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St. Louis Facts

became the first “free” school west of from laws. Historic Notes: the Mississippi. She went on to • St. Louis was founded in 1764 as a establish more than 40 schools for • Elizabeth Keckley, one of the Freedom French fur-trading village by Pierre white, black and Indian children. She School teachers, later went on to fame Laclede. He named the city “St. Louis” was canonized by the Roman Catholic as seamstress and confidant to Mary for King Louis IX, the crusader king Church in 1989. Todd Lincoln at the White House. who was the patron saint of Laclede’s then ruler King Louis XV. Here are • Founded in 1818, Saint Louis • St. Louis’ Old Courthouse was the some other interesting facts about the University was the first university west scene of Dred Scott’s historic slavery Gateway City. of the founded by the trial in 1847, which focused national Jesuits. attention on the slavery issue. Scott won • Today, the population of St. Louis his case in St. Louis but the decision City is 353,837. The metropolitan area • The Cupples House, located on the was overturned in the U.S. Supreme has 2.8 million residents. campus of Saint Louis University, was Court in 1857. The court ruled that built with 42 rooms and 22 fireplaces Scott was not a citizen and therefore not • The city was founded by the French and is on the National Register of entitled to sue. The decision served as a in Spanish territory in 1764. French fur Historic Places. flashpoint for the start of the Civil War. traders Pierre Laclede and Auguste After the decision, Scott and his wife Chouteau founded St. Louis on high • The Eads Bridge over the Mississippi Harriett were freed by their owner. land just below the confluence of the River was the first arched steel truss Scott died in 1858. Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. bridge in the world. When it was first proposed, it was scoffed at as • In 1859, Ulysses S. Grant legally • One of St. Louis’ early nicknames was impossible to build. Completed in freed his only slave at the Old “Mound City” because of the number 1874, it is still in use today carrying Courthouse. of Indian mounds scattered throughout MetroLink light rail and car traffic over the region. St. Louis also was once the river. • The Old Courthouse in St. Louis nicknamed “First in booze, first in shoes features the first cast iron dome ever and last in the American League,” a • The first paddlewheel steamboat built. It was erected in 1862 and still reference to the city’s leadership in the arrived in St. Louis in 1817. By the stands today as part of the Jefferson brewing and shoe manufacturing 1850s, 5,000 steamboats would land in National Expansion Memorial. industries and the poor performance of St. Louis each year. the St. Louis Browns baseball team. • Susan Blow started the first • The first cathedral west of the kindergarten in the in • When Thomas Jefferson signed the Mississippi River was built on the St. Louis in 1873. St. Louis was also Louisiana Purchase for about four cents St. Louis riverfront in 1834 at the site the site of the first public grade school an acre in 1803, St. Louis was already a of St. Louis’ first church. The Old and the first public high school west of 40-year-old river town of 3,000 with a Cathedral still stands there today. the Mississippi. flourishing river trade and the beginnings of commerce. • Reverend John Berry Meachum, a 19th • St. Louisan James Augustine Healy century preacher, cooper and carpenter, became the first black Roman Catholic • Explorers Lewis and Clark began their founded the Freedom School aboard a Bishop in the country in 1875. westward explorations in 1804, and steamboat anchored in the middle of the St. Louis was positioned as the Gateway Mississippi River at St. Louis, in answer • The Wainwright Building, located on to the West. to the 1847 state law which prohibited Seventh Street in downtown St. Louis, blacks from being educated on Missouri was the world’s first skyscraper. It was • In 1818, Sainte Rose Phillipine soil. The floating institution was then designed by architect Louis Sullivan and Duchesne established a school that under federal jurisdiction and exempt completed in 1891. continued

1210 St. Louis Facts

• At the turn of the 20th century, more • The opened in 1929 as opera stars Grace Bumbry and Robert than 100 breweries were operating in one of the crown jewels in William McFerrin, rock greats Chuck Berry and St. Louis, including Anheuser- Busch. Fox’s motion picture empire. With a , and athlete Arthur Ashe. Today, visitors can tour the 1892 brew seating capacity of 5,060, the Fox was house and the Clydesdale horse stables. second in size only to New York’s Roxy • St. Louis’ McDonnell Douglas Theatre. Corporation, now part of Boeing, designed • The 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis and built the space capsule that carried the introduced the ice cream cone and iced • The Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales first men into space in the 1960s. tea to the world, and hot dogs and were originally a gift from August hamburgers were popularized at the Busch to his father marking the end of • The Saint Louis , considered one event. Buster Brown children’s shoes prohibition. He presented his father of the finest in the world, was a pioneer were introduced at the Fair, along with with an eight-horse Clydesdale Hitch in the use of open enclosures, placing the turnstile. and a Budweiser beer wagon in April animals in natural environments 1933. The team was sent to without bars. was the • Formally called the Louisiana Washington, D.C. to deliver the first Zoo’s most famous curator. Purchase Exposition, the 1904 Fair case of Budweiser beer brewed after commemorated the 100th anniversary prohibition to President Franklin D. • The Climatron at the Missouri of the Lewis & Clark expedition. The Roosevelt. Botanical Garden was built in 1960 as Fair was further immortalized by the the world’s first climate-controlled movie, “Meet Me in St. Louis,” which • The is a memorial to geodesic dome designed as a was based on the memoirs of writer Thomas Jefferson and the historic role greenhouse. The garden also is home to Sally Benson. St. Louis played as the Gateway to the the largest traditional Japanese Garden West. Designed by Finnish-American outside Japan. • In 1904, the first Olympiad in the architect, Eero Saarinen, construction U.S. was held in St. Louis at of the Arch was • Ted Drewes located on historic Route Washington University’s Francis Field, completed in 1965. 66 has been selling frozen custards and gold, silver and bronze medals were known as "concretes" since 1929. first introduced. It was the first • St. Louis boasts more free major Olympiad with female participants, and visitor attractions than anywhere in the • The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis the last Olympics with golf as a sport. U.S. outside of the nation’s capital. The (called the New Cathedral by locals) Runner George Coleman Poage was the , Science features the largest collection of mosaics first African-American athlete to Center, and Zoo, History Museum, in the world, with 41 million pieces of participate in the Olympic games. Museum of Westward Expansion, mosaic tile. Anheuser-Busch Brewery, Laumeier • In 1927, a group of St. Louis Sculpture Park, and many • The Saint Louis Symphony businessmen gave financial backing to other sites are open free of charge. Orchestra is the nation’s second oldest the first solo transatlantic flight from symphony orchestra. New York to Paris. The pilot was • St. Louis is spread along 19 miles of Charles Lindbergh and the plane was the Mississippi River shoreline just 12 • Many of the historic transportation named “The Spirit of St. Louis.” miles south of the confluence of the pieces housed at the Museum of Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Transportation in St. Louis were • C.L. Grigg, a soft drink salesman experimental vehicles in their time, and and owner of a general store, • The first high school west of the several are the only examples remaining introduced the Bib-label lithiated Mississippi for black students, Sumner, in existence. The museum has a varied lemon-lime soda in St. Louis in 1929. boasts an impressive roster of graduates: collection of locomotives, train cars, In 1931 he changed the name of the comedian/activist Dick Gregory, automobiles and other forms of drink to 7-Up. of the 5th Dimension, transportation. continued

1210 St. Louis Facts

• The Scott Joplin House State • At , you’ll • Other famous St. Louisans include Historic Site is a four-family find giant works like “The Way,” which Nobel Prize-winning author, T.S. Eliot; antebellum structure which was home is welded from red oil drums, and art by poet Maya Angelou; journalist Joseph to the “King of Ragtime” between 1900 internationally known modern sculptors Pulitzer who established the Pulitzer and 1903 during some of his most that is exhibited in the gallery. Prize awarded annually since 1917; “Joy productive years. of Cooking” author Irma Rombauer; • St. Louis has the only museum in the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry; • Bronze stars imbedded in the world that’s gone completely to the piano man Johnnie Johnson; hip-hop sidewalk of The Loop neighborhood dogs. The American Kennel Club superstar Cornell “Nelly” Haynes, Jr.; pay tribute to more than 100 famous Museum of the Dog is dedicated to singer Tina Turner; actor Vincent Price; St. Louisans who have contributed to fine art depicting canine companions comedian Redd Foxx; pin-up star Betty the cultural heritage of St. Louis, the throughout history. Grable; entertainer Josephine Baker; nation and the world. and Academy Award-winning actor • St. Louis Union Station was once the Kevin Kline. • A new statue called "The Captain's largest and busiest passenger rail station Return" commemorates the Corps of in the world. Built in 1894 by • Famed Blues musician, W.C. Handy, Discovery's arrival on the St. Louis architect Theodore Link, it houses a wrote the classic “St. Louis Blues,” Riverfront after their 1804-1806 hotel and a festival marketplace of under the Eads Bridge on the journey. The bronze statue is 23 feet tall shops and restaurants. Mississippi Riverfront. “St. Louis weighs more than 3.5 tons. Blues” is the most recorded Blues song • The boyhood home of children’s poet in history. • Jefferson Barracks Historic Park in Eugene Field, who grew up to write south St. Louis County contains “Winken, Blinken and Nod,” and restored military buildings, museums “Little Boy Blue,” is open to visitors. and a national cemetery. Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, • Mounds State Historic Site, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and a United Nations World Heritage Site, James Longstreet were all posted there was once the home of the largest prior to the Civil War. prehistoric Indian city north of Mexico. Archaeological finds date from 700 to • The 200-acre National Shrine of Our 1400 A.D. The historic site and Lady of the Snows in nearby Belleville, interpretive center are located just 15 , is the largest outdoor shrine in minutes from downtown St. Louis. the country. • The Saint Louis Art Museum, • Grant’s Farm features the 1856 log designed by Cass Gilbert as the Fine home hand-built by Ulysses S. Grant Arts Palace during the 1904 World’s prior to the Civil War. Grant and his Fair, is the last building remaining from wife, Julia (a St. Louisan), lived in the the Fair. home and farmed the grounds they called “Hardscabble” before moving to • St. Louis was the setting for playwright Julia’s larger family home a few Tennessee Williams’ work, “The Glass hundred yards away. That home, Menagerie.” Williams, who lived here “White Haven,” is operated by the with his mother and siblings, worked for National Parks Service and is open to International Shoe in the building that the public free of charge. today houses the . continued

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