NOMAS shares research on Mill Creek Valley at Missouri History Museum

The WashU chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students’ installation, “Light on the Lost: Mill Creek Valley,” is on view now at the Missouri History Museum as part of a larger exhibition on St. Louis history.

This student-led project marks the first long-term initiative of WashU NOMAS’s “Reviving Erased Black Histories” series. Over the course of a semester and a half led by faculty advisor Melisa Betts Sanders, RA, NOMA, SEED, students researched, designed, and fabricated an exhibit exploring the lost neighborhood of Mill Creek Valley, once a thriving center of Black life and culture in St. Louis.

The project began with lectures, archival research, and mapping work in collaboration with the Missouri Historical Society. Students then developed digital and physical models, drawings, and multimedia elements to visualize the neighborhood’s scale and its erasure through midcentury urban renewal. Through this work, NOMAS sought to connect architectural education with community history and social impact, transforming research into an exhibit that now reaches beyond the university and into the broader public sphere.