Note: Originally published as print-only in The CWE Griffin Newspaper. Photos by author.

Bowood Farms is introducing the new restaurant Bowood by Niche to replace Cafe Osage, which unfortunately closed in Nov. 2020 due to the pandemic. Chef Gerard Craft’s St. Louis-based Niche Food Group announced the upcoming neighborhood restaurant inside Bowood’s vacant restaurant space, delivering lunch, brunch and dinner in late summer 2021.

“We are excited to be bringing food back to Bowood,” owners Lizzy Rickard and Katherine McPheeters told The Griffin. “Enjoying a meal with friends in this space has always been important to us, and we have missed it over the past year. They are still in the planning phase, but we are excited to have dinner in this beautiful space as we know that the neighborhood has been itching for another dinner spot.”

The mission of Bowood is rooted in the revitalization and beatification of spaces and places. They’re based in a previously abandoned car repair warehouse on Olive St., which they’ve reimagined as gardens, a nursery, shopping boutique, restaurant and more.

“The building is a big part of our identity,” Rickard and McPheeters stated. “We believe that a retail space is more than just a place to shop, it is about creating a mood and an atmosphere. When this space was brought to our attention we knew it was the one.”

With Bowood’s inspiring revitalization projects on Olive St., there is much to appreciate about this overlooked pocket of the Central West End Area. Just as the Bowood building has gone through a rebuilding phase, the entirety of Olive St. has seen periods of disregard and new growth.

Alderwoman for the 28th Ward Heather Navarro has seen firsthand and participated in some of the initiatives involving Olive St. As a longtime resident of the CWEA, and now a resident of the Skinker-DeBaliviere area, Navarro got to know the neighborhood through walking her newborn around and meeting other local families.

“We started a group called Central West End Family and Friends,” Navarro said, “and one of our top priorities was finding some space that we could use as a gathering space.”

Navarro recalled that at the time, there were no playgrounds in Forest Park to give parents and kids a place of activity on their walks. But when they found an empty sliver of grass right at the fork of Olive and Washington, they found the perfect place for a small playground and water fountain for their community.

“It had been a park before, but it was just blank,” Navarro recalled. “So that’s really how that got started. We started having regular meetings, and then Bowood Farms opened up down the street and they were interested in helping landscape. That was a really great connection to have there. We applied for grant funding to get the fountain and public art sculpture, and then the city started putting it into their regular maintenance rotation. We get a group of parents who still go out there once a year and mulch, and we do a lot of weeding. I think there’s still an Easter egg hunt that happens every year in the park.”

With the addition of Samuel Kennedy Park and Bowood Farms, Olive St. started seeing a revival that was much needed as a somewhat overlooked area of the CWEA. The variety of businesses on Olive St. that exist now have helped foster growth and development for the CWEA, including the Biome Charter School, the Field Apartments (which used to be an old elementary school), Consuming Kinetics Dance Company located in the Lister Building, Bowood’s sister store Holiday, St. Louis Art Supply and more.

The exciting addition of a new restaurant to the list of Olive St. hotspots provides a glimmer of hope and promise for the future after the many hardships caused by the pandemic local businesses and communities have endured.

“I think a lot of people think of the Central West End, and they think of few key corners,” Navarro expressed, “but there really is a lot more to the Central West End, and I think the more we explore that and people are aware of it the better and the more energy that’s generated there.”