Volunteers gathered Friday on St. Thomas to clear vegetation and debris from a step street above Charlotte Amalie as part of a monthly community effort to restore historic step streets.
The cleanup was organized through the St. Thomas Historical Trust as part of its Step Street Project, which brings residents together to maintain and preserve the stone stairways that connect neighborhoods throughout the town. According to Anna Monica Villa, a board member of the Historical Trust and chair of the project, volunteers meet once a month, with cleanups planned for the last Friday of each month.
Step streets are narrow stone stairways that climb the hills of Charlotte Amalie, connecting streets and homes first laid out during the Danish colonial period. Some, like the well-known 99 Steps, are carefully maintained and widely used, while others face challenges from wear, overgrowth, and aging infrastructure. Villa said historians believe the stairways grew out of town plans drawn in Denmark, where streets were designed as straight lines on flat ground.
“It’s a Danish plan adapted to a St. Thomas reality,” she said. “You have a design that’s made in a place where they have no hills, and then to adapt that plan to the reality of an island that has primarily hills and very little flat space, you have to build steps.” Many of those stairways, she added, were built by local artisans,
Villa said the project is about more than clearing vegetation from stairways. “As we’re fixing the infrastructure, we are also repairing the things that are damaging in the fabric of our community,” she said.
Villa said maintaining the step streets helps preserve the walkable character of Charlotte Amalie, which she said has increasingly shifted toward car-focused design.
“When you walk up the hill, it makes you go slower. You say hello to somebody, you find out what’s going on with them…because we took the time to stop and greet each other on the step street, you knew what was going on with your neighbor. You were in a position to be of help.”
She said the larger goal of the project is to reconnect residents with both the town’s history and with one another. “The project is to reconnect us with our history and with each other,” Villa said, “while reconnecting our community in new, meaningful and healthy ways.”
Many step streets are cared for by the Department of Public works and residents who live along them, with people sweeping, trimming plants, and making small repairs as part of their daily routine. The Step Street Project, Villa said, aims to support that work and extend it to stairways that have been harder to maintain.
Villa said last week’s cleanup was “awesome,” with volunteers working together to clear debris and cut back vines. “It was so satisfying that we accomplished so much in such a short period of time, and I think we can all feel good about that.”
The next Step Street cleanup is set for the last Friday of the month, from 8-10 a.m. Volunteers are encouraged to bring shovels, clippers, or other gardening tools, and donations of topsoil or plants are welcome to help restore areas overtaken by invasive coralita vines.
“It’s fixable. We can do this,” Villa said. To donate or find more information on the step street project, Villa encouraged residents to visit the project section of the St. Thomas Historical Trust website.
