St. Louis is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri, located near the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Missouri River. St. Louis is the largest metropolitan area in Missouri. Sometimes written as Saint Louis, the city is named for King Louis IX of France. It is separate from St. Louis County which borders much of the city itself.

St. Louis was the fourth largest single city in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, although the city proper has since slipped to 52nd. The 1904 World's Fair and 1904 Olympic Games, the first ever held in the United States, were both held in St. Louis. The St. Louis region is home to some of the country's largest privately-held corporations, including Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Graybar, Scottrade, Edward Jones and is also home to some of the largest public corporations, including Emerson, Energizer, Anheuser Busch, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, Purina, Express Scripts, Charter Communications, Monsanto and Wachovia Securities.

The city has many nicknames, the most popular being "Gateway City", as it is seen as the Eastern/Western US dividing mark. St. Louis is also called "Gateway to the West" on behalf of the many people who migrated west through St. Louis via the Missouri River (first leg of the Oregon Trail) and other wagon trails.

St. Louis lies at the heart of Greater St. Louis, a metropolitan area of nearly three million people in both Missouri and Illinois. The Illinois portion is commonly known as the Metro-East. The Greater St. Louis area was the 16th largest metro area in the U.S. as of the July 2007 US Census estimate, with 2,871,421 people.

History

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". European exploration of the area had begun nearly a century before the city was founded. Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, two French explorers, traveled through the Mississippi River valley in 1673, and 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 established a settlement at Cahokia, across the Mississippi River from what is now St. Louis. They founded other early settlements downriver at Kaskaskia, Prairie du Pont and Fort de Chartres, Illinois 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" (French Rivière des pères, River of the Fathers).

In 1763, Pierre Laclède de Liguest, his 13-year-old "stepson" Auguste Chouteau and a small band of men traveled up the Mississippi from New Orleans to found a post to take advantage of trade coming downstream by the Missouri River. 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 forty feet above the river. The men returned to Fort du Chartres for the winter, but in February, Laclède sent Chouteau and thirty men to begin construction at the new site, laid out in a grid pattern as an imitation of New Orleans.

St. Louis was a river city, and it therefore developed in response to its relationship to the river. Development, particularly economic development, clustered around the settlement’s Mississippi River bank on what was called "the levee" and is now called "the landing." This long, smooth bank of land, which would later be paved with cobblestone, sloped into the river at an incline that was gradual enough to permit the river vessels of the time to beach onto it in order to be loaded and unloaded. All products at this time were shipped to and from New Orleans, orienting St. Louis' 18th-century trade north-south.

The settlement began to grow quickly after word arrived that the 1763 Treaty of Paris had given Britain all the land east of the Mississippi. Frenchmen who had earlier settled to the river's east moved across the water to "Laclède's Village." Other early settlements were established nearby at Saint Charles, the independent village of Carondelet (later annexed by St. Louis and now the southernmost part of the current City), Fleurissant (renamed Saint Ferdinand by the Spaniards and now Florissant) and Portage des Sioux. In 1765, St. Louis was made the capital of Upper Louisiana.

From 1766 to 1768, St. Louis was governed by the French lieutenant governor, Louis Saint Ange de Bellerive, who was appointed not by French or Spanish authorities, but by the leading residents of St. Louis. After 1768, St. Louis was governed by a series of governors appointed by Spanish authorities 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. During the period when commandants appointed by Spanish authorities governed St. Louis, meetings of leading residents were also held from time to time, and "syndics" were sometimes elected to carry out certain governmental tasks.

In 1780 St. Louis was attacked by the British during the American Revolution. A combined Spanish and French Creole force protected the city.

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 one raised. On March 10, the French flag was replaced by the United States flag. Until the 1820s French continued to be one of the major spoken and written languages in St. Louis, along with English. 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 23 September 1806. Both Lewis and Clark lived in St. Louis after the expedition. Many other explorers, settlers and trappers (such as Ashley's Hundred) would later take a similar route to the West. After Missouri became a state in 1821, St. Louis was incorporated as a city on December 9, 1822. The city elected its first municipal legislators (called trustees) in 1808. 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. Steamboats signified significant progress in river trade, as steam power permitted much more efficient and dependable river transportation. Unlike the hand-propelled barges and keel boats that preceded the steamboat as the choice vehicle of Mississippi River trade, steamboats could travel upriver, and against the current, just as easily as downriver.

Rapids north of the city made St. Louis the northernmost navigable port for many large boats. The Pike and her sisters soon transformed St. Louis into a bustling boom town, commercial center, and inland port. By the 1830s, it was common to see more than 150 steamboats at the St. Louis levee at one time. 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.

In 1836 the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce was founded. It was one of the oldest Chambers of Commerce in the United States. Along the way, it has been involved with projects as diverse as securing funding for Charles Lindbergh’s historic 1927 transatlantic flight (thus the naming of the plane "The Spirit of St. Louis” and rallying community support for the design, funding and construction of St. Louis’ famed Gateway Arch. The current chamber is now called the St. Louis Regional Chamber of Commerce, representing the Bi-State region. The Regional Chamber and Growth Association organization is directed by Richard Fleming.

Immigrants flooded into St. Louis after 1840, particularly from Germany, Bohemia and Ireland, the last driven by persecution from the English and secondary a potato famine. During Reconstruction, rural Southern blacks flooded into St. Louis as well, seeking better opportunity. The population of St. Louis grew from less than 20,000 in 1840, to 77,860 in 1850, to more than 160,000 by 1860. At this time, public transit developed in order to effectively transport the numbers of new residents in the city. Omnibuses began to service St. Louis in 1843, and in 1859, St. Louis' first streetcar tracks were laid. Later in the 19th century, Italian immigrants began to arrive in the city and farming areas. They helped expand wine making to the Rolla area.

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. Particularly after the 1849 fire, St. Louis' population decentralization westward accelerated, a pattern of migration and development that continues today.

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 barely touched St. Louis. The area saw only a few skirmishes, in which Union forces prevailed. The most important action might have been the Camp Jackson Affair. However, the war shut down trade with the South, as Union troops blockaded the Mississippi River from 1861 through the end of the war. Trade in St. Louis declined to about one-third its average, as the economy of the South, one of the markets St. Louis depended on, was devastated. Missouri was nominally a slave state, but its economy did not depend on slavery. It remained loyal to the Union throughout the Civil War. The arsenal at St. Louis was used during the war to construct ironclad ships for the Union, and shipbuilding continued at the Port of St. Louis even into the latter half of the 20th century.

Eads Bridge, the first road and rail bridge to cross the Mississippi River, was completed in 1874.

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 St. Louis government to increase their political power. This decision later haunted the City, as the results of that separation are still problematic today.

As St. Louis grew and prospered during the late 19th and early 20th century, the city produced a number of notable people in the fields of business and literature. The Ralston-Purina company (headed by the Danforth Family) was headquartered in the city. Anheuser-Busch, the world's largest brewery, remains a fixture of the city's economy. The City was home to International Shoe, the Brown Shoe Company and the St. Louis Division of the Curtiss-Wright Aircraft Company. Several important aircraft were built or first tested at St. Louis, including the CD-25 Coupe business aircraft (later the AT-9 Jeep in wartime service), the CW-20 twin-engine airliner, the C-76 Caravan and the C-46 Commando of the Second World War.

St. Louis was also one of the cities to see a pioneering brass era automobile company, the Success; despite its low price, the company did not live up to its name.

Residents or natives notable in literature included poets Sara Teasdale, Marianne Moore and T. S. Eliot; writers Eugene Field, Kate Chopin and William Burroughs; and playwright Tennessee Williams.

St. Louis is one of several cities claiming 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. Today it is used by the State of Missouri as a government office building.

In 1893 Nikola Tesla made the first public demonstration of radio communication here.

In 1896, one of the deadliest and most destructive tornadoes in U. S. history struck St. Louis and East St. Louis, IL, leaving a mile-wide continuous swath of destroyed homes, factories, mills, saloons, hospitals, schools, parks, churches and railroad yards. Killing more than 255, with damages adjusted for inflation (1997 USD), it was one of the costliest tornadoes in U. S. history with an estimated $2.9 billion in losses. Several other tornadoes have hit the city, including in 1927 (79 killed, 550 injured) and 1959 (21 killed, 345 injured).

By the time of the 1900 census, St. Louis was the fourth-largest city in the country. In 1904, the city hosted its second World's Fair, which led the Olympic Games to be moved from Chicago, originally selected to host the games, to St. Louis to coincide with the Fair. With these games the United States became the first English speaking country to host the Olympics. Citizens of St. Louis still look back fondly on the events of 1904; there were several events held in 2004 to commemorate the centennial.

St. Louis developed a lively immigrant gang culture by the early 20th century, leading up to much bootlegging activity and gang violence. One gang leader, from an Irish part of the city referred to as "Kerry Patch" was named "Jelly Roll" Hogan. Hogan's gang is mentioned in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. In the 1920s there were shoot outs on Lindell Boulevard between Hogan's Gang and the gang known as Egan's Rats. A priest was brought in to broker peace between the gangs in 1923, but this truce only lasted a few months before two more people were killed in a public shoot out. In 1923, Egan's Rats made off with $2.4 million in bonds from a mail truck. Hogan during this time was a state representative. He was elected in 1916, eventually became a state senator and spent forty years in elected office. The Kerry Patch is now part of the Old North St. Louis neighborhood.

Although St. Louis did not segregate people on street cars like other cities, racial discrimination in housing was commonplace, and discrimination in employment was not uncommon before World War II. During World War II the NAACP successfully campaigned, through protests and picket lines, to persuade the Federal government to allow African Americans to work in war plants. Some 16,000 jobs were gained in this way. State court rulings and local civil rights campaigns in the two decades after the war challenged the legality of race-based restrictions on real estate ownership and opened clerical positions in local banks, etc. that had been more common prior to WWII.

St. Louis, as did many other Midwestern cities, experienced major expansion in the early 20th century due to the formation of many industrial companies and reached its peak population at the 1950 census. The Gateway Arch was built in the mid-1960s. In the postwar era, suburbanization in conjunction with the GI Bill, interstate highway construction and changes in housing preferences shifted the population out of the city and into newly formed suburbs. Although the overall population of the St. Louis MSA has always been growing, the St. Louis city population itself decreased for decades, especially after job losses due to restructuring of railroad and other industries.

Recently, there has been revitalization in Downtown St. Louis and along a corridor extending to the west through Midtown and the Central West End neighborhoods. The St. Louis Cardinals' new Busch Stadium opened in 2006. Ballpark Village would have been built where northern half of the former Busch Stadium stood, but those plans have been put on hold. For several years the Washington Avenue Loft District has been gentrifying with an expanding corridor along Washington Avenue from the Edward Jones Dome westward almost two dozen blocks. Revitalization continues, including new construction, as the corridor extends to the west to Forest Park.

Because of the major upturn in urban revitalization, St. Louis received the World Leadership Award for urban renewal in 2006. In 2007 the U. S. Census Bureau reported St. Louis had a net population gain of 7,474 from the 2000 Census, to 355,663, the first gain the city has had since 1950. However, since then, the State of Missouri released census estimates projecting the city will lose 3,000 residents by 2030.

Culture

There are many museums and attractions in the city. The St. Louis Art Museum, located in the City's premier park, Forest Park and dating from the 1904 World's Fair, houses an impressive array of modern art and ancient artifacts, with an extensive collection of master works of several centuries, including paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Picasso and many others. Forest Park is bigger than New York's Central Park and it also is home to the St. Louis Zoo, the Muny and many other attractions. The privately owned City Museum offers a variety of interesting exhibits, including several large faux caves and a huge outdoor playground. It also serves as a meeting point for St. Louis's young arts scene.

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts located in Grand Center, is an arts institution in a world-renowned building designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando. Also located in Grand Center is the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. This non-collecting museum is recognized nationally for the quality of its exhibitions and education programs. The Eugene Field House, located in downtown St. Louis, is a museum dedicated to the distinguished children's author. The Missouri History Museum presents exhibits and programs on a variety of topics including the 1904 World's Fair, and a comprehensive exhibit on Lewis and Clark's voyage exploring the Louisiana Purchase. The Fox Theatre, originally one of many movie theatres along Grand Boulevard, is now a newly restored theater featuring a Byzantine facade and Oriental decor. The Fox Theatre presents a Broadway Series in addition to concerts. The St. Louis Union Station is a popular tourist attraction with retail shops and a luxury hotel.

There are several notable churches in the city, including the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis (more commonly known as "the New Cathedral"), a large Roman Catholic cathedral designed in the Byzantine and Romanesque styles. The interior is decorated with mosaics, the largest mosaic collection in the world. In January 1999 Pope John Paul II spoke in the Cathedral Basilica as part of a two day visit to St. Louis. The Cathedral Basilica is the mother church and seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Louis, the principal diocese of Missouri; the diocese officially has no bishop since Raymond Burke was appointed Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura.

The Basilica of St. Louis, King of France (1834) (more commonly known as the "Old Cathedral") is the oldest Roman Catholic cathedral west of the Mississippi River. The Old Cathedral is located adjacent to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Also notable is the abbey church of Saint Louis Abbey, whose distinctive architectural style garnered multiple awards at the time of its completion.

The Gateway Arch, part of the Memorial, is arguably the city's best-known landmark, as well as a popular tourist site. This Memorial commemorates the acquisition and settlement by the citizens of the United States of America of all of the lands west of the Mississippi River that are part of the nation today. The Arch, and the entire 91 acres (370,000 m) of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial park, occupy the exact location of the original French village of St. Louis (1764–1804). Unfortunately, no buildings from that era exist today.

The Hill is an historically Italian neighborhood where many of the area's best Italian restaurants can be found. The Hill was the home of Yogi Berra, Joe Garagiola and many other noted athletes.

Forest Park offers many of St. Louis's most popular attractions: the Saint Louis Zoological Park; the Municipal Theater (also known as The Muny, the largest and oldest outdoor musical theater in the United States); the St. Louis Science Center (with its architecturally distinctive McDonnell Planetarium); the Saint Louis Art Museum; the Missouri History Museum; several lakes, and scenic open areas. Forest Park completed a multi-million dollar renovation in 2004 for the centennial of the St. Louis World's Fair. The Zoo, Art Museum, and Science Center are all world-class institutions. The Zoo-Museum Tax District provides operating funds, so admission is free to them and the History Museum.

The Saint Louis Zoological Park, one of the oldest and largest free-admission zoos in the country, is home to an Insectarium and the Prairie Village. The St. Louis Zoo is the most visited zoo in the United States, having surpassed the San Diego Zoo in popularity. It boasts many exhibits with animal-friendly habitats. The zoo is located in Forest Park, adjacent to the St. Louis Art Museum.

The St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum is located near Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis. Laclede's Landing, located on the Mississippi Riverfront directly north of the historic Eads Bridge is popular for its restaurants and nightclubs.

St. Louis possesses several distinct examples of 18th and 19th century architecture, such as the Soulard Market District (1779-1842), the Chatillon-de-Menil House (1848), the Bellefontaine Cemetery (1850), the Robert G. Campbell House (1852), the Old Courthouse (1845-62), the original Anheuser-Busch Brewery (1860) and two of Louis Sullivan's early skyscrapers, the Wainwright Building (1890-91) and the Union Trust Building.

On the Riverfront two sculptural groups have been designated a National Lewis and Clark site by the National Park Service. This includes a twice life-sized grouping of Lewis and Clark on the St. Louis Riverfront which commemorated the final celebration of the bicentennial of the expedition. These sculptures were done by Harry Weber.

The Lemp Mansion, home of the ill-fated Lemp family, brewers of Falstaff Beer and others, is considered one of the most haunted places in the nation. It is open to the public as a restaurant, murder-mystery dinner theater, and bed and breakfast.

Entertainment and Performing Arts

St. Louis is home to the world-renowned Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra which was founded in 1880 and is the second oldest orchestra in the nation. The orchestra has received six Grammy Awards and fifty-six nominations. The Historic Powell Symphony Hall on North Grand Boulevard has been the permanent home of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra since 1968. Leonard Slatkin, largely credited with building the orchestra's international prominence during his 17-year tenure as Music Director, is Conductor Laureate. The current Music Director of the orchestra is David Robertson.

The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is an annual summer festival of opera performed in English, originally co-founded by Richard Gaddes in 1976. Union Avenue Opera, formed in the early 1990s, is a smaller company that performs opera in their original languages. Other classical music groups of note include the Arianna String Quartet, the quartet-in-residence at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus and the Young Catholic Musicians, a group for young choir and band members made up of kids from over 60 parishes all over Saint Louis.

St. Louis has long been associated with great ragtime, jazz and blues music. Early rock and roll singer/guitarist Chuck Berry is a native St. Louisan and continues to perform there several times a year. Soul music artists Ike Turner and Tina Turner and jazz innovator Miles Davis began their careers in nearby East St. Louis, Illinois. St. Louis has also been a popular stop along the infamous Chitlin' circuit. It is because of this musical tradition that the city's National Hockey League team, added in the 1967 NHL expansion, was named the St. Louis Blues.

Popular music and entertainment in St. Louis peaked in the 1950s and 60s due to the popularity of Gaslight Square, a thriving local nightclub district that attracted nationally known musicians and performers. This area was all but extinct by the early 1970s and today is the site of a new housing development.

St. Louis is also the home to successful modern musical artists including Living Things, Sheryl Crow, Barbara Carr, Gravity Kills, Story of the Year, Modern Day Zero, Stir, Strawfoot, Greenwheel, Ludo, 7 Shot Screamers, MU330 and The Urge. In the 1990s, the metro area produced several prominent alt-country artists including Uncle Tupelo, a Belleville, Illinois trio often considered the originators of the style whose members went on to found Wilco and Son Volt in 1994 and The Bottle Rockets. As of 2007 the alt-country scene has celebrated a resurgence producing a burgeoning St. Louis Twang Scene consisting of bands, burlesque dancers and roller derby queens. It is also home to local record label Big Muddy Records. Rap and hip-hop artists include Nelly, The Saint Lunatics, Ali, Murphy Lee, Chingy, Huey, J-Kwon, Jibbs and others. Around 2005 the indie rock scene in St. Louis really began to develop with bands Femme Fatality, So Many Dynamos, Jumbling Towers, Gentleman Auction House and Victoria emerging and garnering national recognition.

The theater district of St. Louis is in midtown, which is undergoing a major redevelopment and building boom. This district of the city is known as Grand Center, St. Louis. The phrase can refer to the district itself (which is located within Midtown), or to the not-for-profit agency, Grand Center, Inc. (GCI), which possesses certain quasi-governmental powers and administers arts and urban-renewal programs in the area. The district includes the Fox Theatre, one of the largest live Broadway theaters in the United States, the Powell Symphony Hall, home of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Louis University Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, The Sun Theater (under redevelopment), The St Louis Black Repertory Theater Company, the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, the Sheldon Concert Hall, the Grandel Theatre and many others.

The Muny (short for "The Municipal Opera Association of St. Louis") is located in Forest Park. Seating capacity for every performance is over 13,000 people with 1500 free seats. The Muny has completed its eighty-ninth annual season for the summer of 2007 with the production of Les Misérables. The theater is influential with Actors' Equity Association.

St. Louis is home to over 81 theatre and dance companies and one of the largest theatrical production companies in the U.S.A. known as The Fox Associates. Fox Associates, L.L.C., was formed in 1981 to purchase, renovate and operate the 4,500-seat Fox Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri. The Fox, which had once been at the center of the St. Louis "movie" theater district, had been closed since 1978 and was in need of both a major restoration and new entertainment programming to elevate it once again to its rightful position as the major venue for entertainment in St. Louis. The restoration was completed and in 1982 the Fox reopened as a major entertainment venue for Broadway productions, country stars and rock, pop and jazz artists. It has since become one of the highest grossing theatres in the country. Today, The Fox Associates group has helped produce some of Broadway's biggest hit musicals and has been influential in St. Louis' theater productions.