ST. LOUIS HISTORY and SIGHTS

This year The New York Times included St. Louis on its list of global “Top Places to See in 2016.” While we’re pretty certain our wedding had something to do with St. Louis making the cut this year, there are plenty of other reasons the cognoscenti are beginning to rediscover St. Louis’ charms.

St. Louis Blues and Blueberry Hill

You probably already know about St. Louis’ famed music history. When the earliest forms of the blues migrated north from their birthplace in Mississippi Delta, they melded with the ragtime strains popular in St. Louis at the time (from native Scott Joplin) and the result is what’s known as the St. Louis blues. Later, American music icons like Chuck Berry, Miles Davis, Ike & Tina Turner, Albert King, and Little Milton would hone their craft in St. Louis, creating new versions of the traditional genres of blues, jazz and R&B. Check out Broadway Oyster Bar or BB’s to sample some of the city’s best bluegrass, blues, and jazz.

You can take a stroll down Delmar in University City’s famed Loop district where you will find these musicians on the St. Louis Walk of Fame, as well as other luminaries such as Josephine Baker, Maya Angelou, Yogi Berra, Scott Bakula, Jack Dorsey, T.S. Eliot, Jon Hamm, Karlie Kloss, Joseph Pulitzer, Mark Twain, and Tennessee Williams. Be sure to duck into Blueberry Hill for a beer, darts, and possibly a Chuck Berry sighting, and also into Fitz’s for some St. Louis root beer and burgers.

But wait, you say. Start from the beginning. I don’t know anything about St. Louis.

Meet Me in St. Louie

Ok! St. Louis was originally a French settlement founded in 1764 by a fur trader who received a land grant from King Louis XV. It became part of the U.S. in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. St. Louis was known as the “Gateway to the West” as it was last city where pioneers could stop on their journey into the Wild West. The stainless steel Gateway Arch, designed by famed architect and designer Eero Saarinen, was built in 1963 on the banks of the Mississippi River to pay tribute to this history. It’s a must see and is a short walk from the hotel.

By 1900, St. Louis had grown into the 4th largest city in the U.S. due to a massive influx of German and Irish immigrants, and became a manufacturing hub. Amazingly, in 1904 both the World’s Fair and the Olympics were both held in St. Louis. They were held in Forest Park, a 1400 acre park in the heart of the city that houses the St. Louis Zoo, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Missouri History Museum, and the St. Louis Science Center. The museum is a structure from the Fair, as is the Apotheosis of St. Louis (a statue of French King Louis IX), the 1904 Bird Cage, (now a part of the St. Louis Zoo), and the Grand Basin, located at the foot of Art Hill, which was the location of the Festival Hall and cascades at the Fair.

St. Louis Union Station, an historic national landmark and also the site of your hotel, opened in 1894 and was the largest and busiest train station in the world. In the 1940s, it handled 100,000 passengers a day. The famous photograph of Harry S. Truman holding aloft the erroneous Chicago Tribune headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman", was shot at the station as Truman headed back to Washington, DC from Independence, Missouri after the 1948 Presidential election.

Other industries began to grown, one of them the beer industry. Started by German-American immigrants in the 1850s in St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch brewery became the largest brewery in the world in 1957…despite having stolen the name Budweiser from the original Czech beer. Anheuser-Busch Brewery is the world’s largest beer plant and, lucky for you, it gives free tours that end with free beer and a Clydesdale! The bad news is that the beer might be Bud Light Lime.

If you like local flavor, but don’t necessarily need for it to be beech aged, try the excellent small local brews from micro-breweries like Five Hands, Urban Chestnut, and Schlafly.

Historic Districts

St. Louis’ rich immigrant history also translates into vibrant neighborhoods, each with its own distinct history and flavor.

Soulard, a French neighborhood, is on the banks of the Mississippi River and is named after Antoine Soulard, a refugee from the French Revolution. It is one of the oldest districts in St. Louis with many bars, pubs, and restaurants, as well as historic churches and homes. It also hosts the second largest Mardi Gras celebration in the U.S., after New Orleans.

The Hill, an Italian neighborhood, remains 75% Italian-American. Most of St. Louis’ Italian immigrants arrived from Lombardy and Sicily. Baseballs’ Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola are from here, as are Christina’s Sicilian grandparents on her father’s side. Today, it maintains a traditional collection of authentic Italian bakeries, grocery stores, restaurants and mom-and-pop trattorias. St. Ambrose Church was built in 1926 and continues to be the backbone of the neighborhood today.

Dutchtown, a German neighborhood (Dutch from Deutsch), was the southern center of the German-American settlement in St. Louis in the early 19th century. Many breweries large and small, including Anheuser-Busch and the Lemp Brewery, were/are located here, brewing German style beers. The German Cultural Society still has its headquarters there. Dutchtown is also home to the locally famous Ted Drewes frozen custard stand. Danny Meyer, a St. Louis native, modeled Shake Shack after Ted Drewes. It’s a must taste/see.

Central West End, an affluent and historic neighborhood, is where playwright Tennessee Williams grew up and where you can find T.S. Eliot’s house. Beat writer William S. Burroughs's childhood home sits on Pershing Avenue. Be sure to check out the area around Euclid and Maryland, and take a tour of the magnificent homes. This area is full of charming sidewalk cafés, galleries, antique shops, restaurants, boutiques and pubs.

Clayton is the financial and business center of St. Louis, and is where Christina grew up. It is just outside the city limits and contains a variety of upscale restaurants and bars.

Churches and Cathedrals

St. Louis once had a very large Catholic population, meaning it still has a number of beautiful churches and cathedrals. Christina’s parents and her sister were married under the big green dome of the stunning Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. It’s three blocks east of Forest Park and contains a Byzantine interior draped with 83,000 sq ft of mosaics - that's 41.5 million pieces! The first church built in St. Louis, the "Old Cathedral," is the oldest building in St. Louis and is located near the Arch. Other churches built in the early 1800s include: Cathedral of St. Louis, St. Mary of Victories, St. Francis Xavier, St. Patrick, St. Joseph, St. Vincent de Paul, St. John the Apostle, Sts. Peter and Paul, Holy Trinity, and St. Michael.

Sports

St. Louis is a baseball town. The Cardinals have lousy fans, terrible players, really short bats and.. (Christina: sorry, that was Patrick. His Chicago Cubs are big rivals of the Cardinals and he doesn't like all the winning the Cardinals do). The Cardinals, one of the oldest franchises in Major League Baseball, have won 11 World Series; one played against the old cross-city rival St. Louis Browns in 1944. The Cardinals' 11 titles are second only to the New York Yankees' 27. (Patrick: I will concede the cocaine-fueled 1985 team was a sight to behold, and the scrappiest, most entertaining group of drug addicts I've ever seen).

The Lou also hosts The St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League, who appeared in three Stanley Cup finals from 1968 to 1970, and made 25 consecutive playoff appearances from 1979-80 to 2003-04.

St. Louis also invented corkball.

Until recently, St. Louis was home to the National Football League's Rams, but the team and the powers that be fled for LA (again) and left the city in massive debt. Good riddance.

Toasted Ravioli, Imos, and St. Louis BBQ

St. Louis cuisine is heavily influenced by Italian, German, Irish and French cuisines, but it includes many American contributions. Perhaps the most famous St. Louis dish is toasted ravioli. Invented by Italian-American on The Hill, it is ravioli coated in breading, toasted dry or fried, sprinkled with fresh parmesan, and served with warm marinara dipping sauce. Another key dish is St. Louis-style pizza, honed to perfection by Imos. The characteristics of this pizza are square cut pieces, a thin crisp crust, and Provel cheese – a cheese invention consisting of provolone, swiss, and white cheddar. And finally, St. Louis barbecue. St. Louis-style barbecue involves direct grilling rather than indirect heat and smoking, as well as a larger volume of the style's sweet, sticky, and acidic tomato-based sauce. It is commonly used with two local meat cuts: pork steaks and ribs. You don’t have to imagine how good these dishes are. We’ll ensure you sample all of them during your trip.