History of St. Louis, Missouri

Prior to the arrival of French explorers in 1673, the area that would become St. Louis was a major center of the Mississippian Mound Builders. The presence of numerous mounds, now almost all destroyed, earned the later city the nickname of "Mound City."

The city grew first because of its location on the Mississippi River, with trade moving up and downriver. Later it became a gateway for settlers going to the West, some by stagecoach and others up the Missouri River.

City founding and early history

European exploration of the area began nearly a century before the city was officially founded. Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, both French, traveled through the Mississippi River valley in 1673. Five years later, La Salle claimed the entire valley for France. He called it Louisiana after King Louis XIV; the French also called their region Illinois Country. In 1699, the French built a settlement across the river at Cahokia, near the monumental Cahokia Mounds complex. Other early settlements were downriver at Kaskaskia, Prairie du Pont, Fort de Chartres, and Sainte Genevieve. In 1703, Catholic priests established a small mission at what is now St. Louis. The mission was later moved across the Mississippi, but the small river at the site (now a drainage channel near the southern boundary of the city of St. Louis) still bears the name River Des Peres (River of the Fathers).

In 1764, Pierre Laclède, his 13-year-old "stepson" Auguste Chouteau, and a small band of men traveled up the Mississippi from New Orleans. In November, they landed a few miles downstream of the river's confluence with the Missouri River at a site where wooded limestone bluffs rose 40 feet above the river. The men returned to Fort de Chartres for the winter, but in February, LaClede sent Chouteau and 30 men to begin construction. The settlement was established on February 15, 1765.

The settlement began to grow quickly after word arrived that the 1763 Treaty of Paris had given England all the land east of the Mississippi. Frenchmen who had settled to the river's east moved across the water to "Laclede's Village." Other early settlements were established nearby at Saint Charles, Carondelet (now a part of the city of St. Louis), Fleurissant (renamed Saint Ferdinand under the Spaniards and now Florissant), and Portage des Sioux. In 1765, the French made St. Louis the capital of Upper Louisiana.

From 1766 to 1768, St. Louis was governed by the French lieutenant governor, Louis Saint Ange de Bellerive. After 1768, St. Louis was governed by a series of Spanish governors, whose administration continued even after Louisiana was secretly returned to France in 1800 by the Treaty of San Ildefonso. The town's population was then about a thousand.

St. Louis was acquired from France by the United States under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803, as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The transfer of power from Spain was made official in a ceremony called Three Flags Day. On March 8, 1804, the Spanish flag was lowered and the French flag raised. On March 10, 1804, the French one was replaced by the United States flag.

19th century expansion and growth

The Lewis and Clark Expedition left the St. Louis area in May 1804, reached the Pacific Ocean in the summer of 1805, and returned on September 23, 1806. Many other explorers, settlers, and trappers (such as Ashley's Hundred) took a similar route to the West. Missouri became a state in 1820. St. Louis was incorporated as a city on December 9, 1822. A U.S. arsenal was constructed at St. Louis in 1827.

The steamboat era began in St. Louis on July 27, 1817, with the arrival of the "Zebulon M. Pike". Rapids north of the city made St. Louis the northernmost navigable port for many large boats, and "Pike" and her sisters soon transformed St. Louis into a bustling boomtown, commercial center, and inland port. The city's Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1836, was the first commodity trading exchange in the United States. By the 1850s, St. Louis had become the largest U.S. city west of Pittsburgh, and the second-largest port in the country, with a commercial tonnage exceeded only by New York.

Immigrants flooded into St. Louis after 1840, particularly from Germany, Bohemia, Italy and Ireland, the latter driven by an Old World potato famine. The population of St. Louis grew from fewer than 20,000 in 1840, to 77,860 in 1850, to just over 160,000 by 1860.

Two disasters occurred in 1849: a cholera epidemic killed nearly one-tenth of the population, and a fire destroyed numerous steamboats and a large portion of the city. These disasters led to political action: old cemeteries were removed to the outskirts of the town; sinkholes were filled and swamps drained; water and sewer public utilities started; and a new building code required structures to be built of stone or brick.

In the first half of the 19th century, a second channel developed in the Mississippi River at St. Louis. An island (Bloody Island) formed between the two channels, and a smaller island (Duncan's Island) developed below St. Louis. It was feared that the levee at St. Louis might be left high and dry, and federal assistance was sought and obtained. Under the supervision of Robert E. Lee, levees were constructed on the Illinois side to direct water toward the Missouri side and eliminate the second channel. Bloody Island was joined to the land on the Illinois side, and Duncan's Island was washed away.

Militarily, the Civil War (1861-1865) barely touched St. Louis; the area saw only a few skirmishes in which Union forces prevailed. But the war shut down trade with the South, devastating the city's economy. Missouri was nominally a slave state, but its economy did not depend on slavery, and it never seceded from the Union. The arsenal at St. Louis was used during the war to construct ironclad ships for the Union.

t. Louis during the Gilded Age

On August 22, 1876 the City of St. Louis voted to secede from St. Louis County and become an independent city. At that time the County was primarily rural and sparsely populated, and the fast-growing city did not want to spend its tax dollars on infrastructure and services for the inefficient county. The move also allowed some in the St. Louis government to increase their political power.

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As St. Louis grew and prospered during the late 19th and early 20th century, the city produced a number of people who became notable in the fields of business and literature. The Ralston-Purina company, headed by the Danforth Family, was headquartered in the city, and Anheuser-Busch, the world's largest brewery, remains a fixture of the city's economy. The city was home to both International Shoe and the Brown Shoe Company. Notable residents in the field of literature included poets Sara Teasdale, and T. S. Eliot, as well as playwright Tennessee Williams. Eliot always spoke fondly of his hometown, while Williams despised the city.

St. Louis is one of several cities that claims to have the world's first skyscraper. The Wainwright Building, a 10-story structure designed by Louis Sullivan and built in 1892, still stands at Chestnut and Seventh Streets, and is today used by the state of Missouri as a government office building.

Nikola Tesla made the first public demonstration of radio communication here in 1893. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated in detail the principles of radio communication. The apparatus that he used contained all the elements that were incorporated into radio systems before the development of the vacuum tube.

In 1896, one of the deadliest and most destructive tornadoes in U.S. history struck St. Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois. The confirmed death toll was 255, with some estimates above 400, and injuries over 1,000. It left a mile-wide continuous swath of destroyed homes, factories, mills, saloons, hospitals, schools, parks, churches, and railroad yards. Damages adjusted for inflation (1997 USD) made it the costliest tornado in U.S. history at an estimated $2.9 billion. Several other tornadoes have hit the city, making it the large city with the highest frequency and most amount of tornado damage in the U.S. The most deadly and destructive storms occurred in 1871 (9 killed), 1890 (4 killed), 1904 (3 killed, 100 injured), 1927 (90 killed, 550 injured), and 1959 (21 killed, 345 injured).

By the 1900 census, St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the country [http://www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0027/tab13.txt] . In 1904, the city hosted a world's fair at Forest Park called the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Several fair buildings would become city cultural institutions, such as the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Missouri History Museum. The city also held the Olympic Games, when the United States became the first English-speaking country to host the Olympics. In 2004, the city held events to commemorate the centennial of these special events.

Early 20th century

St. Louis was developed primarily as an industrial city, and manufacturing remained the basis of its prosperity into the middle of the 20th century.

The uranium used in the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb was refined in St. Louis by Mallinckrodt Chemical Company, starting in 1942. Through the 1950s, St. Louis struggled with a severe air pollution problem that was caused in part by the many coal-fired furnaces used to heat older homes. Many of the city's older neighborhoods were densely developed around the factories that formed the base of the city's economy. As the importance of manufacturing in the local and national economy declined, job losses and depopulation caused the decline of many of these neighborhoods as well. The rise of the automobile allowed people to commute from beyond city limits in the suburbs, which began to develop in the early 20th century. The city's decision to leave St. Louis County proved to be short-sighted, as suburban development and population migration outside city limits cost the city millions in lost tax dollars and contributed to the city's deterioration.

The city first lost population between the 1930 and 1940 census. Efforts to expand the city's boundaries to include some of the newly developing suburbs failed. The city reached its peak population at the 1950 census, reflecting a national housing shortage after World War II. Continued suburban development and highway construction would led to a steep decline in the city's population over the next several decades. Between the 1950 census and the year 2000, the city lost more than half its population to St. Louis County and St. Charles County. Some people left the region altogether; national trends were for job and population migration away from Rust Belt cities in the Midwest and Northeast to the developing Sunbelt cities in the south and west.

The Pruitt-Igoe housing project was built in 1955 to contemporary theories espoused by Le Corbusier about super blocks and tower housing. These proved untenable, however, as were efforts to concentrate poor families in public housing. Years of horrific social problems culminated in the 1972 demolition of the towers. Such projects were considered among the most notorious failures in urban planning. Many considered the destruction of Pruitt-Igoe, together with similar tower housing projects in Chicago and Philadelphia, to be the symbolic end of Modern architecture. The St. Louis buildings had been the first major work by Minoru Yamasaki, who later designed the World Trade Center.

Recent developments

Recently, there has been an upturn in construction in downtown St. Louis. The St. Louis Cardinals' new Busch Stadium opened in 2006. Ballpark Village will be built where the former Busch Stadium stood. For several years, the Washington Avenue Loft District has been gentrifying with an expanding corridor along Washington Avenue from the Edwards Jones Dome westward almost two dozen blocks. Rehabilitation of other downtown areas is planned, such as around the Old Post Office and Cupples warehouses. The Forest Park Southeast neighborhood near the Missouri Botanical Garden and the old Gaslight Square district are also going through extensive renovations.

St. Louis' population is growing once more following a half-century of decline. The 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 census estimates were successfully contested by the mayor's office and revised after it was revealed that earlier figures had estimated the city's population as too low. As of 2006, St. Louis' population is estimated to be 5,648 higher than it was at the time of the 2000 Census. Citizens of St. Louis County, however, consider themselves St. Louisans. The city population combined with population of St. Louis County, St. Charles County and Jefferson County would rank St. Louis as one of the largest cities again.

References

* [http://stlouis.missouri.org/heritage/History69/ Physical Growth of the City of St. Louis, Missouri]
* [http://stlouis.missouri.org/citygov/parks/forestpark/history/statue.html History of the Statue: "Apotheosis of St. Louis"]

External links

* [http://stlcin.missouri.org/history/ St. Louis Preservation Society]
* [http://www.mohistory.org/home/ Missouri History Museum]
* [http://www.landmarks-stl.org/ Landmarks Association of St. Louis]
* [http://www.builtstlouis.net/archlinks.html Built St. Louis: architectural links]