Webster Groves: Giant fruit advocacy starts here!

Though nobody seems to ever sit in them--blame their propensity for collecting rainwater that then sits for days upon days--the "apple chairs" are a distinctive feature of Webster Groves' "Old Orchard" neighborhood.

There are three sets of chairs: One on Big Bend near Murdoch, one at the small park with the gazebo by Old Orchard Center, and another on the wedge-shaped park area in front of Nerinx Hall, a girls' school. On Feb. 27, a work crew uprooted the latter bunch of apples and deposited them in a row along Big Bend Blvd.

It's the latest in a series of small upheavals in this immediate area, coming shortly after the removal of a large bush behind a stone monument facing the Big Bend/Lockwood intersection and last year's seemingly-unlikely collision of an SUV with said monument. (A teenage girl accidentally rammed the nearby DeSoto Building with her car in a separate incident.)

Gotta wonder if the apples will be re-planted elsewhere in the neighborhood, or if they're just going away for good. And does their removal have anything to do with the construction of a huge new theater building at Nerinx Hall (seen in the background in the above photos)?


UPDATE: During the second week of March, the uprooted apples were all relocated to the Gazebo area. The former Apple Zone is being prepped, I hear, for the installation of a piece of public art.