alternatehistory.com

There are dozens of ways we imagine our nation’s capital: the steel-and-brick of Eads Bridge across the mighty Mississippi, the Beaux-Arts Skyscrapers and shaded boulevards of Laclede’s Landing, the hipster communities of St. Clair, or the barbecue and murals of Kinloch, just to name a few. All of these conjure up images of the city, and with them certain assumptions. But St. Louis is a dynamic and ever-changing place. In some ways, it is more European than many American cities, with its aversion to large highways, streetcar system, and famous Mardi Gras and Oktoberfest celebrations (the second-largest and third-largest in the country, respectively!) At the same time, St. Louis is quintessentially American, and as Gateway to the West, the southern end of the Nomiz Megalopolis, and junction of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, it binds together the country.

St. Louis was first founded by the French explorer Pierre Laclede in 1763, on the opposite shore from what was once Cahokia, one of the largest population centers of the Mississippian culture. In 1803, St. Louis was transferred to the United States, and became the gateway to the west for many enterprising pioneers. During the Civil War, St. Louis remained part of the Union, and the St. Louis Arsenal was instrumental in maintaining federal control of the Mississippi River. In 1889, the country voted to move the capital from Washington, DC, and St. Louis defeated Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco. The District of Lincoln, bounded by the Mississippi River to the east, the Missouri River to the north and north-west, and the Meramac River to the south-west, was carved from Missouri, and in 1895, St. Louis became America’s third capital.

In 1904, St. Louis celebrated its new status by hosting both the World’s Fair and the Olympic Games, becoming the first city outside of Europe to host the Olympics and the only city to host both events simultaneously. St. Louis continued to be a popular destination for many, and in the 1920s Kinloch, an underdeveloped region in northern St. Louis, rose to prominence as “Black Wall Street,” in part due to the arrival of many fleeing violence in Tulsa, OK, becoming the heart of a new cultural movement. St. Louis became ground zero for many social movements in the later 1900s, including the environmental movement, the LGBT+ rights movement, and the Civil Rights movement.

Today, St. Louis is the twenty-fifth largest city in the United States, and, along with Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois, Peoria, Illinois, and Springfield, Illinois, part of the “Nomiz” megalopolis region. St. Louis continues to be an active part of American culture, with their Baseball, Soccer, Hockey, and Basketball teams, as well as many nationally-recognized brands, Schneider-Carondelet Brewing, McDonnell Air & Space, Mallinckrodt Chemical, and Barnes-Jewish Healthcare. It is also a major tourist destination, thanks to the many distinctive neighborhoods of the city.

These neighborhoods include Laclede’s Landing, Soulard, Kinloch, Greenleaf-Eliot, and The Hill. Laclede’s Landing, the downtown of St. Louis, is known for being the location of the United States Capital Building, the president’s home at the Seward House, the Washington, Madison, Lincoln, and Stevenson Memorials, and thirteen of the Smithsonian Institution’s museums. Much of the skyline of Laclede’s Landing is dominated by the Beaux-Arts skyscrapers built there in the 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s shortly after the capital moved. Soulard, to the south, was once the “French Quarter” of St. Louis, and is now known for its red brick architecture, old Farmer’s Market, and massive Oktoberfest and Mardi Gras celebrations. To the north, Kinloch is a major center of Black American culture and finance. Greenleaf Park, formerly Forest Park, is the heart of Greenleaf-Eliot, a center of the Second Empire architecture which characterizes much of St. Louis and the inner residential region of the city. Finally, The Hill is a major Italian-American community and the heart of St. Louis’s food scene.

In the District of Lincoln, several famous landmarks can be found. Of course, the Capital Building and Seward House are famous, as are the many memorials and statues that can be found downtown. Other points of interest include the Cathedral Basilica, St. Louis’ largest Catholic Church, a neo-Byzantine basilica with the largest collection of mosaics in the western hemisphere, Eads Bridge, a famous 19th century bridge across the Mississippi, and the Eliot Central Library, a Greek Revival library built atop the former home of poet T.S. Eliot. Greenleaf Park is also the home to many landmarks, many from the 1904 World's Fair. These include the National Zoo, St. Louis History Museum, Wheatley National Theater, Lincoln Pavilion, and the Monument to Enslaved Americans. St. Louis is the home to seven accredited universities. Among these, Washington University (located on the west side of Greenleaf Park) and Dunham University (located in Kinloch) have the largest enrollment and are recognized nationally as major research institutions.

The areas surrounding St. Louis are no less interesting. St. Charles, Missouri, north of the Missouri River, is the home of the distinctive “St. Charles Southern” architectural style, blending Queen Anne with Antebellum South, as well as the National Security Apparatus, where the branches of the military coordinate and the defense industry is centered. St. Clair, Illinois, across the Mississippi, serves as St. Louis’s central business district, with gleaming modern skyscrapers and a growing hipster counterculture. Chouteau, Illinois, further north, combined many of the Franco-Spanish citizens of St. Louis with bootlegging connections from Chicago to New Orleans, creating a city with distinctive Jappellic Architecture (one part Venetian Gothic, one part French Baroque, one part Chinoiserie) and an abundance of cabarets, speakeasies, and live music spots. Landmarks such as the Spirit of ’71 memorial in Chouteau (dedicated to the Paris Commune of 1871), the Division Street Egyptian Theater in St. Clair (the heart of LGBT+ culture in 1970s St. Louis), and the Eastern Missouri National Park to St. Louis’s south-west complete the circuit of places to see in our nation’s capital.


Fun Facts:

• St. Louis is sister cities with Nanjing, China, Florence, Italy, Birmingham, UK, and Munich, Germany. St. Louis also has a long-running relationship with the city of San Francisco.
• St. Louis is built atop a series of naturally occurring caves. These caves were frequently used by escapees from slavery in the Antebellum South, and are now commonly used by brewers for St. Louis’s famous beer industry, including by the major company Schneider-Carondelet Brewing.
• St. Louis is ranked as the 4th drunkest city in the United States, after Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Fairbanks, Alaska, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
• In a 2016 study, St. Louis cuisine was dubbed the “worst regional cuisine in America” by readers of Culinary Digest. Readers found “St. Louis style Pizza” to be the worst offender, while admitting that “Kinloch Soul-style Barbecue” was a redeeming factor.
• St. Louis has the largest population of Serbian-Americans and Lebanese-Americans in the United States.