USA > Missouri > St Louis County > St Louis City > The story of a great city in a nutshell : 500 facts about St. Louis > Part 2
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IO
FIVE HUNDRED FACTS
St. Louis was founded on February 14, 1764. St. Louis' first bank was established in 1816. St. Louis' first post-master was Rufus Easton. St. Louis' first brick house was erected in 1813. The Eads Bridge was dedicated on July 4, 1874. In 1822, St. Louis purchased its first fire engine. St. Louis suffered from cholera epidemic in 1832. In 1804, St. Louis' first post office was established. The Southern hotel fire occurred on April 11, 1877. In 1818, the first street paving was laid in St. Louis. St. Louis' first Methodist Church was erected in 1821. In 1821, St. Louis' first brick-paved sidewalk was laid. Martial law was declared in St. Louis on August 14, 1861. St. Louis was incorporated as a town on November 9, 1809. St. Louis was swept by a devastating tornado May 27, 1896. A Federal mint branch was established in St. Louis in 1829. The Marquis de Lafayette visited St. Louis on April 29, 1825. Washington University was chartered in 1853 and opened in 1859. Pierre Laclede Liguest, founder of St. Louis, died on June 20, 1778. St. Louis reverted to French dominion by the treaty of October 1, 1800. In 1830, construction of St. Louis' first waterworks plants was begun. The first directory of St. Louis was published by John A. Paxton in 1821.
On December 7, 1812, the first territorial general assembly met in St. Louis.
In 1832, St. Louis received it first supply of water from municipal works.
St. Louis' first American court of justice was established in the winter of 1804-5.
First line of telegraph from the East reached St. Louis in Deeem - ber, 1847.
The first steamboat to reach St. Louis was the Pike, which arrived on August 2, 1815.
On May 26, 1780, St. Louis was attacked by Indians and a half a dozen residents slain.
Pierre Laclede Liguest, aided by Auguste Chouteau, selected the site which became St. Louis.
The first overland mail from California (24 days 1812 hours) arrived at St. Louis on October 9, 1858.
The first English school in St. Louis was opened by Messrs. Ratch- ford and George Tompkins in 1808.
The municipality of St. Louis was separated from the County of St. Louis under legislative act of 1875.
St. Louis' first American governor was Capt. Amos Stoddard, whose jurisdiction included the whole territory of Lousiana. .
ABOUT ST. LOUIS.
St. Louis' first theater was erected in 1819.
In 1822, St. Louis had a population of 4,800.
The first railroad entered St. Louis in 1851.
In 1801, St. Louis was visited by a smallpox epidemic.
Pontiac, the great Indian chief, visited St. Louis in 1769.
In 1799, a census of St. Louis showed a population of 925.
The first term of the St. Louis University opened on November 2, 1829. St. Louis' greatest fire occurred on May 17, 1849, the loss aggregating $3,000,000.
Missouri's first constitutional convention was held in St. Louis on September 18, 1820.
Francis L. McIntosh, Missouri's first victim of lynch law, was burned to death in St. Louis in 1836.
The territory of Upper Louisiana was formally transferred to the United States in St. Louis by Amos Stoddard on March 10, 1804.
Do you Know That :-
90 laundries serve St. Louisans? 31 breweries brew St. Louis beer? St. Louisans drink at 1927 saloons? St. Louisans eat at 311 restaurants?
Milk is furnished St. Louis by 347 dairies? Only 53 undertakers bury St. Louis' dead? St. Louisans buy bread from 468 bakeries? St. Louis is served by 543 carpenter shops? St. Louisans are shaved at 846 barber shops? St. Louisans are attended by 1672 physicians? St. Louisans patronize 293 blacksmith shops? St. Louisans buy medicines at 365 drug stores? St. Louis buys sweets from 259 confectionaries? St. Louis' legal affairs are adjusted by 737 lawyers? St. Louisans get their meats from 712 butcher shops? 94 furniture stores supply St. Louis' household goods? Provisions are sold St. Louisans at 921 retail groceries? St. Louisans have their clothes made at 603 tailor shops? St. Louisans buy tobacco at 536 cigar and tobacco stores? 100 livery stables supply horses and vehicles for St. Louisans? St. Louisans' teeth are cared for by 228 dentist establishments? Insurance is written for St. Louisans by 262 insurance agencies? St. Louis houses are decorated by 139 wall paper establishments? St. Louis women have their gowns made at 1074 dress and cloak- making establishments?
St. Louis' watches are regulated at 174 watch-making establishments?
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FIVE HUNDRED FACTS
Gambling is prohibited by law in St. Louis? 47 retail hat stores sell hats to St. Louisans? St. Lonisans buy dry goods at 349 retail stores? 264 plumbing shops aid in St. Louis' sanitation? St. Louis buildings are painted by 326 paint shops? St. Louis' 73 miles of public sewerage cost $4,730,000? The seating capacity of the Century Theater is 1,600? The seating capacity of the Havlin's Theater is 2,800? The seating capacity of the Olympic Theater is 2,508? The seating capacity of the Imperial Theater is 2,048? The Odeon and Masonic Temple are at Grand and Finney avenues. The seating capacity of the Columbia Theater is 1,887? The seating capacity of the Grand Opera House is 2,269?
Beethoven Conservatory is one of the most artistic buildings in St. Lonis?
The first Veiled Prophet pageant and ball took place in 1878? St. Louis has one thousand and seventy-one streets and avenues? St. Louis' Union Station was formally opened on September 1, 1894? The corner- stone of St. Louis' Union Station was laid on July 8, 1893? The first ground was broken for St. Louis' Union Station on April 1, 1892.
The Chamber of Commerce building on Third Street was erected in 1873.
The Grand Commander Knights Templars of Missouri resides in St. Lonis?
The seating capacity of Grand Music Hall in the Exposition Building is 3.524?
St. Louis' Union Station grand central hall has a floor area of 8,880 square feet?
Heroic statues of Shakespear, Humboldt and Columbus are in Tower Grove Park?
The statues of Washington, Lafayette and Benton, in Lafayette Park, are world-famous?
More than 250,000,000 pieces of mail were handled in the St. Louis Postoffice during 1900?
The Grand Secretary and Grand Recorder of the State Grand Lodge, Grand Chapter, Grand Encampment, Grand Commandery, Grand Council Royal and Select Masters, and Grand Council O. H. P., Masonic bodies, reside in St. Louis?
Natives of New England, New York. Indiana, Virginia, Ohio, Tennes- see, Kentucky and Illinois, resident in St. Louis, have clubs?
St. Louis' longest and largest completed sewer is the Mill Creek, 4.75 miles long, with a 24-foot section, and costing $1,784,000?
The Nielson mulberry in Tower Grove Park grew from a slip cut from the tree that shades Shakespear's tomb at Stratford-on- Avon?
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ABOUT ST. LOUIS.
558 music teachers instruct St. Louisans? 19 foreign consuls are located in St. Louis? The famous Grant statue is in City Hall Park?
St. Louis' sewerage cost to construct $11,392,300.
The High School on Grand Avenue was built in 1893?
142 millinery establishments serve St. Louis' fair sex?
The sites of the present City Hall and Exposition were city parks? St. Louis has paid out $4,926,087.85 in the purchase of land for parks. St. Louis' realty transfers in 1900 involved a total value of $25.000,000? St. Louisans buy their footwear at 726 boot and shoe establishments?
Everybody Ought to Know That :-
Eads Bridge is 6,220 feet in length.
Calvary Cemetery embraces 262 acres.
Bellefontaine Cemetery contains 350 acres.
O'Fallon Park is on Broadway near Bircher.
Carondelet Park is on Ninth Street near Kansas.
The salary of St. Louis' fire chief is $4,000 per annum.
St. Louis' Union Station cost approximately $6,500,000.
The St. Louis Star is published at Ninth and Olive streets.
The St. Louis Transit Company is capitalized at $90,000,000.
The St. Louis Exposition has been running eighteen years.
The United States sub-treasury at St. Louis has 19 employes.
United States sub-treasury in Louis handles $105,000,000 a year. The St. Louis Republic has its office at Seventh and Olive streets.
The salary of the United States sub-treasury at St. Louis is $4,500. The Amerika of St. Louis is printed on Third street, near Chestnut. The Westliche Post of St. Louis has its office at Broadway and Market Street.
St. Louis' water supply comes from the Mississippi river at Bissell's Point.
The Christian Brothers' College of St. Louis is noted throughout the world.
St. Louis University, world famous, is located on Grand avenue, between Lindell and West Pine Boulevards.
St. Louis is completing a city hall, the approximate cost of which is $2,000,000.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is established on Olive between Broad- way and Sixth street.
The St. Louis Globe- Democrat building is on the southwest corner of Sixth and Pine streets.
The City Hall fronts on Twelfth and Market Streets and Clark Avenue.
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FIVE HUNDRED FACTS
St. Louis' largest park contains 1,371.94 acres. The total cost of the Eads Bridge was $10,000,000. St. Louis' hog receipts in 1833 numbered 2,156,144.
St. Louis' sheep receipts in 1899 numbered 434,133. St. Louis' cattle receipts in 1899 numbered 795,800. The St. Nicholas Hotel is at Eighth and Locust Streets.
St. Louis' wool receipts in 1900 were valued at $8,000,000.
St. Louis' bank clearings in 1900 amounted to $1,688,849,494.
St. Louis' longest east and west street is Arsenal-5.82 miles. St. Louis' grain receipts in 1900 aggregated 61,144,804 bushels.
St. Louis' public parks represents more than $10,000,000 in values.
St. Louis' longest north and south street is Broadway-15.2 miles. St. Louis' manufacturing plants represent investments of $700,000,000. A St. Louis building contains the largest plate-glass window ever made.
The Lindell Hotel is on Washington Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Streets.
The cash receipts of the St. Louis Post Office in 1900 amounted to $2,031,664.
The letters originating in the St. Louis Post Office during 1900 number- ed nearly 150,000,000.
The Beers Hotel is on the northwest corner of Grand Avenue and Olive Street.
The Merchants' Bridge stretches from the foot of Ferry Street to the Illinois bank.
The Custom House building is between Olive, Locust, Eighth and Ninth Streets.
St. Louis Court House is between Broadway, Fourth, Chestnut and Market Streets.
The Grand Avenue Hotel is on the southeast corner of Olive Street and Grand Avenue.
St. Louis' manufactured prodnets for 1901 are expected to approach $1,000,000,000 in value.
St. Louis' leading hardware house occupies more floor space than any other building extant.
Washington University is one of the most comprehensive educational institutions in the world.
Fifteen thousand dollars was sent by the Merchants' Exchange to the Johnstown flood sufferers in 1889.
A transfer ticket will take a street car passenger from any part of St. Louis to Shaw's Garden or Forest Park.
The annual interest charges on St. Louis' outstanding municipal debt amounts to $802,209.28, or 4.367 per cent. per annum.
Shaw's Garden is at Tower Grove Avenue and Old Manchester Road.
15
ABOUT ST. LOUIS.
·
The Fullerton Building is twelve stories high.
The Carleton Building is ten stories in height.
The Equitable Building is ten stories in height.
The Security Building is eleven'stories in height. The Union Trust Building is fourteen stories high.
The Holland Building is thirteen stories in height. The Chemical Building is sixteen stories in height.
The Lincoln Trust Building is twelve stories in height.
The Merchants' Bridge of St. Louis was erected in 1889.
Union Station was formally opened on September 1. 1894.
St Louis' cotton receipts in 1900 aggregated 1,011,587 bales. St. Louis' street railways carried 106,933,411 passengers in 1900.
The Archiepiscopal residence of Archbishop Kain is in St. Louis. Forest Park main entrance is at Kingshighway and Lindell Boulevard. Bishop D. S. Tuttle, of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, lives in St. Louis.
Illuminating gas is sold to ordinary consumers in St. Louis for $1 per 1,000 feet.
St. Louis erected in 1900, 2,059 houses with an aggregate value of $8,400,000.
Merchants' Exchange has contributed $700,000 for charitable purposes since 1866.
The only shrine in the West blessed by the Pope is at the Visitation Convent, Cabanne.
St. Louis' total city tax, exclusive of public schools and state taxes, is $1.30 per $100 of valnation.
Rev. Dr. J. M. Fitzgerald, Resident Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, lives in St. Louis,
In 1892 Mississippi River flood sufferers were given $54,000 by the St. Louis Merchants' Exchange.
St. Louis' rate of taxation in 1900 was $1 95 per $100 of valuation, which is on a basis of about 60 per cent.
Lafayette Park Presbyterian Sunday-school is the largest in the world, having an enrollment of 2,344 scholars.
Mrs. Elizabeth Avis, founder of the first Methodist missionary society, died recently in St. Louis. She was nearly a hundred years old.
The Presbyterian Women's Board of Missions has a circulating library after which many Eastern societies have modeled their work.
The new $150,000 Second Presbyterian Church has a magnificent series of stained glass windows, each window in honor of a former pastor.
The Presbyterian Church (North) of St. Louis has in the last year contributed $13,560 to home missions and $5,229 to foreign missions.
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"FIVE HUNDRED FACTS
There are 385 letter carriers in St. Louis.
St. Louis is the home of Ruckstuhl, the sculptor. St. Louis' Fair Grounds have an area of 143 acres. St. Louis holds its Forty-first Annual Fair in 1901. St. Louis received 169,082 horses and mules during 1900. Tower Grove Park is on Grand near Magnolia Avenue. There are 75 Christian Endeavor Societies in St. Louis. The salary of the St. Louis post-master is $6,000 a year. The finest jewelry palace in the country is in St. Louis. The Southern Hotel is at Broadway and Walnut Street. The Union Station is at Eighteenth and Market Streets. Number of railway postal clerks paid at St. Louis office, 350. Thirty boys handle the special delivery letters for St. Louis. Mary N. Murfree (Charles Egbert Craddock) lives in St. Louis. The total number of employes in the St. Louis post office is 1,380. Winston Churchill, author of Richard Carvel, lives in St. Louis. There are 533 clerks and 30 substitute clerks in the St. Louis post office. The St. Louis Post Office ranks fifth in the country in money receipts. St. Louis is unique in its interdenominational Woman's Missionary Society.
The St. Louis Post Office ranks first in the country in ratio of expenses to receipts.
A law establishes the rate of cab fare in St. Louis, and provides penal - ties for violation.
The Four Courts building (Police headquarters) is at Twelfth Street and Clark Avenne.
The $5,000 window at St. James Memorial Church is considered the finest in the West.
Sufferers by the Chicago fire in 1871 received $150,000 from the St. Louis Merchants' Exchange.
St. Louis is the home of Kate Chopin, noted as a writer of charming stories of southern life.
Fee Fee Baptist Church was the first Protestant house of worship west of the Mississippi.
The Eads bridge spans the Mississippi from the foot of Washington Avenue to East St. Louis.
The Southern Methodist Orphans' Home in St. Louis is the best equipped in the country.
The first $5 for the $100,000 Lindell Avenue M. E. Church was sub - scribed by a washerwoman.
The highest church spire in St Louis is that of St. Alphonsus' Church, 235 feet high; the next, Pilgrim Church, 229 feet; the the next, SS. Peter and Paul's, 222 feet; and the fourth highest is that of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 208 feet high.
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ABOUT ST. LOUIS.
Susan E. Blow, a St. Louis woman, is famous as the Mother of the Kindergarten in America.
St. Louis' mayor receives a salary of $5,000 per annum.
St. Lonis' chief of police receives $5,000 per year in salary.
Texas flood sufferers in 1900 received $80,000 from St. Louis.
The bonded debt of St. Louis at the end of the fiscal year 1899-1900 was only $18,916,278.
The new Holy Trinity Catholic Church is the grandest church build- ing west of New York.
Merchants' Exchange contributed $267,450 for relief of victims of the St. Louis cyclone in 1896.
CONTENTS.
" Facts, I Assure You "
3
Historical
19
St. Louis To-Day 26
Free City of the West
33
A Financial Fortress
38
The Sinews of Trade
45
In Touch With the World
49 56
Grand Monuments of Progress
72
Impelling Forces
S2
Rapid Transit
90
City of Beautiful Homes
94
Parks and Gardens
104
Education and Literature
II2
Churches of St. Louis
124
Clubs and Fraternities.
I 32
Recreation 140
World's Fair 146
World's Fair Location
164
Chronology of the Exposition I72
The Louisiana Purchase
178
ILLUSTRATIONS.
St. Louis City Officers 2
City Hall
29
Union Station
41
High School on Grand Avenue
51
Mercantile Trust Company's Building
59
The Fullerton Building 69
Westmoreland Place
77
A Floral Bed in Tower Grove Park
85
Sylvan Lake in Forest Park
97
Rabbit Island in Deer Paddock Lake, Forest Park
109
Circle Lake in Forest Park 119
Lafayette Bridge, Forest Park
I35
Officers Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company. 147
World's Fair Directors 157, 167,179
National Commissioners, World's Fair 187
Centers of Commercial Activity
.. HISTORICAL ...
L ONG before the colonist from Europe had fought and hewed his way to the Valley of the Missis- sippi, an earlier population selected the present site of St. Louis for urban pursuits. Their customs, habits and lives were altogether unlike those of the Caucasians who succeeded them centuries later ; but the geographic and utilitarian advantages of the lo- cality responded as readily to the efforts of the Mound Builders as they did in subsequent ages to the purposes of the pioneer trapper and trader. Archaeologists have been unable to fix the precise era in which the Mounds of North America were constructed. But a number of these queer piles-mute messages from a mystic past- have given St. Louis the name of the Mound City.
Aside from the purely speculative interest that clings to these monuments of prehistoric masonry, facts of peculiar significance cluster around the series of mounds which dot the city and its environs. Each mass of strangely-built rock and soil bears silent testimony to
19
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IN A NUTSHELL.
the fact that æons ago an unknown people delved and toiled and breathed and lived where now modern modes of trade and traffic have established a bustling metropolis. Each mound links the judgment of the past with the enterprise of the present in the selection of the site for a great city.
But accepted history is eminently practical, and, eliminating the dreams of theorists on what might have been, tells us that Pierre Laclede Liguest, known to his companions as Laclede, was the founder of St. Louis. It was in 1762 that the New Orleans firm of Maxent, Laclede & Co. obtained from the French Governor General of Louisiana, exclusive control of the fur trade with the Missouri and other tribes of Indians as far North as the River St. Peter. It was necessary to establish a trading post in closer touch with the Indians than New Orleans, and an expedition for that purpose was fitted out. Laclede, the junior member of the firm, was peculiarly qualified for the command of this undertaking, and to him it was intrusted.
Leaving New Orleans on August 3, 1763, the hardy band of frontiersmen under Laclede made their way northward to Fort Chartres, where the goods and stores of the party were put away while the members of the expedition pursued their quest for a satisfactory post site. The journey up the Mississippi had consumed three months. Laclede himself, finding the graceful curve in the Mississippi now marked by the Mer- chants' and Eads' Bridges, declared that he would seek no farther. Returning to Fort Chartres, he an-
2I
HISTORICAL.
nounced that he had "found a situation where he intended to establish a settlement which might become hereafter one of the finest cities in America."
But a rigorous winter intervened, and it was not until February 14, 1764, that Auguste Chouteau, then in his fourteenth year, arrived on the site of the future St. Louis with thirty men belonging to Laclede's expe- dition. Chouteau, though a beardless youth, was one of those prodigies of pioneer days to whom age merely meant seasoning ; and it was not regarded as extraor- dinary at the time that he should be given charge of the clearing party. So, while Laclede is recorded as the founder of St. Louis, it was Auguste Chouteau who directed the felling of the first tree on the tract now occupied by St. Louis.
A tool shed and several log cabins were put together in an open space which was afterward platted into the block noiv bounded by Washington Avenue, Broadway, St. Charles and Sixth Streets. The settlement was named by Laclede himself. Though the territory had been ceded to Spain in 1762, Laclede-a native of Bion, in Southern France-named the trading post after the patron saint of his sovereign, Louis XV. There was no disposition among the hardy pioneers to transfer their allegiance to the Spanish throne, and in their own rough, honest ways they set about the task of establishing law and order without the aid of the governments across the sea.
On August 11, 1768, Rios arrived to take charge of the colony for Spain, under the authority of Don Juan
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IN A NUTSHELL.
de Ulloe, viceroy of Louisiana. But the settlers were hostile to Spanish sway, and Rios, exercising rare tact. avoided any rupture by neglecting to assert with any- thing akin to ostentation the sovereignty of the crown of Spain. So profitless was this occupation that on July 17, 1769, Spanish troops were withdrawn from Upper Louisiana.
During this period the people of St. Louis were liv- ing under a unique local administration. They had given to St. Ange de Bellerive the authority of gov- ernor, but he was reluctant to assume all the responsi- bilities attaching to such office. Maintaining a wise military supervision over the affairs of the settlement, he was aided in the discharge of his civil functions by Judge Lefebvre Inglebert Desbruisseau and Joseph Labusciere. This democratic triune inaugurated the system of registering land grants in 1766, Labusciere officiating as notary.
It was in 1770 that the Spaniards formally took charge of the territory, Don Pedro Piernos assuming the governorship. The annals of those days would find fitter place in the pages of romance than in the less flowered records of simple history. Chivalry, courage, hardihood and perilous emprises of varied character and purpose make up most of the anecdotes of that time. The adventurous courtier of Europe, the sun-tinted chieftain of the forest, the silent trapper and the hardy frontiersman met on common terms in the Mississippi trading post. Here came the famous Pontiac to visit friends, and being murdered while on
23
HISTORICAL.
an excursion to Cahokia, here his remains were buried.
St. Louis, together with the rest of the great pro- vince of Louisiana, was restored to French sovereignty by the treaty cession of 1800, and three years later through purchase from Napoleon became part of the United States of America.
Through all the turmoil and carnage that distracted the western hemisphere during those trying years, the trading post thrived with relatively rare fortune. Only one Indian attack was suffered in that time-on May 26, 1780-when six of the settlers were slain. Tradi- tion has it that the massacre would have become gen- eral had not the plans of the redskins miscarried.
The first marriage ceremony performed in St. Louis was solemnized on April 20, 1766. The first news- paper of the settlement was established in 1808. The first brick house which the town could boast was erected in 1813, followed three years later by the establishment of St. Louis' first banking institution. In 1817 the people of this frontier settlement heard the whistle of the first steamboat that reached St. Louis, and in the same year the first board of school trustees was organized. The settlement was incorpor- ated as a town in 1809, and was chartered as a city in 1822. Ten years later an epidemic of cholera deso- lated many homes in the growing city, and in 1849 there was another visitation of this dread plague, and about the same time there was a great fire that de- stroyed the business section of the city. In 1851, while St. Louis was yet engaged in shaking off the in-
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IN A NUTSHELL.
dustrial lethargy produced by the joint calamity of epidemic and conflagration two years before, the first railroad built in the Mississippi valley entered the Mound City.
The shock of civil war and the travail and distress of financial panics affected, but they did not stop, the . progress of the city. Passing with its sister cities through the national trials and adversities that have befallen the country, St. Louis has been always one of the first to extend aid to the helpless and sympathy to the afflicted. Sharing, too, in the national triumphs and fortunes, St. Louis has outstripped most of her sis- ter cities in growth and advancement, until now, on the threshold of a new century, a world's interest is turn- ing toward the metropolis that is to celebrate with an historic exposition the entry of the Louisiana territory into the dominion of the "Stars and Stripes."
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