The history of St. Louis, Missouri began with the settlement of
the St. Louis area by Native American mound builders who lived as part of the Mississippian
culture from the
9th century to the 15th century, followed by other migrating tribal groups.
Starting in the late 17th century, French
explorers arrived. Spain took over in 1763 and a trading company led by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau established
the settlement of St. Louis in February 1764. It attracted French settlers
leaving Illinois when Britain took control east
of the Mississippi.
The city grew in population due to its
location as a trading post on the Mississippi River,
as the western fur trade was lucrative. The city played a small role in
the American
Revolutionary War and
became part of the U.S. through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
With its connection through the Ohio
River to the east, the Mississippi to the south and north, and the Missouri to
the west, St. Louis was ideally located to become the main base of
interregional trade. In the 1840s, it became a destination for massive immigration
by Irish and Germans.
Some native-born Americans reacted with
fear to the newcomers, adopting nativist sentiments. Missouri was a slave
state, but the city's proximity to free states caused it to become a center for
the filing of freedom suits. Many slaves gained freedom through
such suits in the antebellum years. But, by the 1850s and the Dred Scott case,
interpretations had changed and the US Supreme Court ruled
against him. It also ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional,
contributing to the tensions causing the American Civil War. During the War, St. Louis had a small
skirmish on its outskirts, but was held under Union control.
After the war, the city expanded its
railroad connections and industrial activity. It suffered a corresponding rise
in pollution of the river and waterfront. During the
early 1870s, the Eads Bridge was constructed over the
Mississippi River, and the city established several large parks,
including Forest Park.
Due to local political
and economic disputes, the city separated from St. Louis County in 1876 and became an independent city. Its limited geographic area has
inhibited its success in the 20th and 21st centuries because of the small tax
base.
During the late 19th century, St. Louis
became home to two Major League
Baseball teams. Ragtime and blues music flourished in the city, with
African Americans making major contributions also in jazz.
The city hosted the 1904 World's Fair and the 1904 Summer Olympics, attracting millions of visitors. Part
of the infrastructure for the fair was the basis for major city institutions in
Forest Park. In the early part of the century, many African Americans migrated
from the South to the city for industrial jobs,
as part of the Great Migration. St. Louis did not escape the Great Depression and
its high unemployment.
During World War II the city hosted war industries that employed thousands of
workers.
After the war, federal highway subsidies
and postwar development encouraged outward migration as residents moved to gain
newer housing; this suburbanization
significantly reduced the city's middle-class population. The city made efforts
to create new attractions, such as the Gateway Arch,
which construction became a focus of the civil rights
movement to gain
non-segregated jobs in the skilled trades. The first litigation under the 1964
Civil Rights Act was against St. Louis unions.
The city worked to replace substandard
housing by new public housing projects
such as Pruitt–Igoe. A combination of factors resulted in
this being notoriously unsuccessful, and it was demolished in the late 20th
century.
Starting in the 1980s and continuing
into the following century, construction and gentrification have
increased in some areas of St. Louis, particularly downtown. City beautification and crime
reduction have made progress, although St. Louis has continued to struggle with
crime and perceptions of crime. The city saw modest population growth during
the mid-2000s, but showed a decline in the 2010 U.S. Census.
Exploration and Louisiana before 1762
Main article: History of St. Louis, Missouri before
1762
The earliest settlements in the
middle Mississippi Valley were built in the 10th century by
the people of the Mississippian
culture, who
constructed more than two dozen platform mounds within
the area of the future European-American city. These were related to the center
of the culture at the very large complex of Cahokia Mounds,
on the east side of the Mississippi River.
The Mississippian culture ended for
unknown reasons in the 14th century and these sites were empty for some
time. Siouan-speaking groups such as the Missouria and
the Osage migrated from the eastern Ohio
Valley to the Missouri Valley. They lived in villages along the Missouri and Osage rivers.
Both groups competed with northeastern tribes such as the Sauk and
the Meskwaki, and all four groups confronted the
earliest European explorers of the middle Mississippi Valley.
Extensive European exploration near the
confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers began nearly a century before
the city was officially founded. Explorer
Louis Joliet and Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette traveled
south on the Mississippi River in June 1673, passed the future site of St.
Louis and reached the mouth of the Arkansas River before
turning back.
Nine years later, French explorer La Salle led an expedition south from
the Illinois River to the mouth of the Mississippi in
the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the entire valley for
France. La Salle named the Mississippi river basin La Louisiane (Louisiana) after King Louis XIV; the region between and near the
confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers was named
the Illinois Country. As part of a series of forts in
the Mississippi valley, the French built settlements at Cahokia and Kaskaskia, Illinois. French trading companies also built towns
during the 1720s and 1730s, including Fort de Chartres and Ste. Genevieve,
Missouri, the first
European town in Missouri west of the Mississippi.
From 1756 to 1760, fighting in the French and Indian
War (the North
American front of the Seven Years' War)
halted settlement building. The economy remained weak through 1762 due to the
ongoing war, in which Britain defeated France the following year.
City founding and early history: 1763–1803
The arrival in New Orleans of Jean-Jacques Blaise
d'Abbadie as the
new governor of Louisiana in June 1763 led to changes in colonial
policies. D'Abbadie quickly moved to grant trade monopolies in the middle
Mississippi Valley to stimulate the economy. Among the new monopolists
was Pierre Laclede, who along with his stepson Auguste
Chouteau set out in August 1763 to build a fur trading post
near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.[8][9] The
settlement of St. Louis was established at a site south of the confluence on
the west bank of the Mississippi on February 15, 1764, by Chouteau and a group
of about 30 men. Laclede arrived at the site by mid-1764 and
provided detailed plans for the village, including a street grid and
market area.
French settlers began to arrive from
settlements on the east bank of the Mississippi in 1764 due to fears of British
control, given the transfer of eastern land to Great Britain after the Treaty of Paris. The local French lieutenant
governor moved to St. Louis in 1765 and began awarding land grants. As
part of the peace negotiations to end the Seven Years' War, Spain gained
control of Louisiana according to the secret Treaty of
Fontainebleau in
1762. Due to travel times and the Louisiana Rebellion
of 1768, the Spanish
took official control in St. Louis only in May 1770. After the transfer,
the Spanish confirmed French land grants, and Spanish soldiers provided local
security.
The
first Catholic Church in St.
Louis was built in 1770
The occupation of most settlers was
farming, and by the 1790s nearly 6,000 acres were under cultivation around St.
Louis. Fur trading was the major commercial focus of
many residents, as it was much more lucrative than agriculture during that
period.[15] The
residents were not particularly religious, in spite of their Roman Catholic faith. The
first church was constructed in mid-1770 and St. Louis acquired a resident
priest in 1776, making Catholic religious observance a more customary component
of life.
The French settlers brought both black
and Indian slaves to St. Louis; although the
majority were used as domestic servants,
others worked as agricultural laborers. In 1769, the Spanish prohibited
Indian slavery in Louisiana, but the practice was entrenched among the French Creoles in St. Louis. As a
compromise, Spanish governors ended the Indian slave trade but allowed the
retention of current slaves and any children born to them. In 1772, a
census determined the population of the village to be 637, including 444 whites
(285 males and 159 females) and 193 African slaves, with no Indian slaves
reported due to their technical illegality. During the 1770s and 1780s,
St. Louis grew slowly and the Spanish commanders were replaced often.
American Revolution, See also: Battle of St. Louis
Upon the beginning of the American Revolutionary
War, Spanish governor,
Bernardo de Galvez, in New Orleans assisted the American rebels with weapons,
food, blankets, tents and ammunition. The Spanish lieutenant governors at
St. Louis also aided the colonials, particularly the forces of George Rogers Clark during the Illinois campaign. After
the official entry of Spain into the American
Revolutionary War in
June 1779 on the side of the Americans and the French, the British began
preparing an invasion to attack St. Louis and other Mississippi
outposts. However, St. Louis was warned of the plans, and residents began
to fortify the town.
The Battle of St. Louis on May 26, 1780
On May 26, 1780, British and Indian
forces attacked the town of
St. Louis, but were
forced to retreat due to the fortifications and defections of some Indian
forces. In spite of their defeat, the British and their allies destroyed
much of St. Louis' agricultural lands and cattle stock, killed 23 residents,
wounded 7 and captured between 25 and 75 as prisoners (some might have been
murdered after their capture). A subsequent counterattack launched from
St. Louis against British forts in the Midwest ended the threat of another
attack on the town.
After the British were defeated, more
French Creole families evaded Anglo-American rule by moving to the
Spanish-controlled land on the west bank, including wealthy merchants Charles Gratiot, Sr. and Gabriel Cerre. Both the
Gratiot and Cerre families intermarried with the Chouteau family to create a
Creole-dominated society in the 1780s and 1790s. The families also had marital
ties to Spanish government officials, including the lieutenant governors Piernas and Cruzat.
Transfer to France and the United States See also: Three Flags Day
During the 1790s, towns near St. Louis
expanded as small farmers sold their lands to the Cerres, Gratiots, Soulards,
or Chouteaus. These farmers moved to towns such as Carondelet, St. Charles, and Florissant. By 1800, only 43% of the district's
population lived within the village (1,039 of 2,447).
The Spanish government secretly returned
the unprofitable Louisiana territory to France in October 1800 in the Treaty of San
Ildefonso. The
Spanish officially transferred control in October 1802; however, Spanish
administrators remained in charge of St. Louis throughout the time of French
ownership.
Shortly afterward, a team of American
negotiators purchased Louisiana, including St. Louis. On March 8 or 9,
1804, the flag of Spain was lowered at the government buildings in St. Louis
and, according to local tradition, the flag of France was raised. On March 10,
1804, the French flag was replaced by that of the United States.
Expansion, growth, and the Civil War: 1804–1865
Government
and religion
Initially, the governor of the Indiana Territory governed
the Louisiana District (which included St. Louis), and
the district's organizational law forbade the foreign slave trade and reduced
the influence of St. Louis in the region. Wealthy St. Louisans petitioned
Congress to review the system, and in July 1805, Congress reorganized the
Louisiana District as the Louisiana Territory, with its territorial capital at St.
Louis and its own territorial governor. From the division of the Louisiana
Territory in 1812 to Missouri statehood in 1821, St. Louis was the capital of
the Missouri Territory.
The St. Louis Courthouse, completed in 1828
The population of the city expanded
slowly after the Louisiana Purchase, but expansion increased desire to
incorporate St. Louis as a town, allowing it to create local ordinances without
the approval of the territorial legislature.
On November 27, 1809, the first Board of
Trustees were elected. The Board passed slave codes,
created a volunteer fire
department, and created
an overseer to improve street quality. To enforce town ordinances, the
Board created the St. Louis Police
Department, and a
town jail was
established in the fortifications built for the Battle of St. Louis.
After the end of the War of 1812,
the population of St. Louis and the Missouri Territory began expanding
quickly. During this expansion land was donated for the Old St. Louis County
Courthouse. The
population increase stirred interest in statehood for Missouri, and in 1820,
Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, authorizing Missouri's admission as a slave state.
The state constitutional convention and first General Assembly met in St.
Louis in 1820.
Shortly thereafter, St. Louis
incorporated as a city, on December 9, 1822. The first mayor of the city
was William Carr Lane, and a Board
of Aldermen replaced
the earlier Board of Trustees. Early city government focused on improvements to
the riverfront and health conditions. In addition to a street paving
program, the aldermen voted to rename the streets.
After the transfer of Louisiana to the
United States, the Spanish had ended subsidies to the Catholic Church in St.
Louis. As a result, Catholics in St. Louis had no resident priest until
the arrival of Louis William
Valentine Dubourg in
early January 1818. Upon his arrival, he replaced the original log chapel
with a brick church, recruited priests, and established a seminary. By
1826, a separate St. Louis diocese was created. Joseph Rosati became
the first bishop in 1827.
Protestants had
received services from itinerant ministers in the late 1790s, but the Spanish
required them to move to American territory until after the Louisiana
Purchase. After the purchase, the Baptist missionary John Mason Peck built
the first Protestant church in St. Louis in 1818.
Methodist ministers
reached the town during the early years after the purchase, but only formed a
congregation in 1821.
The Presbyterian Church in St. Louis began as a Bible
reading society in 1811, and in December 1817 members organized a church and
built a chapel late the next year.
A fourth Protestant group to take root
was the Episcopal Church, founded in 1825.
During the 1830s and 1840s, other faith
groups also came to St. Louis, including the first Jewish congregation
in the area, the United Hebrew Congregation, which was organized in 1837.
Followers of Mormonism arrived
in 1831, and in 1854, they organized the first LDS church in St. Louis. Despite
these events, during the pre-Civil War era most of the population were culturally
Catholic or uninterested in organized religion.
Commerce, the Panic of 1819, and growth
The
St. Louis levee on the
Mississippi River in 1857
Commerce after the Louisiana Purchase remained
focused on the fur trade; operations in St. Louis were led by the Chouteau
family and its alliance with the Osages and by Manuel Lisa and
his Missouri Fur Company. Due to its role as a major
trading post, the city was the departure point for the Lewis and Clark
Expedition in
1804.
American and other immigrant families
began arriving in St. Louis and opening new businesses, including printing and
banking, starting in the 1810s.
Among the printers was Joseph Charless,
who published the first newspaper west of the Mississippi, the Missouri Gazette, on July 12, 1808.
In 1816 and 1817, groups of merchants
formed the first banks in the town, but mismanagement and the Panic of 1819 led
to their closure.
The effect of the Panic of 1819 and
subsequent depression slowed commercial activity in St. Louis until the
mid-1820s. By 1824 and 1825, however, St. Louis businesses began to
recover, largely due to the introduction of the steamboat;
the first to arrive in St. Louis, the Zebulon M. Pike, docked on August 2, 1817. Rapids north
of the city made St. Louis the northernmost navigable port for many large riverboats, and the Pike and other ships soon
transformed St. Louis into a bustling inland port. More goods became available
in St. Louis during the economic recovery, largely as a result of the new
steamboat power.
Wholesalers, new banks, and other retail
stores opened starting in the late 1820s and early 1830s. The fur trade
continued as a major industry into the 1830s. In 1822, Jedediah
Smith joined William H. Ashley's
St. Louis fur trading company.
Smith would later be known for his
explorations of the West and for being the first American to travel overland
to California. New fur trade companies such as
the Rocky Mountain Fur
Company pioneered
trails west.
Although beaver fur
lost its popularity in the 1840s, St. Louis continued as a hub of buffalo hide and
other furs.
Construction of the County Courthouse in
the late 1820s also encouraged growth, with an addition of western lots to
Ninth Street and a new City Hall adjacent
to the river in 1833. The military post far north of the city at Fort Bellefontaine moved nearer to the city to Jefferson Barracks in 1827, and the St. Louis Arsenal was
built in south St. Louis the same year.
The 1830s included dramatic population
growth: by 1830, it had increased to 5,832 from roughly 4,500 in 1820. By 1835,
it reached 8,316, doubled by 1840 to 16,439, doubled again by 1845 to 35,390,
and again by 1850 to 77,860.
Infrastructure
and education improvements
St. Louis Fire
(1849)
Steamboats along St. Louis Levee, 1850
In large part due to the rapid
population growth, cholera
became a significant problem. In 1849, a
major cholera epidemic killed nearly 5,000 people,
leading to a new sewer system and the draining of a mill
pond. Cemeteries were
removed to the outskirts to Bellefontaine
Cemetery and Calvary Cemetery to reduce groundwater
contamination.
In the same year, a large fire broke out on a steamboat on the
levee, spread to 23 other boats, and destroyed a large portion of the center
city. The St. Louis landing was significantly improved during the 1850s.
Using the engineering planning of Robert E. Lee,
levees were constructed on the Illinois side to direct water toward Missouri to
eliminate sand bars that threatened the landing. Another infrastructure
improvement was the city's water system, which was begun in the early 1830s and
was continually improved and expanded in the 1840s and 1850s.
Most early St. Louisans remained
illiterate through the 1810s, although many wealthy merchants purchased books
for private libraries. Early schools in St. Louis were all fee-based and
mostly conducted lessons in French.
The first substantial educational effort
came about under the authority of the Catholic Church, which in 1818 opened
Saint Louis Academy, later renamed Saint Louis
University. In
1832, the college applied for a state charter,
and in December 1832, it became the first chartered university west of the
Mississippi River. Its medical school opened
in 1842, with faculty that included Daniel Brainard (founder
of Rush Medical College), Moses Linton (founder of the
first medical journal west of the Mississippi River in
1843), and Charles Alexander Pope (later president of the American Medical
Association). However,
the university primarily catered to seminary students rather than the general
public, and only in the 1840s did the Catholic Church offer large scale
instruction at parochial schools.
In 1853, William Greenleaf
Eliot founded a
second university in the city – Washington
University in St. Louis. During
the 1850s Eliot founded Smith Academy for boys and Mary Institute for girls,
which later merged and became Mary
Institute and St. Louis Country Day School.
Public education in
St. Louis, provided by St. Louis Public
Schools, began in 1838
with the creation of two elementary schools, and the system quickly expanded
during the 1840s. By 1854, the system had 27 schools and served nearly
4,000 students. In 1855, the district opened a high school to
considerable fanfare. The high school, now known as Central VPA High
School, was the first
public high school west of the Mississippi River. By 1860, nearly 12,000
students had enrolled in the district. The district also opened a normal school in
1857, which later became Harris–Stowe State
University.
Entertainment options increased during
the pre–Civil War period; in early 1819, the first theatre production in St.
Louis opened, including a musical accompaniment. In the late 1830s, a
35-member orchestra briefly played in St. Louis, and
in 1860, another orchestra opened that played more than 60 concerts through
1870.
Slavery,
immigration and nativism
See also: History of slavery in Missouri
Dred Scott, whose famous case to gain his
freedom began
as a lawsuit filed in St. Louis in 1846. Missouri
was admitted as a slave state. During the 1840s, the number of slaves
increased but their percentage relative to the population declined; during the
1850s, both the number and percentage declined. Roughly 3,200 free blacks
and slaves lived in St. Louis in 1850, working as domestic servants, artisans,
crew on the riverboats and stevedores.
Some slaves were allowed to earn wages,
and some were able to save money to purchase their freedom or that of
relatives. Others were manumitted,
which occurred relatively more frequently in St. Louis than in the surrounding
rural areas. Still others attempted to escape via the Underground Railroad or attempted to gain their freedom
through freedom suits. The first freedom suit in St.
Louis was filed by Marguerite Scypion in 1805. More than 300 suits were
filed in St. Louis before the Civil War. Among the most famous was that
of Dred Scott and his wife Harriet, in a case heard at the Old Courthouse. The
suit was based on their having traveled and lived with their master in free
states. Although the state ruled in his favor, an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court resulted in an 1857 ruling against
them. The Court ruled that slaves could not be counted as citizens, overturning
the basis of the Missouri Compromise and inflaming national debate
about slavery.
During the economic expansion of the
1830s, Irish and German immigration to St. Louis increased
substantially. In particular, the writings of Gottfried Duden encouraged
German immigration. Many Irish were motivated by the Irish potato famine
of 1845–1846 and
the failed Irish uprising of
1848. Other Irish
settlers came because of its reputation as a Catholic city.
Nativist sentiment increased in St. Louis
during the late 1840s, leading to mob attacks and riots in 1844, 1849, and 1852. The 1844
riots derived from popular outrage and resentment toward human dissection,
which was then taking place at the Saint Louis University Medical
College. The discovery of human remains prompted rumors of grave robbing,
and a mob of more than 3,000 residents attacked the medical college, destroying
most of its interior facilities. The worst nativist riot in St. Louis took
place in 1854. The local militia was
used to end the fighting. 10 people were killed, 33 wounded, and 93
buildings were damaged. Regulations on elections prevented fighting in future
elections in 1856 and 1858.
American
Civil War
Further information: St. Louis in the Civil War
Before the war, the core of St. Louis
leadership had shifted from the Creole and Irish families to a new group,
dominated by anti-slavery Germans. Among this new class of leaders
was Frank P. Blair, Jr., who led an effort to create a local
militia loyal to the Union after Missouri Governor Claiborne Fox
Jackson hinted
about secession. This local militia allied itself
with the Union army forces at Jefferson Barracks under the leadership of Nathaniel Lyon,
which on May 10, 1861 cleared a Confederate encampment outside the city in
what became known as the Camp Jackson Affair. While the Confederates were being
marched back into town, a group of citizens attacked the Union and militia
forces, costing 28 civilian lives.
Throughout the entirety of the Civil
War, St. Louis was under pressure as it was considered a city on the
borderline. Though many people were confident in abolition, many were concerned
about the economic effect of losing their free work force. In addition, St.
Louis was still a developing city, and so a war could lead to utter destruction
and ruin. However, with all the necessity of ammunition, St. Louis survived and
transformed into a leader among cities.
After the Camp Jackson Affair, there
were no more military threats to Union control until 1864, although guerrilla activity
continued in rural areas for the duration of the war. Union General John C. Frémont placed the city under martial law in
August 1861 to suppress sedition;
after Fremont's dismissal, Union army forces continued to suppress
pro-Confederate demonstrations. The war significantly damaged St. Louis
commerce, especially after the Confederacy blockaded the Mississippi shutting
off St. Louis's connection to eastern markets. War also slowed growth during
the 1860s, with an increase of only 43,000 residents from 1860 to 1866.
Fourth city status: 1866–1904
Main article: History of St. Louis, Missouri
(1866–1904)
During the decades after the Civil War,
St. Louis grew to become the nation's fourth largest city, after New York City,
Philadelphia, and Chicago. It also experienced rapid infrastructure and
transportation development and the growth of heavy industry. The period
culminated with the 1904 World's Fair and 1904 Summer Olympics, which were held concurrently in St.
Louis.
Infrastructure, parks, and education
The Eads Bridge opened in 1874 as
the first St. Louis bridge over the Mississippi River. 4th Fa. Chesnut N.,
1872
During the Civil War, the infrastructure
of St. Louis suffered from neglect; another cholera epidemic struck in 1866,
and typhoid fever raged. In response, St. Louis
improved its water system and established a Board of Health to regulate
polluting industries. St. Louis's park system was expanded during the
1860s and 1870s, with the creation of Tower Grove Park
and Forest Park.
Railroads
Railroad connections with the southwest
and Texas were improved during the 1870s, with the formation of the Cotton Belt Railroad. In addition to connecting St.
Louis with the West, the railroads began to demand connections with the east
across the Mississippi. Between 1867 and 1874, work on the Eads Bridge over
the Mississippi continued despite setbacks such as caisson disease. The
bridge formally opened on July 4, 1874.
To accommodate increased rail traffic, a
new railroad terminal was constructed in 1875, but it was not large enough to
consolidate all train service in one location. A replacement station,
called Union Station, opened on September 1, 1894.
Although Chicago had a greater volume of traffic at
its own Union Station, more railroads met at St. Louis than
any other city in the United States. Union Station's rail platform expanded in
1930 and operated as the passenger rail terminal for St. Louis into the 1970s.
Education
By 1870 the public and parochial
education systems expanded, to 24,347 and 4,362 students respectively. St.
Louis educators established the first public kindergarten in
the United States, under the instruction of Susan Blow in
1874. Proposals for a free library system originated prior to the Civil
War, and after the conflict the St. Louis Public School Library was
established. During the 1870s and 1880s, a variety of local fee-based libraries
consolidated with the school library system, and in 1894, the school system
divested the library system as an independent entity, which became the St. Louis Public
Library.
Racially segregated schools had operated secretly and
illegally in St. Louis since the 1820s, but in 1864, an integrated group of St.
Louisans formed the Board of Education for Colored Schools, which established
schools without public finances for more than 1,500 black pupils in 1865.
After 1865, the St. Louis Board of
Education appropriated funding for the black schools, but facilities and
conditions were quite poor. In 1875, after considerable effort and protest from
the black community, high school classes began to be offered at Sumner High School, the first high school for black
students west of the Mississippi. However, inequality remained rampant in St.
Louis schools.
Radical historians in the 1960s, steeped
in the anti-bureaucratic ethos of the New Left, deplored the emergence of
bureaucratic school systems. They argue its purpose was to suppress the upward
aspirations of the working class. However, other historians have
emphasized the necessity of building non-politicized standardized systems. The
reforms in St. Louis, according to historian Selwyn Troen, were. "born of
necessity as educators first confronted the problems of managing a rapidly
expanding and increasingly complex institutions." Troen found that the
bureaucratic solution remove schools from the bitterness and spite of ward
politics.
Troen argues: In the space of only a
generation, public education had left behind a highly regimented and
politicized system dedicated to training children in the basic skills of
literacy and the special discipline required of urban citizens, and had
replaced it with a largely apolitical, more highly organized and efficient
structure specifically designed to teach students the many specialized skills
demanded in a modern, industrial society. In terms of programs this entailed
the introduction of vocational instruction, a doubling of the period of
schooling, and a broader concern for the welfare of urban youth.
Separation from St. Louis County
Map
of St Louis in 1885
When Missouri became a state in 1821,
St. Louis County was created from the boundaries of the former St. Louis sub-district
of the Missouri Territory; St. Louis city existed within the county but was not
coterminous with it. Starting in the 1850s, rural county voters began to exert
political influence over questions of taxation in the St. Louis County court. In
1867, the county court was given power to assess and collect property tax
revenue from St. Louis city property, providing a financial boon to the county
government while depriving city government of revenues. After this power
transfer, St. Louisans in the city began to favor one of three options: greater
representation on the county court via charter changes, city–county
consolidation, or urban secession to
form an independent city.
At a Missouri state constitutional
convention in 1875, delegates from the region agreed on a separation
plan. A Board of Freeholders from
St. Louis county and city reorganized boundaries and proposed a final plan of
separation in mid-1876. The new city charter also tripled the size of the
city to include the new rural parks (such as Forest Park) and the useful
riverfront from the Missouri–Mississippi confluence to the mouth of the River Des Peres.
After a fraudulent election
initially showed a rejection of the plan, a recount in December 1876 showed
voters had approved the separation.
Industrial and commercial growth
In 1880, the leading industries of St.
Louis included brewing,
flour milling, slaughtering, paper making,
machining, and tobacco processing. Other industries
including the manufacture of paint, bricks, and iron.
During the 1880s, the city grew in
population by 29 percent, from 350,518 to 451,770, making it the country's
fourth largest city; it also ranked fourth as measured by value of its
manufactured products, and more than 6,148 factories existed in 1890. However,
during the 1890s, manufacturing growth slowed dramatically.
The Panic of 1893 and
subsequent depression and the overproduction of grain made St. Louis mills considerably
less productive and valuable. Flour milling was halved and most other
industries suffered similar declines.
The introduction of the railroad in St.
Louis helped spread the fortune and initialize much of this industrial success.
With the completion of the Municipal Railroad System, St. Louis' manufacturers
could get their products to consumers on the East Coast much faster than
before.
St.
Louis brewery Anheuser-Busch pioneered the use
of refrigerated
railroad cars for
transporting beer to a national market. The
brewing small industry took off with the arrival of Adam Lemp from
Germany in 1842. He introduced lager beer,
which quickly became the city's most popular choice. The industry expanded
rapidly in the late 1850s, from 24 breweries in 1854 to 40 in
1860. Brewing became the city's largest industry by 1880, and St. Louis
breweries were innovators. Anheuser-Busch pioneered refrigerated railroad cars
for beer transport and was the first company to market pasteurized bottled
beer.
Industry
along 12th St. and Washington Ave., 1892
St. Louis became home to whiskey
distilleries. Several were at the heart of the Whiskey Ring during
the early 1870s, a conspiracy that began among St. Louis distillers and federal
tax officials to avoid paying excise taxes. With the breakup of the ring in May
1875, more than 100 conspirators were charged with fraud, including Grant's
private secretary,
Orville E. Babcock. In early 1876, 110 conspirators were
convicted of fraud. Babcock was the only defendant who was acquitted.
The Ralston-Purina company,
headed by the Danforth family, was headquartered in the city, and Anheuser-Busch,
the world's largest brewery, remained a fixture of the city's economy into the
21st century. The city was home to both International Shoe and the Brown Shoe Company. St. Louis was also home to the Graham Paper Company, the oldest and largest paper company
west of the Mississippi River. The Desloge Consolidated Lead Company,
the largest lead mining concern in the country, headed by the Desloge family, was headquartered
downtown. In May 1874, the insurance companies of St. Louis founded the Underwriters
Salvage Corps to
reduce the impact of fires in the city.
Passenger
jam the interior of Union
Station in
St. Louis, the largest and busiest train station in the world when it opened in
1894.
Among the downsides to rapid
industrialization was pollution. Brick firing produced particulate air pollution and
paint-making created lead dust, while beer and liquor
brewing produced grain swill. The worst pollution was coal dust and
smoke, for which St. Louis was infamous by the 1890s. The greatest number
of complaints to the St. Louis Board of Health were due to industries engaged
in rendering, which produced noxious fumes. In
spite of this, pollution control was hindered by a desire to promote
growth. One of the few controls began in 1880, in which regulations would
be enforced strictly in some areas while little in others, thereby encouraging
factories to concentrate in industrial districts.
In addition to industrial growth, the
1880s and 1890s were a period of significant growth in downtown commercial
building. The retail district was centered at Fourth Street and Washington
Avenue, while banking and business was centered to the south, at Fourth and
Olive streets. During the 1890s, significant retailers and businesses moved
westward; among the new buildings constructed as a result of this movement was
the Wainwright Building. Designed by Louis Sullivan in
1891, the Wainwright was the tallest building in the city at the time of its
construction and remains an example of early skyscraper design.
Culture
From
1901 to 1907, ragtime composer Scott Joplin lived in St.
Louis
In September 1880, the St. Louis Choral
Society opened as a musical orchestra and choir; the same organization provided
annual concerts through 1906, when it was renamed the St. Louis Symphony
Orchestra. Starting
in the 1890s, the district known as Chestnut Valley (an area near the
present-day Scottrade Center) became the home of St. Louis
ragtime. Several well-known ragtime and jazz composers lived or played in
St. Louis, including W.C. Handy, Tom Turpin, Scott Hayden, Arthur Marshall, Joe Jordan, and Louis Chauvin. In
addition to the early Chestnut Valley players, ragtime composer Scott Joplin moved
to St. Louis from Sedalia, Missouri in
1901, where he associated with Tom Turpin and composed music in the city until
moving to Chicago in 1907.
The sport of baseball began
to be played in the years following the Civil War; a team known as the St. Louis Brown
Stockings was
founded in 1875. The Brown Stockings were a founding member of the National League and
became a hometown favorite, defeating the Chicago White Stockings (later
the Chicago Cubs) in their opener on May 6,
1875. The original Brown Stockings club closed in 1878, and an unrelated
National League team with the same name was founded in 1882.This team
repeatedly changed its name, shortening to the Browns in 1883, becoming the
Perfectos in 1899, and settling on the St. Louis Cardinals in 1900. In 1902, a team
moved to St. Louis from Milwaukee and adopted the name St. Louis Browns,
although they had no relation to the previous Browns or Brown
Stockings. From 1902 until the 1950s, St. Louis was home to two Major
League teams.
Notable residents in the field of
literature included poets Sara Teasdale and T. S. Eliot,
as well as playwright Tennessee Williams.
1904 World's Fair
Beginning in the 1850s, St. Louis hosted
annual agricultural and mechanical fairs at Fairground Park to
connect with regional manufacturers and growers. By the 1880s, the connection
to agriculture had declined, and in 1883, a new St. Louis Exposition
and Music Hall was
built to house industrial exhibits. In 1890, St. Louis attempted to host
the World's Columbian
Exposition, but the
project was awarded to Chicago, which hosted the exposition in 1893. In
1899, delegates from states that had been part of the Louisiana Purchase met in
St. Louis, selecting it as the site of a world's fair celebrating
the centennial of the purchase in 1904.
Company directors selected the western
half of Forest Park as the fair site, sparking a real estate and construction
boom. Streetcar and rail service to the area was improved, and a new filtration
system was implemented to improve the St. Louis water supply. The fair
consisted of an "Ivory City" of twelve temporary exhibition palaces,
and one permanent exhibit palace which became the St. Louis Art Museum after the fair. The fair
celebrated American expansionism and world cultures with exhibits of historical
French fur-trading, and Eskimo and Filipino villages. Concurrently,
the 1904 Summer Olympics were held in St. Louis, at what
would become the campus of Washington University
in St. Louis.
Decline of the inner city and urban renewal: 1905–1980
Main article: History of St. Louis, Missouri
(1905–1980)
Civic
improvements and segregation policies
During the early 1900s and 1910s, St.
Louis began a building program that created parks and playgrounds in several
deteriorating residential neighborhoods.
Parks Commissioner (and former professional tennis player) Dwight F. Davis continued
the development of recreational facilities during the early 1910s by
expanding tennis facilities and building a public
18-hole golf course in northwest Forest
Park. The St. Louis Zoo was constructed in Forest Park in
the early 1910s under the leadership of Mayor Henry Kiel.
Since the 1890s, St. Louis had attempted
to control its air pollution problems with little success, but damage to
buildings and flora made the issue more visible during the 1920s. Problems
came to a head with the 1939 St. Louis smog, which blackened the sky and lasted for
three weeks. A ban on burning low-quality coal solved the problem in
December 1939, and the addition of natural gas for
heating assisted homeowners in making the transition to cleaner fuels by the
late 1940s.
During the 1904 World's Fair, ballooning was demonstrated as a viable means
of transportation; in October 1907, the second Gordon Bennett Cup, an international balloon racing event,
was held in the city.
The first airplane flight
occurred in late 1909, and by the next year, an airfield had
been established in nearby Kinloch, Missouri. In
October 1910,
St. Louis hosted President Theodore Roosevelt, who became the first president to fly
in an airplane after departing from the field.
In 1925, local entrepreneur Albert Lambert purchased Kinloch Field, expanded
its facilities, and renamed it Lambert Field. In
May 1927, Charles Lindbergh departed from Lambert Field en
route to New York to begin his solo non-stop flight across
the Atlantic Ocean. In early 1928, the city of St. Louis purchased the
airport from Lambert, making it the first municipally owned airport in the
United States; Lambert remains the area's primary airport.
Although St. Louis enforced a variety
of Jim Crow laws, the area generally had a lower level
of racial violence and fewer lynchings
than the American South. The St. Louis black community was
stable and relatively concentrated along the riverfront or near the railroad
yards. Although informal discrimination had existed in the St. Louis
housing market since the end of the Civil War, only in 1916 did St. Louis pass
a residential
segregation ordinance. The
ordinance quickly was invalidated by court injunctions,
but private restrictive
covenants in St.
Louis real estate transactions limited the ability of white owners to sell to
blacks and were another form of racial discrimination. In 1948 the U.S.
Supreme Court overturned such real estate limitations as unconstitutional
in Shelley v. Kraemer,
a court case based on the sale of a St. Louis house (the Shelley House) to a black family.
Despite segregationist and racist
attitudes, St. Louis acted as a haven during the 1917 East St. Louis Riot, as St. Louis police shepherded fleeing
blacks across the Eads Bridge to shelter and food provided by the city
government and the American Red Cross. Leonidas C. Dyer,
who represented part of St. Louis in the U.S. House, led a Congressional
investigation into the events and eventually sponsored an anti-lynching bill in response. Due to an influx
of refugees from East St. Louis and the general effects of the Great Migration of blacks from the rural South to
industrial cities, the black population of St. Louis increased more rapidly
than the whole during the decade of 1910 to 1920.
Unemployment in St. Louis during the
Great Depression was high. Black unemployment went from 13.2% in 1930 to 80% in
1933. White unemployment went from8.4% in 1930 to 30% in 1933.
World War I and the interbellum period
Both the St. Louis German and Irish
communities urged neutrality at the 1914 outbreak of World War
I, which contributed to a resurgent nativism after U.S. entry into the
war in
1917. As a result, German St. Louisans suffered some discrimination during
the war, and St. Louisans repressed elements of German culture. Commerce
was not dramatically affected by the war. However, leading up to and before
World War I, the population started to decrease as men were needed to work at
the artillery plants and factories that were closer to the Atlantic.
After World War I, the nationwide prohibition of
alcohol in 1919
brought heavy losses to the St. Louis brewing industry. Other industries, such
as light manufacturing of clothing, automobile manufacturing, and chemical
production, filled much of the gap, and St. Louis's economy was relatively
diversified and healthy during the 1920s.
St. Louis suffered as much or more than
comparable cities in the early years of the Great Depression.
Manufacturing output fell by 57 percent between 1929 and 1933, slightly more
than the national average of 55 percent, and output remained low until World
War II. Unemployment during the Depression was high in most urban areas,
and St. Louis was no exception (see table).
Black workers in St. Louis, as in many
cities, suffered significantly higher unemployment than their white
counterparts. To aid the unemployed, the city allocated funds starting in
1930 toward relief operations. In addition to city relief
aid, New Deal programs such as the Public Works
Administration employed
thousands of St. Louisans. Civic improvement construction jobs also reduced the
number of persons on direct relief aid by the late 1930s.
World War II
During World War II, St. Louis was the
location of a large ammunition factory and the Curtiss-Wright aircraft
factory. Area factories also produced uniforms and footwear, K-rations,
and chemicals and medicines.
The uranium used
in the Manhattan Project was refined in St. Louis by Mallinckrodt
Chemical Company starting
in 1942, and several atomic bomb
scientists had ties to St. Louis, including Arthur Compton.
At the start of the war, many German,
Italian, and Japanese St. Louisans were interrogated or arrested, while the FBI investigated charges of sedition in
the area. Residents engaged in civil defense drills
and supported the war effort with scrap drives and war bond purchases.
St. Louis produced several notable
soldiers in the war, including Edward O'Hare,
who grew up in St. Louis and won the Medal of Honor for
combat in the Pacific. St. Louis also was home to Wendell O. Pruitt,
an African-American pilot who shot down three enemy
aircraft and destroyed multiple ground targets in June 1944.
At the outbreak of war, African-American
workers gained greater acceptance in industry than previously, but
discrimination remained a problem for many black workers. During the war,
city officials passed the first municipal integration ordinance, allowing
African Americans to eat at city-owned (but not private) lunch
counters. In May 1944, when a black sailor in uniform was refused service
at a privately owned lunch counter, the action prompted peaceful sit-in protests
at several downtown diners. No changes in Jim Crow segregation policies at
lunch counters resulted, but Saint Louis University admitted its first black students
starting in August 1944.
More than 5,400 St. Louisans became
casualties of the war, listed as either missing or killed in action. The
end of the war led to the closure of many St. Louis factories, with major layoffs beginning
in May and continuing through August 1945. By late 1945, returning soldiers encountered a
chronic housing and job shortage in the city. The GI Bill allowed
many St. Louis veterans to purchase homes and pursue higher education, which
encouraged sub-urbanization that after the war reduced the city's population.
Sub-urbanization
and population loss
Internal population migration westward
was a feature of St. Louis since its earliest days, but it accelerated rapidly
in the late 19th century. Starting in the 1890s, the St. Louis streetcar
system and
commuter railroad stations enabled commuters to travel from suburban towns
bordering the city into the downtown.
Towns such as Kirkwood, Maplewood, Webster Groves, Richmond Heights, University City, and Clayton grew
rapidly between 1900 and 1930. Extensive movement to these towns doubled the
population of St. Louis County from 1910 to 1920, while due to restrictions on
immigration and outward migration the city grew only 12 percent in the same
period.
During the 1930s, the city's population
declined by a small amount for the first time, but St. Louis County grew by
nearly 30 percent. Nearly 80 percent of new residential construction in the
region occurred outside city limits during the late 1930s, and St. Louis
planners were unable to combat the problem via annexation.
The city reached its highest recorded
census population in 1950, reaching 856,796, and its population peaked in the
early 1950s with approximately 880,000 residents. However, new highway
construction and increased automobile ownership enabled further suburbanization
and population began a long decline. Another factor in the city's population
loss was white flight, which began in earnest during the late
1950s and continued during the 1960s and 1970s. From 1950 to 1960, the
city population declined by 13 percent to 750,026, and from 1960 to 1970, the
city declined another 17 percent to 622,236.
Of this decline, the white population
declined primarily due to "massive outward migration, primarily to the
suburbs."
Between 1960 and 1970, a net 34 percent
of white city residents moved out; in addition, city white death rates exceeded
birth rates. By the early 1970s, the white population of the city had
decreased significantly, particularly among those of child-bearing
age. The black population of St. Louis saw a natural increase of 19.5
percent during the 1960s, with no gain or loss through migration; during that
decade, the overall percentage of black city residents rose from 29 to 41
percent. However, the black population declined in size from 1968 to 1972
by nearly 20,000 residents, representing significant black out-migration from
the city during the period. Many moved to suburban developments in St. Louis
County.
Urban renewal projects and the Arch
The
St. Louis riverfront in 1942 after land clearance for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
Early urban renewal efforts
in St. Louis coincided with efforts to plan a riverfront memorial
to honor Thomas Jefferson,
which would later include the famous Gateway Arch. Work
began in the early 1930s on acquisition and demolition of the forty-block area
where the memorial would stand; the only remnant of Laclede's street grid that
was preserved was north of the Eads Bridge (in what is now known as Laclede's Landing). The only building in the area to
remain was the Old Cathedral. Demolition continued until the
outbreak of World War II, when the area began to be used as a parking lot. The
project stalled until a design competition for the memorial was launched.
In 1948, Finnish architect Eero Saarinen's
design for an inverted and weighted catenary curve
won the competition; however, groundbreaking did not occur until 1954. The Arch
topped out in October 1965. A museum and visitors' center was completed
underneath the structure, opening in 1976. In addition to attracting millions
of visitors, the Arch ultimately spurred more than $500 million in downtown
construction during the 1970s and 1980s.
Concurrent with plans to build the
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial during the 1930s were plans to
create subsidized housing in the city. Despite efforts
at civic improvement starting in the 1920s and two significant housing projects
built in 1939, after World War II more than 33,000 houses had shared or outdoor
toilets, while thousands of St. Louisans lived in crowded, unsafe
conditions.
Starting in 1953, St. Louis cleared the
Chestnut Valley area in Midtown, selling the land to developers who constructed
middle-class apartment buildings. Nearby, the city cleared more than 450
acres (1.8 km2) of a residential neighborhood known as Mill
Creek Valley, displacing thousands. A residential mixed-income development
known as LaClede Town was created in the area in
the early 1960s, although this was eventually demolished for an expansion of
Saint Louis University. The majority of people displaced from Mill Creek
Valley were poor and African American, and they typically moved to historically
stable, middle-class black neighborhoods such as The Ville.
The Pruitt–Igoe housing project consisted of 33
buildings and nearly 3,000 units but lasted less than 20 years
In 1953, St. Louis issued bonds that
financed the completion of the St. Louis Gateway
Mall project and
several new high-rise housing projects. The most famous and largest
was Pruitt–Igoe, which opened in 1954 on the northwest
edge of downtown and included 33 eleven-story buildings with nearly 3,000
units. Between 1953 and 1957, St. Louis built more than 6,100 units of public
housing, and each opened with enthusiasm on the part of local leaders, the
media, and new tenants.
From the beginning problems
plagued the projects; it became quickly apparent that there was too little
recreational space, too few healthcare facilities or shopping centers, and
employment opportunities were scarce. Crime was rampant, particularly at
Pruitt–Igoe and that complex was demolished in 1975. The other St. Louis
housing projects remained relatively well-occupied through the 1980s, in spite
of lingering problems with crime.
Along with the housing projects, a 1955
urban renewal bond issue totaled more than $110 million. The bonds provided
funds to purchase land to build three expressways into downtown St. Louis, which
later became Interstate 64, Interstate 70,
and Interstate 44. In 1967, the highway-only Poplar Street Bridge opened to move traffic from all
three expressways over the Mississippi River.
The openings of the Arch in 1965 and the
bridge in 1967 were accompanied by the opening of a new stadium for
the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals moved into Busch Memorial Stadium early in the 1966 season.
Construction of the stadium required the demolition of Chinatown, St. Louis, ending the decades-old presence of a
Chinese immigrant community.
Government
consolidation attempts
Due to the city's population decline,
beginning in the 1920s and accelerating through the 1950s, local government
leaders made several attempts to consolidate services. A pre–Great
Depression annexation attempt by the city failed due to opposition from county
voters, and only after World War II would more efforts be made toward
consolidation.
The first (and one of the few)
successful attempts at consolidation resulted in the creation of the Metropolitan Sewer District, a city–county water and sewer company
formed in 1954.
The next year, however, a city–county mass transit agency
was rejected by voters, followed by a failed charter revision in 1955 that
would have unified the city and the county. As the County population grew,
local subdivisions began multiplying and incorporating into cities and towns,
producing more than 90 separate municipalities by the 1960s. Regional
planning advocates succeeded in the 1965 creation of the East–West Gateway Coordinating Council, a group given the power to approve or
deny applications for federal aid from cities.
Recent developments: 1981–present
Main article: History of St. Louis, Missouri
(1981–present)
Beautification
and crime prevention projects
By the late 1970s, urban decay had
spread, as described by Kenneth T. Jackson, historian of suburban development:
[St. Louis is] a premier example of
urban abandonment.
Once the fourth largest city in America,
the "Gateway to the West" is now twenty-seventh, a ghost of its
former self. In 1940 it contained 816,000 inhabitants: in 1980 the census
counted only 453,000. Many of its old neighborhoods have become dispiriting
collections of burned-out buildings, eviscerated homes, and vacant lots.... The
air is polluted, the sidewalks are filthy, the juvenile crime is horrendous,
and the remaining industries are languishing. Grimy warehouses and aging loft
factories are landscaped by weed-grown lots adjoining half-used rail yards.
Like an elderly couple no longer sure of their purpose in life after their
children have moved away, these neighborhoods face an undirected future.— Kenneth T. Jackson
As of the election of Vincent Schoemehl as
the city's youngest mayor ever in 1981, St. Louis's problems were more
significant than many other rustbelt cities.
Several major development projects incomplete and the city's economic base
crumbling. However, Schoemehl developed two projects early in his three
terms in office that assisted St. Louis: Operation Brightside provided city
beautification through plantings and graffiti cleanup. Schoemehl
also instituted a safety program to address crime, known as Operation
SafeStreet, which blocked access to certain through streets and provided
low-cost security measures to homeowners. Crime declined starting in 1984,
and despite a small resurgence in 1989, continued to decline through the 1990s.
School
desegregation and voluntary transfers
Although de jure segregation in St. Louis public schools ended
in 1954 after Brown v. Board of Education,
St. Louis area educators continued to employ tactics to ensure de facto segregation during the 1960s.
In the 1970s, a lawsuit challenging
this segregation led to a 1983 settlement agreement in which St. Louis County
school districts agreed to accept black students from the city on a voluntary
basis. State funds were used to transport students to provide an integrated
education. The agreement also called for white students from the county to
voluntarily attend city magnet schools,
in an effort to desegregate the City's remaining schools. Despite
opposition from state and local political leaders, the plan significantly
desegregated St. Louis schools; in 1980, 82 percent of black students in the
city attended all-black schools, while in 1995, only 41 percent did
so. During the late 1990s, the St. Louis voluntary transfer program was
the largest such program in the United States, with more than 14,000 enrolled
students.
Under a renewed agreement in 1999, all
but one of the St. Louis County districts agreed to continue their
participation, albeit with an opt-out clause that allowed districts to reduce
the number of incoming transfer students starting in 2002. In addition,
districts have been permitted to reduce available seats in the program. Since
1999, districts have reduced availability by five percent annually. A
five-year extension of the voluntary transfer program was approved in
2007, and another five-year extension was approved in 2012, allowing new
enrollments to take place through the 2018–2019 school year in participating
districts. Critics of the transfer program note that most of the
desegregation under the plan is via transfer of black students to the county
rather than transfer of white students to the city. Another criticism has
been that the program weakens city schools by removing talented students to
county schools. Despite these issues, the program will continue until all
transfer students reach graduation; with the last group of transfer students
allowed to enroll in 2018–2019, the program will end after the 2030–2031 school
year.
New
construction, gentrification, and rehabilitation
From 1981 to 1993, new construction
projects were initiated in downtown St. Louis at levels unseen since the early
1960s. Among these was the tallest building in the city, One Metropolitan
Square, which was
designed by Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum and
built in 1989. New retail projects began to take shape: Amtrak
abandoned Union Station as a passenger rail terminal in 1978, but in 1985, it
reopened as a festival marketplace under the direction of Baltimore
developer James Rouse. The same year, downtown
developers opened St. Louis Centre,
an enclosed four-story shopping mall costing
$176 million with 150 stores and 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 m2)
of retail space. By the late 1990s, however, the mall had fallen out of
favor due to the expansion of the St. Louis Galleria in Brentwood, Missouri. The mall's flagship Dillard's store
closed in 2001. The mall closed in 2006, and beginning in 2010, developers
began to convert the mall into a parking structure and an adjoining building
into apartments, hotel, and retail.
The Washington Avenue Historic District has been the site
of several renovation projects since the late 1990s
The city sponsored a major expansion of
the St. Louis Convention
Center during the
1980s, and Schoemehl focused efforts on retaining professional sports
teams. To that end, the city purchased The Arena,
a 15,000-seat venue for professional ice hockey that
was home of the St. Louis Blues. In
the early 1990s, Schoemehl worked with business groups to develop a new ice hockey arena
(now known as the Scottrade Center)
on the site of the city's Kiel Auditorium,
with the promise that the developer would renovate the adjacent opera house.
Although the arena opened in 1994 (and
the original arena was demolished in 1999), renovations on the opera house did
not begin until 2007. This was more than 15 years after the initial development
plan. The Peabody Opera House (named for corporate
contributor Peabody Energy) reopened on October 1, 2011, with
performances by Jay Leno and Aretha Franklin.
In January 1995, Georgia Frontiere,
the owner of the National Football
League team known
as the Los Angeles Rams (now St. Louis Rams),
announced she would move that team to St. Louis.[244] The
team replaced the St. Louis Cardinals (now Arizona Cardinals),
an NFL franchise that had moved to St. Louis in 1960 but departed for Arizona
in 1988. The Rams played their first game in their St. Louis stadium,
the Edward Jones Dome, on October 22, 1996.
Starting in the early 1980s, more
rehabilitation and construction projects began, some of which remain
incomplete. In 1981, the Fox Theatre, a movie theater in Midtown that closed
in 1978, was completely restored and reopened as a performing arts
venue. Among the areas to undergo gentrification was
the Washington Avenue Historic District, which extends along Washington Avenue
from the Edward Jones Dome west almost two dozen blocks. During the early 1990s,
garment manufacturers moved out of the large office buildings on the street,
and by the end of that decade residential developers began to convert the
buildings into lofts. Prices per square foot increased
dramatically in the area, and by 2001, nearly 280 apartments were
built. Among the Washington Avenue projects to remain in development is
the Mercantile Exchange Building, which is being converted to offices,
apartments, retail, and a movie theater. The gentrification also has had the
effect of increasing the downtown population, with both the central business
district and Washington Avenue district more than doubling their population
from 2000 to 2010.
Other downtown projects include the
renovation of the Old Post Office,
which started in 1998 and was completed in 2006. The Old Post Office and seven
adjacent buildings had been vacant since the early 1990s; as of 2010 this
complex included a variety of tenants, including a branch of the St. Louis Public
Library, a branch
of Webster University, the St. Louis Business Journal,
and a variety of government offices. The renovation of the Old Post Office
spurred development of an adjacent plaza, which is linked to a new $80 million
residential building called Roberts Tower, the first new residential construction
in downtown St. Louis since the 1970s.
As early as 1999, the St. Louis
Cardinals began pushing for the construction of a new Busch Stadium as
part of a broader trend in Major League
Baseball toward
stadium building. In early 2002, plans for a new park were settled among
state and local leaders and Cardinals owners.
According to an agreement in which the
state and city would issue bonds for construction, the Cardinals agreed to
build a multipurpose development known as St. Louis Ballpark
Village on part of
the site of Busch Memorial Stadium. The new stadium opened in 2006, and
groundbreaking for Ballpark Village took place in February 2013.
Population
and crime issues
Starting in the early 1990s, St. Louis
became home to a substantial Bosnian immigrant
community, which became the second-largest in the United States in 1999. The
city also began to see an increase in immigrants from Mexico, Vietnam,
Ethiopia, and Somalia. Many immigrants reported moving to St. Louis,
particularly its south side Bevo Mill neighborhood, due to the
low cost of living compared to other American cities. Despite this
increase, the foreign-born population of the St. Louis region was roughly
one-third of the national average in 2010.
During the mid-2000s, the population of
St. Louis began growing following a half-century of decline. Census estimates
from 2003 through 2008 were successfully challenged and population figures were
revised upward; however, no challenges to 2009 data were permitted. In
spite of gains during the 2000s, the 2010 U.S. Census
showed a decline of slightly more than
10 percent for St. Louis.
Given the losses of industry and jobs,
St. Louis has had significant and persistent problems with both crime and
perceptions of crime. In 2011 St. Louis was named by U.S. News and World Report as
the most dangerous city in the United States, using Uniform Crime
Reports data
published by the U.S. Department of
Justice. In
addition, St. Louis was named as the city with the highest crime rate in the
United States by CQ Press in 2010, using data reported to
the FBI in 2009. Critics of these analyses note that division between St.
Louis City and St. Louis County make crime reports for the area appear inflated,
and that reporting crime differs greatly depending on the localities
involved. The FBI cautioned against using this data as a form of ranking,
as it presents too simplistic a view of crime. From 2006 to 2007, the rate
of city youth to be killed by guns was the second-highest in the United States,
according to data released by the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate of firearm deaths for
the metropolitan
statistical area was
one-fifth of the city rate.
Comments
Having
lived in St. Louis from 1951 to 1975, I can add some information missing in the
wiki article above that focused primarily on the City of St. Louis.
It
neglected covering the growth of the suburbs in St. Louis County and St.
Charles County. The population of this Metro area was 2.5 million in 1983 and
is now 2.9 million in 2018. The population of St Charles County grew from
50,000 in 1966 to 400,000 in 2017. The St. Louis Metro area is very affordable,
because it has a very large private sector economy and has been well managed. St.
Louis Metro has shrunk and grown incrementally and avoided the economic
devastation that hit Detroit and the endless corruption suffered by Chicago.
I was
born in St. Louis in 1943 and we lived away from St. Louis from 1945 to 1951,
but we returned to St. Louis in 1951. We bought a house across the street from
my grandpa’s house in 1956. I could bike to Forest Park and took the bus to
high school until I was 16 when I bought a car. There were lots of things to do
and it was easy to get around. I lived
in Maplewood until 1966 where I finished grade school, high school and college.
It was ideal.
I moved
to Weldon Springs in St. Charles County in 1966 because I was able to buy a
large house on a large lot for about half the cost of buying a smaller house on
a smaller lot in St. Louis County. It was just off Hwy 40 just across the
Missouri River Bridge. It was very close to St. Louis County and that gave us
access to where we needed to go. I worked downtown and had an office in St.
Charles in 1966. Later I worked in St. Louis and St. Louis County, but my
commute was always less than 30 minutes. The roads and highway grid are the
best in the US.
At the
same time, I had friends who were moving in to old homes near Grand Avenue and
Forest Park to refurbish these large homes. Most of them were city-centered and
needed to live close to the city. This spread all over the old residential
areas of mid-town. These couples bought
cheap, fixed the houses up and their equity rose. It’s all about the money.
We moved
to Salina Kansas in 1975 and then to Atlanta Georgia in 1983. Because both of
our families were in St. Louis Metro, we visited them every year or two. I
watched the completion of their highway grid that allowed us to drive anywhere
in the Metro in 30 minutes at any time. I saw well-planned growth and upgrading
throughout the Metro. I saw St. Charles County grow from rural exurbs to
completed, self-contained suburbs.
The
History of St. Louis is incredible starting with the establishment of French
trading posts in the 1600s drawn to the Mississippi and Missouri river shipping
lanes still used today to move food to market. The Catholic roots from France
and Spain served as a magnet to create a largely Catholic population that is
still there and is still welcoming.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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