a 30-gallon trash can.

“My first version had a lot of tomato and a lot of smoke, but it wasn’t sweet as St. Louisans like it,” he said. “So I doubled the brown sugar. St. Louisans like it thick and sweet.”

Farache believes that Morgan Ford’s restaurants can coexist with their Grand Boulevard neighbors. Grand’s got cilantro, Morgan Ford’s got the Cards.

“What we have is a place to relax and watch the game,” Farache said. “It’s a place where everyone knows your name.”

The Future Antiques
3229 Morgan Ford Road • 314-865-1552 • tfa50s.com

Visiting the Future Antiques is like walking onto the set of “Mad Men”: martini shakers, ashtrays, fur coats and Danish modern furniture, everything but Luckys and a half-naked secretary.

Indeed when COCA hosted its annual fundraiser with “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm, St. Louis’ socialites sent their personal shoppers to TFA for authentic brooches and dresses.

“The quality was great back then,” said TFA manager Michael, who is shy about sharing his last name. “The products were American-made. The furniture was made of solid wood, not compressed particle board. If it has lasted 50 years and still looks that good, it’s a safe bet it’s going to last during your lifetime.”

TFA’s affection for all things vintage extends to Vitrolite, the structural glass that graces the shop’s once-hideous facade.

Popular in art deco and art nouveau architecture, Vitrolite has not been produced domestically for 60 years. Luckily for TFA, premier preservationist Tim Dunn lives in St. Louis and had access to burgundy Vitrolite salvaged from a Nebraska building. TFA’s website chronicles the building’s amazing transformation.

“When we first looked at this building, it was painted concrete gray,” Michael said. “Nothing about it was appealing. But the Vitrolite suits the building’s original design.”

Michael says TFA never wanted to leave South Grand, but a rent spike forced the business out. To Michael’s shock, last year’s Christmas sales were the store’s best. One reason is clearly the building’s sheer size. At 6,000 square feet, customers can actually see the merchandise. On South Grand, displays were stacked to the ceiling.

But Michael also credits Morgan Ford’s groovy vibe.

“The last few years have been phenomenal,” he said. “The pet parade, the new businesses, the improvements to the neighborhood — it’s all coming together.”

Grove Furnishings
3169 Morgan Ford Road • 314-776-7898 • grovefurnishings.com

Beyond mowing the grass and picking up the trash, what can the average homeowner do to control property values? The answer, for Bill Waggoner, was to open a business.

Nearly five years ago, he and two friends opened Grove Furnishings, a small shop that catered to what the neighborhood aspired to be, not what it was.

“It was a travesty for this neighborhood to look the way it did,” said Waggoner, who arrived in 1994. “I thought if something is going to happen, I’m going to have to do it.”

Grove Furnishings features high-end, custom-made furniture, antiques and inexpensive home decorating items such as mother-of-pearl bottle openers and ceramic platters. The store specializes in Mission furniture made in Missouri.

“Our philosophy is, if you like the piece, it goes in your house,” Waggoner said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the same style as the rest of the furniture.”

The business has scaled back its weekday hours, but increased weekend foot traffic has helped sales.

“I remember our first weekend, a guy came in and said to me, ‘Man you have (guts) to open this kind of store in the middle of the ghetto,’” Waggoner said. “I thought, ‘I didn’t realize I lived in the ghetto.’ I knew there was a compliment in there. What’s great is now we have this wild array of customers from all over.”