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.
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.