USA > Missouri > St Louis County > St Louis City > The story of a great city in a nutshell : 500 facts about St. Louis > Part 6
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A kindred organization whose influences are immense
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throughout the territory with which St. Louis is pecu- liarly identified, is the Western Commercial Travelers' Association.
One of St. Louis' trade guilds embracing a tremen- dous amount of business energy, locally applied, is the City Drummers' Association. This organization of bright young business men makes its influence felt in all branches of commerce.
RAPID TRANSIT.
C OMPARISON is impossible between the rapid transit facilities of St. Louis and those of other cities. The street car systems of the Mound City were recognized years ago as furnishing the stand- ards by which the methods of urban transportation in other communities could be easiest measured. And St. Louis transit equipments are only mentioned nowadays to instance the closest approach that has been made to perfection in that field of human endeavor.
From Baden on the extreme north to Carondelet on the south, from the Mississippi River on the east to the picturesque reaches of St. Louis County on the west, the city is literally gridironed with electric railways. But it is no more in their extensiveness than in the ex- cellence of their service, that the distinguishing features of these arteries of urban life are found. Every oppor- tunity for public convenience has been consulted in the construction of these lines, and arrangements of transfers have been so thoroughly perfected, that it is practically
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possible for a passenger to go from any section of the city to another with the greatest dispatch for one fare. And connections are made with surburban lines that bring a dozen adjacent towns and villages within an hour's ride of the metropolis.
So complete are the conveniences and facilities af- forded that, in view of the succession of splendid scenes presented from a street car window in St. Louis, the city's transit lines deserve to rank among the communi- ty's amusement resources. Certainly it is an exhilarating recreation to be whisked a dozen miles in a cushioned seat,along rails that glide under the cars with the smooth- ness of a summer sea, from an eminence that overlooks the majestic Mississippi, with its picturesque craft and mighty bridges, across which gleam the roof tops of East St. Louis and the waving Illinois corn-fields beyond ; from this panorama of two states through a crowd of archi- tectural wonders sheltering the commercial activities of a giant community ; on through long stretches of man- sions and snug cottages reflecting the placid happiness of a prosperous city of homes ; out into broad reaches of a Missouri plain, and on under the spreading foliage of a magnificent park. Such a ride is surely a method of diversion ranking in the highest order of amusement.
In 1899 the street railways of St. Louis were as- sembled into two main systems, nearly all the lines be- ing consolidated into the larger concern, owned by the United Railways Company, and operated by the St. Louis Transit Company. The other system is that of the St. Louis and Suburban Company. The St. Louis
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Transit Company has 339.60 miles constructed and about 80 miles that is authorized, making a total of about 420 miles when all is completed, and now operat- ing 2,000 cars and adding to equipment as construction is completed ; while the St. Louis and Suburban Com- pany owns fully 100 miles of line with over 300 cars. The former concern is extending its services in all directions.
Altogether, rapid transit is nowhere more convenient, expeditious or economical than in St. Louis. By the system of transfers adopted, a passenger finds it pos- sible to ride twelve and one-half miles for one fare- at a rate of two-fifths of one cent per mile. When coupled to this cheapness of fare are considered the manifold conveniences and comforts afforded by the most modern adjuncts of street railway service, the ad- vantages of St. Louis' rapid transit facilities become apparent.
The remarkable progress and advance made in this direction assume an astonishing phase when it is re- called that less than fifteen years ago drivers were lash- ing street car mules into a semblance of animation on the principal thoroughfares of St. Louis. Then came the cable car. It was regarded in its time as a wonder- ful step of progress. The horse and mule slowly gave way to the cable grip in the street car service, and several years afterward-a decade since-the trolley lines appeared. Now there is not a street railway in St. Louis that is not fitted with appliances for electric loco- motion.
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This rapid development of transit facilities is reflected in the remarkable expansion of the city's residence districts. As the electric lines reached out toward the city limits, the home-seeker followed. The congestion of down-town affairs was eluded, and St. Louis held forth the attractiveness of ideal residence sections. The far reaching electric lines have carried the hedges of the cottages and the parterres of the mansion-owner out beyond the intramural purlieus into the hills and val- leys of St. Louis County and the sylvan nooks along the Des Peres and Meramec Rivers. The compact busi- ness districts thus find expanded lungs and dilated nos- trils with which to inhale the odor of meadow land and forest, the garden and the orchard, brought to them from the homes of the clerk and the merchant prince at the other end of the car lines.
CITY OF
BEAUTIFUL HOMES.
G REAT as is St. Louis commercially and industri- ally, its pre-eminence in material matters is no more marked than its pre-eminence as a place of beauty and comfort.
No feature of a residence place is more important than its climate. The son of the balmy Southland hesi- tates before plunging into the chill of the northern zones; and the child of the cooler latitudes shudders at the prospect of continuous torridity. But St. Louis is in the happy mean where the heat of summer and the cold of winter are so tempered with mildness that no stranger finds it necessary to go through the debilitating process of being acclimated. Situated in latitude 38 degrees 37 minutes and 37.5 seconds North, and longi- tude 90 degrees 11 minutes and 19.35 seconds West, it never experiences those extremes of temperature so common in most of the larger cities of the country, where the sun and snow annually claim scores of victims. In fact fatalities from weather causes are practically un-
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known in St. Louis; and even in the zenith of the heated term the Mound City is a place of relative comfort.
From the mightiest river in the world, one of the most beautiful of cities lifts itself in a succession of ter- races to a plain garnished with some of the most taste- ful and costly residential structures in America. St. Louis slopes gently upward from the Mississippi, a mile westward, where at Seventeenth Street the terrace on which its business districts are distributed gains its highest elevation, 150 feet above the river. A softly outlined valley leads up to the next terrace, the summit of which is at Garrison Avenue. Then, there is another undulation, west of which rises the third of the city's terraced divisions, at King's Highway Boulevard, four miles west of and 200 feet above the river. Thence the city reaches westward on a broad plateau whose gentle swells and dales, like the calm heaving of a great lake, add to the beauty of the landscape.
Geologists have declared that this series of terraces on which St. Louis has assembled its beauties and its strength mark the flood plains of successive periods. Deposits of aqueous origin that are frequently upturned on the surface of the city's outlying districts, together with the analogous history of other borders of the Mis- sissippi River, bear out this theory. And more practi- cal scientists, who have turned their studies from the formations of the past to the uses of the present, find in these flood-cut table-lands St. Louis' surpassing advantages of natural drainage.
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Nature apparently set apart the Mound City's site for the abiding place of a great community; and the arts, sciences and felicities of a happy people, directed by an ever-assertive progressiveness, have carried out this natural design. Perhaps no one feature con- tributes more to the pleasantness of life in St. Louis than the characteristics and tendencies of the people, best traced in the history of the city itself. Settled by the courteous and ceremonious French, the traditional chivalry of whom lingers in every annal of the com- munity, the trading post of Pierre Laclede Liguest en- tered its career mingling the pretty customs and comi- ties of old France with the rough and ready frankness of the plains. It was a pleasant mixture of open- hearted, alert and comradely spirit, tinctured with the fine fancies and polish that the frontiersman from Eu- rope could not entirely forget. Then came the new generation and more pioneers-Englishmen, Germans and adventurous spirits from all parts of the Old World. The young blood of the American-born, infused with the self-reliance and aggresive energy of colonial life, was tempered by contact with the softening influences from abroad. Common dangers and common hard- ships imparted to all a sense of fellowship; and through the trials of pioneer days grew that sturdy race of men -ready to share cheer with their neighbors-who have since given to the world an understanding of Amer- icanism.
From a truly cosmopolitan settlement, St. Louis has grown into a characteristically American metropolis.
SYLVAN LAKE IN FOREST PARK.
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CITY OF BEAUTIFUL HOMES.
Its hospitality is the essence of its existence. Without it St. Louis would not be St. Louis. From the un- couth days when the settler's latch-string hung ready for the touch of the traveler, the community has been a fountain of hospitable amenities. With none of the rigors of the North, and all the balm of the South, with all the industry of the East and the freedom of the West, it has become the most delightful abiding place on the continent. Great gatherings that have passed into the nation's history evoked striking demonstrations of. St. Louis hospitality. Delegates to national political conventions or to social and fraternal conclaves, re- turning to their homes, have echoed from one end of the land to the other the incomparable hospitality of the Mound City, giving to it a fame for open cheer that no other community in the world enjoys. It is this hospitable demeanor of the St. Louisan that adds one of the chiefest charms to the city as a place of resi- dence.
Social intercourse brings pride of home. Linked with the hospitality of St. Louisans is a pervading spirit of public improvement. The desire to embellish and adorn the community has been the predominant public inclination throughout the municipal life of St. Louis. Encouraged by the wealth of natural beauties that abound on all sides, this desire has thrived and pros- pered on accomplishment until, at the daivn of the Twentieth Century, the finest ingenuity is required to devise some new means of enhancing the city's attrac- tiveness.
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The progress of the city's development as a place of pleasant residence is traced by the growth of building westward from the Mississippi River. In St. Louis' earliest days the plain but substantial homes of the pioneers were. built on the crest of the incline that raises itself from the western bank of the great river. Then, as fortunes accumulated among the settlers, their resi- dences crept away from the noise and bustle of the river traffic and clustered along Lucas Place, on the first reach of the terrace that looks down on the great Father of Waters Perhaps no more comfortable homes were ever erected. The fanciful and fretted architecture of the end-of-the-century palaces presents more sprightly fronts, but certainly none of the latter-day mansions surpass in massive, substantial comfort the old-style, southern homes that were built on Lucas Place in the early days of St. Louis. Many of these structures still stand, quaint monuments of a quaint past, listening to the murmur from the venerable shade trees that sur- round them of those other times when chivalry reigned.
As the wealth of the community increased, new resi- dence districts blossomed forth. The arts of the gar- dener and the skill of the builder created new beauties in the Lafayette Park district, along South Broadway on the Bluffs, westward from the Lucas Place environs to Lindell Boulevard and on Grand Avenue. Then came the period of superb palaces. Vandeventer Place was created-an exclusive demesne for the palatial homes of those who sought to test the architect's skill in devising beautiful abodes.
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CITY OF BEAUTIFUL HOMES.
The spirit of emulation among home-builders was abroad and it grew with the erection of each new palace. The residence districts scattered, and, in scat- tering, spread additional beauties of even greater grandeur. Westmoreland, Portland, Cabanne and West Cabanne Places were laid out, platted and built up into distinctive communities of social sacredness and architectural splendor. The Compton Heights vicinage grew into beauty under the hands of home-builders ; and Hawthorne and Longfellow Boulevards became garden spots, vieing in picturesque magnificence with the finest residence sections in the world.
Since then clusters of beautiful mansions have been assembled in scores of neighborhoods throughout the city, until the face of St. Louis has grown like the sur- face of some great garden. On South Grand Avenue, almost in the Compton Heights district, at the other extreme of the city in North St. Louis and wherever the opportunities of site and surroundings were found, the lavish hand of the home-builder has been at work. Some of these beautiful sections still lack the finishing crown that will come when the prospective dwellers have erected their residences. But they have been laid out with great care in exquisite order for home purposes, with granitoid pavements, shaded by well-set trees, and inclosed with pretty walls and gates which mark them as exclusive reservations. These plats are held by their owners until a raise of values shall have come through the utilization of other residence districts.
But these vacant spaces only set off the exquisite
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beauties of the idealic homes that group about them. To plunge from the noise and bustle and grime of the industrial centers into these home districts, is like en- tering an Elysian realm. The clang of bells, the hoarse whirr of wheels and the turmoil of trade, change to the chirp of birds in the trees, and the tinkle of musical instruments among the houses that nestle amid the foli- age. The murmur of fountains among vari-colored flower beds, the soft sighing of the willow as it sways under passing breezes, the quiet of home life, and all the sweet fancies that linger where Art and Nature meet, make of these Boulevards and Places veritable havens of happiness.
The majestic spread of the elm and the sycamore in- close broad avenues along which rise marvels of the architect's fancy. Here a Parthenon front betrays the classic taste of the owner, and there a castellated annex tells of a leaning toward a different style of architecture. Drive-ways between oaks and maples and bordered by silver-leaf poplars lead to splendid palaces, whose fretted cornices and graceful outlines tell that the builders looked to the Renaissance for their architectural ideals. A walnut coppice across the way shelters a row of Ionic columns ; and beyond, a stretch of ash and gum trees show the minaret-like projections of a mansion erected along Moorish lines.
One of the most striking features of St. Louis' do- mestic palaces is the diversification of architectural styles that attended their construction. Now and then a group of these palatial residences are built with some
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CITY OF BEAUTIFUL HOMES.
similarity of outlines, and the Flemish ideal will pre- dominate in this group, the Gothic in another, and the Doric further on. But the general rule seems to have been a diffusion of styles ; and in any one of the superb residence places, shut off from ordinary traffic at either end by fanciful gates depending from massive columns, and parked along the center of its entire length with series of variegated parterres and luxuriant foliage trees, are found a dozen different representations of archi- tecture. A search of modern palaces the world over will scarcely reveal a more striking array of homes than are found among these places and boulevards of St. Louis, such as, for example, those of Messrs. J. C. Van Blarcom, Thos. H. West, T. A. Meysenberg and E. C. Sterling, in Westmoreland Place; of Messrs. J. B. M. Kehlor, H. I. Drummond, R. C. Kerens and H. C. Pierce, in Vandeventer Place; of Messrs. S. M. Ken- nard, W. D. Orthwein, L. B. Tebbetts and J. A. Holmes, in Portland Place; of Messrs. D. M. Houser, J. M. Carpenter, G. W. Garrels, J. B. C. Lucas, and scores of others on West Pine Boulevard; of Messrs. E. A. Busch, Zach W. Tinker, Dr. H. M. von Starkloff and Wm. H. Dittman, on Longfellow Boulevard ; of Messrs. C. Stoffregen, W. T. Koken, Prof. C. M. Woodward and L. H. Lohmeyer, on Hawthorne Boulevard; and of other merchant princes and representative St. Louisans in other residence districts
PARKS AND GARDENS.
P ROXIMITY to public parks has appeared to be one of the desiderata in the selection of St. Louis residence sites. With a score of these "public lungs " scattered from one end of the community to the other, St. Louis might well be termed the city of parks. Stretches of green trees shading bubbling fountains and hiding pretty sylvan nooks, break the continuity of brick and stone in every quarter of the city. St. Louis parks represent a value of more than $10,000,000, and among them are several that surpass any others in the world in several distinctive features. During its park-making career, the municipality has expended $4,926,087.85 for their purchase. The remainder have either been bequeathed to the city, or are maintained as public re- sorts under special commissions.
Thousands of dollars are expended annually in the maintenance and adornment of these beautiful reserva- tions. The skill of the gardener and the horticulturist demonstrate the beauteous issue of Nature's union with
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PARKS AND GARDENS.
Art ; and statuary from the studios of some of the greatest artists of the day lend auspice to the other attractions of the parks. Statues of Washington, Lafayette, Hum- boldt and Shakespeare, of Benton, Clay, Blair and Grant, and of other statesmen, warriors and men of letters, grace opportune coigns in every park in the city.
The largest of these stretches of natural beauty in St. Louis, and the second largest in the country, is Forest Park. It is more than a park, it is a place of gladsome resort for rich and poor alike. Entertainment of infinite variety and extent is afforded all classes. Throughout its 1371.94 acres of area are spread natural and artistic beauties, that both enthrall and entrance. The .pictur- esque River Des Peres winds its way through Forest Park, feeding the many lakes and ponds, on which pleasure craft ply on balmy summer afternoons or under the ro- mantic moonlight. There are menageries, aviaries and aquariums to amuse and instruct; there are fish- hatcheries and plant reservations, in which piscatorial and vegetable specimens are perpetuated ; there are spacious picnic grounds for idlers, courts for tennis players, amphitheaters for athletic contests, and racing courses for wheelmen and horses. All are free to the public, and every citizen of the community is entitled to equal enjoyment of all these opportunities for diver- sion.
The hoot of the owl, the croaking of frogs, the musical trill of the feathered songster, and the gurgle of plashing fountains join in one sweet melody that per- vades the great park, and, mingling with the hum of
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voices, tell of peace and rest in Nature's bosom. Then on summer evenings the strain of brass bands and loiter- ing musicians, throbbing under the hundreds of electric lights that flash through the park, tell of the human joys and pleasures that come when the day's toil is over.
Hiram W. Leffingwell, whose name indentifies itself with several imperishable institutions in St. Louis, con- ceived the first definite plan for the establishment of Forest Park. A bill to carry out his project was enacted by the state legislature, and approved on March 25, 1872. But the enactment was opposed by several interested property holders, and a resort to the courts resulted in a decison that it was unconstitutional. St. Louis' char- acteristic perseverance was involved, and the park pro- moters again appealed to the legislature. There was a new enactment, approved on March 25, 1874, but this was also assailed in the courts. However, a final de- cision sustaining every clause of this second act was rendered before the expiration of another year, and the work of laying out the great park commenced at once thereafter. Three appraisers set the value of lands in- volved at $799,995. This appraisement was approved, and the municipal park board, after the usual processes of condemnation of the selected area, assumed charge of the land. April 15, 1875, witnessed the inauguration of permanent improvements, which have since been carried on with unremitting energy.
To an Englishman who adopted America as his country and St. Louis as his home, the Mound City owes at least two of its world-famous parks. One,
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the Missouri Botanical or Shaw's Garden, is peerless in . its assemblage of horticultural and floral specimens. In 1858 Mr. Henry Shaw, who had amassed a fortune and retired from commercial life, secured permission to establish his garden at Shaw and Tower Grove Avenues. In that year he organized the collection of plants that has since given to the botanists of the universe one of their deepest interests, and to millions who have had " an eye for the beautiful," or a sympathy for Nature's charms, one of their keenest pleasures. It is claimed that every flower, plant, tree and shrub in the world is represented in Shaw's Garden.
Spread over an area of forty-five acres is a marvelous gathering of plant wonders from every corner of the globe. The giant cacti and lilies of the tropics shelter delicate orchids from the temperate zones ; magnificent forest monarchs, standing here and there in isolated splendor, set off the beauties of gorgeous flowers from near-by parterres.
Sylvan grottoes and picturesque dells dot this spread of plant beauties, and between the reaches of floral grandeur hot-houses and conservatories intersperse a number of more fragile growths that require the tender nursing of indoor culture. An extensive botanical library, with more than 10,000 volumes, and two her .. bariums-one the work of Dr. George Engelman-form important adjuncts of the great garden. Henry Shaw died in 1889, bequeathing a large estate valued at more than $1,000,000 for the maintenance of his matchless garden as a public resort. The directions of his will are carried out with scrupulous nicety, and hundreds of
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thousands of persons annually marvel at the surpassing grandeur of the botanical collections. Admission is with- out charge, and ample provision is made to render a visit to the garden both instructive and entertaining.
Just South of Shaw's Garden is St. Louis' most beauti- ful park. While Tower Grove Park lacks the area of other public reservations, it makes up in exquisiteness of design and beauty of arrangement what it lacks in di- mensions. It is one of the most artistically kept parks in the world. Tower Grove Park is also a gift to St. Louis from Henry Shaw, but its bequest was conditioned on the annual appropriation by the city of $25,000 for its maintenance. The yearly expenditure of this sum insures the most careful preservation and the most in- dustrious extension of the park's beauties, and they are countless. It is Tower Grove Park that contains the most beautiful statues in the city's custody. It is Tower Grove Park, too, that contains a mulberry tree which has reared its spreading branches from a slip brought from Shakespeare's tomb on the Avon, and planted here by Adelaide Nielson of histrionic fame. Tower Grove Park has an area of 266.67 acres, and, like Shaw's Botanical Garden, is under the care and supervision of a special Board of Trustees.
Carondelet Park, in the extreme southern portion of St. Louis, has an area of 180 acres. Next in point of dimensions ranks O'Fallon Park, at the other end of the city, with 158.32 acres. Besides the parks mentioned are the following: Compton Hill Reservoir Park, on South Grand Avenue ; Benton Park, Jefferson Avenue and Arsenal Street; Carondelet, at Ninth and Kansas ;
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