SOMNOLENT ST. LOUIS
"The moderation of prosperous people comes from the
calm which good fortune gives to their temper."
--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Some years ago, while riding westward through the Alleghenies in an
observation car of the Pennsylvania Limited, a friend of mine fell into
conversation with an old gentleman who sat in the next chair.
"Evidently he knew a good deal about that region," said my friend, in
telling me of the incident later. "We must have sat there together for a
couple of hours. He did most of the talking; I could see that he enjoyed
talking, and was glad to have a listener. Before he got off he shook
hands with me and said he was glad to have had the little chat. Then,
when he was gone, the trainman came and asked me if I knew who he was. I
didn't. Come to find out, it was Andrew Carnegie."
I asked my friend how Mr. Carnegie impressed him.
"Oh," he replied, "I was much surprised when I found it had been he. He
seemed a nice old fellow enough, kindly and affable, but a little
commonplace. I should never have called him an 'inspired millionaire.'
I've been reconstructing him in my mind ever since."
I am reminded of my friend's experience by my own meeting with the city
of St. Louis; for it was not until after I had left St. Louis that I
found out "who it is." That is, I failed to focus, while there, upon the
fact that it is America's fourth city. And now, in looking back, I feel
about St. Louis as my friend felt about the ironmaster: I do not think
it looks the part.
St. Louis leads the world in shoes, stoves, and tobacco; it is the
world's greatest market for hardware, lumber, and raw furs; it is the
principal horse and mule market in America; it builds more street and
railroad cars than any other city in the country; it distributes more
coffee; it makes more woodenware, more native chemicals, more beer. It
leads in all these things. But what it does not do is to _look_ as
though it led. Physically it is a great, overgrown American town, like
Buffalo or St. Paul. Its streets are, for the most part, lacking in
distinction. There is no center at which a visitor might stop, knowing
by instinct that he was at the city's heart. It is a rambling,
incoherent place, in which one has to ask which is the principal retail
shopping corner. Fancy having to ask a thing like that!
I do not mean by this that St. Louis is much worse, in appearance, than
some other American cities. For American cities, as I have said before,
have only recently awakened to the need of broadly planned municipal
beauty. All I mean is that St. Louis seems to be behind in taking action
to improve herself.
Almost every city presents a paradox, if you will but find it. The St.
Louis paradox is that she is a fashionable city without style. But that
is not, in reality, the paradox, it seems. It only means that being an
old, aristocratic city, with a wealthy and cosmopolitan population, and
an extraordinarily cultivated social life, St. Louis yet lacks municipal
distinction. It is a dowdy city. It needs to be taken by the hand and
led around to some municipal-improvement tailor, some civic haberdasher,
who will dress it like the gentleman it really is.
I remember a well-to-do old man who used to be like that. His daughters
were obliged to drag him down to get new clothes. Always he insisted
that the old frock coat was plenty good enough; that he couldn't spare
time and the money for a new one. Nevertheless, he could well afford new
clothes, and so can St. Louis. The city debt is relatively small, and
there are only two American cities of over 350,000 population which have
a lower tax-rate. These two are San Francisco and Cleveland. And either
one of them can set a good example to St. Louis, in the matter of
self-improvement. San Francisco, with a population hardly more than half
that of St. Louis, is yet an infinitely more important-looking city;
while Minneapolis or Denver might impress a casual visitor, roaming
their streets, as being equal to St. Louis in commerce and population,
although the Missouri metropolis is, in reality, considerably greater
than the two combined. However, in considering the foibles of an old
city we should be lenient, as in considering those of an old man.
Old men and old cities did not enjoy, in their youth, the advantages
which are enjoyed to-day by young men and young cities. Life was harder,
and precedent, in many lines, was wanting. Excepting in a few rare
instances, as, for example, in Detroit and Savannah, the laying out of
cities seems to have been taken care of, in the early days, as much by
cows as men. Look at Boston, or lower New York, or St. Paul, or St.
Louis. How little did the men who founded those cities dream of the
proportions to which they would some day attain! With cities which have
begun to develop within the last fifty or sixty years, it has been
different, for there has been precedent to show them what is possible
when an American city really starts to grow. To-day all American cities,
even down to the smallest towns, have a sneaking suspicion that they may
some day become great, too--great, that is, by comparison with what they
are. And those which are not altogether lacking in energy are prepared,
at least in a small way, to encounter greatness when, at last, it comes.
Baedeker says St. Louis was founded as a fur-trading station by the
French in 1756. "All About St. Louis," a publication compiled by the St.
Louis Advertising Men's League, gives the date 1764. Pierre Laclede was
the founder, and it is interesting to note that some of his descendants
still reside there.
When Louis XV ceded the territory to the east of the Mississippi to the
English, he also ceded the west bank to Spain by secret treaty. Spanish
authority was established in St. Louis in 1770, but in 1804 the town
became a part of the United States, as a portion of the Louisiana
Purchase.
[Illustration: The dilapidation of the quarter has continued steadily
from Dickens's day to this, and the beauty now to be discovered there is
that of decay and ruin]
In the old days the city had but three streets: the Rue Royale, one
block back from the levee (now Main Street); the Rue de l'Eglise, or
Church Street (now Second); and the Rue des Granges, or Barn Street (now
Third).
Though a few of the old French houses, in a woeful state of
dilapidation, may still be seen in this neighborhood, it is now for the
most part given over to commission merchants, warehouses, and slums.
Charles Dickens, writing of St. Louis in 1842, describes this quarter:
"In the old French portion of the town the thoroughfares are narrow and
crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and picturesque: being
built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before the windows,
approachable by stairs or rather ladders from the street. There are
queer little barbers' shops and drinking houses, too, in this quarter;
and abundance of crazy old tenements with blinking casements, such as
may be seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with high
garret gable windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French
shrug about them; and, being lopsided with age, appear to hold their
heads askew, besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the
American improvements.
"It is hardly necessary to say that these consist of wharves and
warehouses and new buildings in all directions; and of a great
many vast plans which are still 'progressing.' Already, however,
some very good houses, broad streets, and marble-fronted shops
have gone so far ahead as to be in a state of completion, and the
town bids fair in a few years to improve considerably; though it
is not likely ever to vie, in point of elegance or beauty, with
Cincinnati.... The Roman Catholic religion, introduced here by
the early French settlers, prevails extensively. Among the public
institutions are a Jesuit college, a convent for 'the Ladies of
the Sacred Heart,' and a large chapel attached to the college,
which was in course of erection at the time of my visit.... The
architect of this building is one of the reverend fathers.... The
organ will be sent from Belgium.... In addition to these
establishments there is a Roman Catholic cathedral.
"No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he dwells in
(unless he is going away from it), and I shall therefore, I have
no doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants of St. Louis in
questioning the perfect salubrity of its climate.... It is very
hot...."
The cathedral of which Dickens wrote remains, perhaps the most sturdy
building in the section which forms the old town. It is a
venerable-looking pile of gray granite, built to last forever, and
suggesting, with its French inscriptions and its exotic look, a bit of
old Quebec. But for the most part the dilapidation of the quarter has
continued steadily from Dickens's day to this, and the beauty now to be
discovered there is that of decay and ruin--pathetic beauty to charm the
etcher, but sadden the lover of improvement, whose battle cry invariably
involves the overworked word "civic."
An exception to the general slovenliness of this quarter is to be seen
in the old Merchants' Exchange Hall on Main Street. Built nearly sixty
years ago, this building, now disused and dilapidated, nevertheless
shows a facade of a distinction rare in structures of its time. I was
surprised to discover that this old hall was not better known in St.
Louis, and I cheerfully recommend it to the notice of those who esteem
the architecture of the Jefferson Memorial, the bulky new cathedral on
Lindell Boulevard, or that residence, suggestive of the hanging gardens
of Babylon, at Hortense Place and King's Highway. Take the old
Merchants' Exchange Hall away from dirty, cobbled Main Street, set it
up, instead, in Venice, beside the Grand Canal, and watch the tourist
from St. Louis stop his gondola to gaze!
But what city has respected its ruins? Rome used her palaces as mines
for building material. St. Louis destroyed the wonderful old mound which
used to stand at the corner of Mound Street and Broadway, forming one of
the most interesting archeological remains in the country and, together
with smaller mounds near by, giving St. Louis her title of "Mound City."
With Dickens's statements concerning the St. Louis summer climate, the
publication, "All About St. Louis," does not, for one moment, agree. In
it I find an article headed: "St. Louis has Better Weather than Other
Cities," the preamble to which contains the following solemn truth:
The weather question is purely local and individual. Every person
forms his own opinion about the weather by the way it affects him,
wherever he happens to be.
Having made that clear, the writer becomes more specific. He informs us
that, in St. Louis, "the prevailing winds in summer blow over the Ozark
Mountains, insuring cool nights and pleasant days." Also that "during
the summer the temperature does not run so high, and warm spells do not
last so long as in many cities of the North." The latter statement is
supported--as almost every statement in the world, it seems to me, can
be supported--by statistics. What wonderful things statistics are! How I
wish Charles Dickens might have seen these. How surprised he would have
been. How surprised I was--for I, too, have visited St. Louis in the
middle of the year. Yes, and so has my companion. He went to St. Louis
several years ago to attend the Democratic National Convention, but he
is all right again now.
I showed him the statistics.
"Why!" he cried. "I ought to have been told of this before!"
"What for?" I demanded.
"If I had had this information at the time of the convention," he
declared, "I'd have known enough not to have been laid up in bed for six
weeks with heat prostration."
* * * * *
Though the downtown portion of St. Louis is, as I have said, lacking in
coherence and distinction, there are, nevertheless, a number of
buildings in that section which are, for one reason or another, notable.
The old Courthouse, on Chestnut and Market Streets, between Fourth and
Fifth, is getting well along toward its centennial, and is interesting,
both as a dignified old granite pile and as the scene of the whipping
post, and of slave sales which were held upon its steps during the Civil
War.
Not far from the old Courthouse stands another building typifying all
that is modern--the largest office building in the world, a highly
creditable structure, occupying an entire city block, built from designs
by St. Louis architects: Mauran, Russell & Crowell. Another building,
notable for its beauty, is the Central Public Library, a very simple,
well-proportioned building of gray granite, designed by Cass Gilbert.
The St. Louis Union Station is interesting for several reasons. When
built, it was the largest station in the world--one of the first great
stations of the modern type. It contains, under its roof, five and a
half miles of track, and though it has been surpassed, architecturally,
by some more recent stations, it is still a spectacular building--or
rather it would be, were it not for its setting, among narrow streets,
lined with cheap saloons, lunch rooms, and lodging houses. That any city
capable of building such a splendid terminal could, at the same time, be
capable of leaving it in such environment is a thing baffling to the
comprehension. It must, however, be said that efforts have been made to
improve this condition. Six or seven years ago the Civic League proposed
to buy the property facing the station and turn it into a park. St.
Louis somnolence defeated this project. The City Plan Commission now has
a more elaborate suggestion which, if accepted, will not only place the
station in a proper setting, but also reclaim a large area, in the
geographical center of the city, which has suffered a blight, and which
is steadily deteriorating, although through it run the chief lines of
travel between the business and residence portions of the city.
This project, if put through, will be a fine step toward the creation,
in downtown St. Louis, of some outward indication of the real importance
of the city. The plan involves the gutting of a strip, one block wide
and two miles long; the tearing out of everything between Market and
Chestnut Streets, all the way from Twelfth Street, which is the eastern
boundary of the City Hall Square, to Grand Avenue on the west. Here it
is proposed to construct a Central Traffic Parkway, which will pass
directly in front of the station, connecting it with both the business
and residence districts, and will also pass in front of the Municipal
Court Building and the City Hall, located farther downtown. The plan
involves an arrangement similar to that of the Champs-Elysees, with a
wide central drive, parked on either side, for swift-moving vehicles,
and exterior roads for heavy traffic.
An expert in such work has said that "city planning has few functions
more important than the restoration of impaired property values."
American cities are coming to comprehend that investment in
intelligently planned improvements, such as this, have to do not only
with city dignity and city self-respect, but that they pay for
themselves. If St. Louis wants to find that out, she has but to visit
her western neighbor, Kansas City, where the construction of Paseo
boulevard did redeem a blighted district, transforming it into an
excellent neighborhood, doubling or trebling the value of adjacent
property, and, of course, yielding the city increased revenue from
taxes.
A matter more deplorable than the setting of the station is the
unparalleled situation which exists with regard to the Free Bridge.
Though the echoes of this scandal have been heard, more or less,
throughout the country, it is perhaps necessary to give a brief summary
of the matter as it stands at present.
The three used bridges which cross the Mississippi River at St. Louis
are privately controlled toll bridges. Working people, passing to and
fro, are obliged to pay a five-cent toll in excess of car fare. Goods
are also taxed. It was with the purpose of defeating this monopoly that
the Free Bridge was constructed. But after the body of the bridge was
built, factional fights developed as to the placing of approaches, and
as a result, the approaches have never been built. Thus, the bridge
stands to-day, as it has stood for several years, a thing costly,
grotesque, and useless, spanning the river, its two ends jutting out,
inanely, over the opposing shores. In the meantime the city is paying
interest on the bridge bonds at the rate of something over $300 per day.
The question of approaches has come before the city at several
elections, but the people have so far failed to vote the necessary
bonds. The history of the voting on this subject plainly shows
indifference. In one election the Twenty-eighth Ward, which is the rich
and fashionable ward, cast only 2,325 votes, on the bridge question, out
of a possible 6,732. Had the eligible voters of this ward, alone, done
their duty, the issue would have been carried at the time, and the
bridge would now be in operation.
One becomes accustomed to exhibitions of municipal indifference upon
matters involving questions like reform, which, though they are not
really abstract, often seem so to the average voter. Reforms are,
relatively at least, invisible things. But the Free Bridge is not
invisible. Far from it! There it stands above the stream, a grim,
gargantuan joke, for every man to see--a tin can tied to a city's tail.
[Illustration: The three used bridges which cross the Mississippi River
at St. Louis are privately controlled toll bridges]
In writing of St. Louis I feel, somehow, like a man who has been at a
delightful house party where people have been very kind to him, and who,
when he goes away, promulgates unpleasant truths about bad plumbing in
the house. Yet, of course, St. Louis is a public place, to which I went
with the avowed purpose of writing my impressions. The reader may be
glad, at this point, to learn that some of my impressions are of a
pleasant nature. But before I reach them I must rake a little further
through this substance, which, I am becoming very much afraid, resembles
"muck."
St. Louis has, for some time, been involved in a fight with the United
Railways Company, a corporation controlling the street car system of the
city. In one quarter I was informed that this company was paying
dividends on millions of watered stock, and that it had been reported by
the Public Service Commission as earning more than a million a year in
excess of a reasonable return on its investment. In another quarter,
while it was not denied that the company was overburdened with
obligations representing much more than the actual value of the present
system, it was explained that the so-called "water" represented the cost
of the early horse-car system, discarded on the advent of the cable
lines, and also the cost of the cable lines which were, in turn,
discarded for the trolley. It was furthermore contended that, in the
days before the formation of the United Railways Company, when several
companies were striving for territory, the street railroads of St.
Louis were overbuilt, with the result that much money was sunk.
In an article on St. Louis, recently published in "Collier's Weekly," I
made the statement that the street car service of St. Louis was as bad
as I had ever seen; that the tracks were rough, the cars run-down and
dirty, and that an antediluvian heating system was used, namely, a
red-hot stove at one end of the car, giving but small comfort to those
far removed from it, and fairly cooking those who sat near.
This statement brought some protest from St. Louis. Several persons
wrote to me saying that the cars were not dirty, that only a few of them
were heated with stoves, and that the tracks were in good condition.
With one of these correspondents, Mr. Walter B. Stevens, I exchanged
several letters. I informed him that I had ridden in five different
cars, that all five were heated as mentioned, that they were dirty and
needed painting, and that I recalled distinctly the fact that the
rail-joints caused a continual jarring of the car.
Mr. Stevens replied as follows:
"In your street car trip to the southwestern part of the city you saw
probably the worst part of the system. Some of the lines, notably those
in the section of the city mentioned by you, have not been brought up to
the standard that prevails elsewhere. I have traveled on street cars in
most of the large cities of this country, north and south, and according
to my observation, the lines in the central part of St. Louis,
extending westward, are not surpassed anywhere."
As I have reason to know that Mr. Stevens is an exceedingly fair-minded
gentleman, I am glad of the opportunity to print his statement here. I
must add, however, that I think a street car system on which a stranger,
taking five different cars, finds them all heated by stoves, leaves
something to be desired. Let me say further that I might not have been
so critical of the St. Louis street railways and its cars, had I not
become acquainted, a short time before, with the Twin City Rapid Transit
Company, which operates the street railways of Minneapolis and St. Paul:
a system which, as a casual observer, I should call the most perfect of
its kind I have seen in the United States.
* * * * *
"What is the matter with St. Louis?" I inquired of a wide-awake citizen
I met.
"Oh, the Drew Question," he suggested with a smile.
"The Drew Question?" I repeated blankly.
"You don't know about that? Well, the question you asked was put to the
city, some years ago, by Alderman Drew, so instead of asking it outright
any more, we refer to it as 'the Drew Question,' Every one knows what it
means."
The man who asks that question in St. Louis will receive a wide variety
of answers.
One exceedingly well-informed gentleman told me that St. Louis had the
"most aggressive minority" he had ever seen. "Start any movement here,"
he declared, "and, whatever it may be, you immediately encounter strong
objection."
In other quarters I learned of something called "The Big Cinch"--an
intangible, reactionary sort of dragon, said to be built of big business
men. It is charged that this legendary monster has put the quietus upon
various enterprises, including the construction of a new and first-class
hotel--something which St. Louis needs. In still other quarters I was
informed that the city's long-established wealth had placed it in
somewhat the position of Detroit before the days of the automobile, and
that much of the money and many of the big business enterprises were
controlled by elderly men; in short, that what is needed is young blood,
or, as one man put it, "a few important funerals."
"It is conservatism," explained another. "The trouble with St. Louis is
that nobody here ever goes crazy." And said still another: "About
one-third of the population of St. Louis is German. It is German
lethargy that holds the city back."
Whatever truth may lurk in these several statements, I do not,
personally, believe in the last one. If the Germans are sometimes
stolid, they are upon the other hand honest, thoughtful, and steady. And
when it comes to lethargy--well, Chicago, the most active great city in
the country, has a large German population. And, for the matter of that,
so has Berlin! Some of the best citizens St. Louis has are Germans, and
one of her most public-spirited and nationally distinguished men was
born in Prussia--Mr. Frederick W. Lehmann, former Solicitor General of
the United States and ex-president of the American Bar Association. Mr.
Lehmann (who served the country as a commissioner in the cause of peace
with Mexico, at the Niagara Falls conference) drew up a city charter
which was recommended by the Board of Freeholders of St. Louis in 1910.
This charter was defeated. However, another charter, embodying many even
more progressive elements than those contained in the charter proposed
by Mr. Lehmann, has lately been accepted by the city, and there can be
little doubt that the earlier proposals paved the way for this one. The
new charter had not been passed at the time of my visit. The St. Louis
newspapers which I have seen since are, however, most sanguine in their
prophecies as to what will be accomplished under it. All seem to agree
that its acceptance marks the awakening of the city.
German emigration to St. Louis began about 1820 and increased at the
time of the rebellion of 1848, so that, like Milwaukee, St. Louis has
to-day a very strong German flavor. By the terms of the city charter all
ordinances and municipal legal advertising are printed in both English
and German, and the "Westliche Post" of St. Louis, a German newspaper
founded by the late Emil Pretorius and now conducted by his son, is a
powerful organ. The great family beer halls of the city add further
Teutonic color, and the Liederkranz is, I believe, the largest club in
the city. This organization is not much like a club according to the
restricted English idea; it suggests some great, genial public gathering
place. The substantial German citizens who arrive here of a Sunday
night, when the cook goes out, do not come alone, nor merely with their
sons, but bring their entire families for dinner, including the mother,
the daughters, and the little children. There is music, of course, and
great contentment. The place breathes of substantiality, democracy, and
good nature. You feel it even in the manner of the waiters, who, being
first of all human beings, second, Germans, and waiters only in the
third place, have an air of personal friendliness with those they serve.
* * * * *
Aside from his municipal and national activities, Mr. Lehmann has found
time to gather in his home one of the most complete collections of
Dickens's first editions and related publications to be found in the
whole world. It is, indeed, on this side--the side of cultivation--that
St. Louis is most truly charming. She has an old, exclusive, and
delightful society, and a widespread and pleasantly unostentatious
interest in esthetic things. In fact, I do not know of any American
city, to which St. Louis may with justice be compared, possessing a
larger body of collectors, nor collections showing more individual
taste. The most important private collections in the city are, I
believe, those of Mr. William K. Bixby, who owns a great number of
valuable paintings by old masters, and a large collection of rare books
and manuscripts. As a book collector, Mr. Bixby is widely known
throughout the country, and he has had, if I mistake not, the honor of
being president of that Chicago club of bibliolatrists, known as the
"Dofobs," or "damned old fools over books."
An exhibition of paintings owned in St. Louis is held annually in the
St. Louis Museum of Art, and leaves no doubt as to the genuineness of
the interest of St. Louis citizens in painting. Nor can any one,
considering the groups of canvases loaned to the museum for the annual
exhibition, doubt that certain art collectors in St. Louis (Mr. Edward
A. Faust, for example) are buying not only names but paintings.
The Art Museum is less accessible to the general citizen than are
museums in some other cities. Having been originally the central hall of
the group of buildings devoted to art at the time of the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition, it stands in that part of Forest Park which was
formerly the Fair ground. Posed, as it is, upon a hill, in a commanding
and conspicuous position, it reveals, somewhat unfortunately, the fact
that it is the isolated fragment of a former group. Nevertheless, it
must take a high place among the secondary art museums of the United
States. For despite the embarrassment caused by the possession of a good
deal of mediocre sculpture, a legacy from the World's Fair, which is
packed in its central hall; and despite the inheritance, from twenty or
twenty-five years since, of vapid canvases by Bouguereau, Gabriel Max,
and other painters of past popularity, whose works are rapidly coming to
be known for what they are--despite these handicaps, the museum is now
distinctly in step with the march of modern art. The old collection is
being weeded out, and good judgment is being shown in the selection of
new canvases. Like the Albright Gallery in Buffalo, the St. Louis Museum
of Art is rapidly acquiring works by some of the best American painters
of to-day, having purchased within the last four or five years canvases
by Redfield, Loeb, Symons, Waugh, Dearth, Dougherty, Foster, and others.
Another building saved from the World's Fair is the superb central hall
of Washington University, a red granite structure in the English
collegiate style, designed by Cope & Stewardson. The dozen or more
buildings of this university are very fine in their harmony, and are
pronounced by Baedeker "certainly the most successful and appropriate
group of collegiate buildings in the New World."
It is curious to note in this connection that there are eight colleges
or universities in the United States in which the name of "Washington"
appears; among them, Washington University at St. Louis; Washington
College at Chestertown, Md.; George Washington University at Washington,
D. C.; Washington State College at Pullman, Wash., and the University of
Washington at Seattle.
[Illustration: The skins are handled in the raw state ... with the
result that the floor of the exchange is made slippery by animal fats,
and that the olfactory organs encounter smells not to be matched in any
zoo]