Abroad At Home Part 19

"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 Ca.s.s 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 surpa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.s directly in front of the station, connecting it with both the business and residence districts, and will also pa.s.s in front of the Munic.i.p.al 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 Pas...o...b..ulevard 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, pa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.es. 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 munic.i.p.al 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 surpa.s.sed 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-cla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sociation. 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 pa.s.sed 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 munic.i.p.al 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 munic.i.p.al and national activities, Mr. Lehmann has found time to gather in his home one of the most complete collections of d.i.c.kens'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 ma.n.u.scripts. 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 "d.a.m.ned 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 embarra.s.sment 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 p.r.o.nounced 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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]

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FINER SIDE

Before making my transcontinental pilgrimage I used to wonder, sometimes, just where the line dividing East from West in the United States might be. When I lived in Chicago, and went out to St. Louis, I felt that I was going, not merely in a westerly direction, but that I was actually going out into the "West." I knew, of course, that there was a vast amount of "West" lying beyond St. Louis, but I had no real conception--and no one who has not seen it can have--of what a stupendous, endless, different kind of land it is. St. Louis west? It is not west at all. To be sure, it is the frontier, the jumping-off place, but it is no more western in its characteristics than the city of Boulogne is English because it faces England, just across the way. From every point of view except that of geography, Chicago is more western than St. Louis. For Chicago has more "wallop" than St. Louis, and "wallop" is essentially a western attribute. "Wallop" St. Louis has not.

What she has is civilization and the eastern spirit of laissez-faire.

And that of St. Louis which is not of the east is of the south. Her society has a strong southern flavor, many of her leading families having come originally from Kentucky and Virginia. The Southern "colonel" type is to be found there, too--black, broad-brimmed hat, frock coat, goatee, and all--and there is a negro population big enough to give him his customary background.

Much negro labor is employed for the rougher kind of work; colored waiters serve in the hotels, and many families employ colored servants.

As is usual in cities where this is true, the accent of the people inclines somewhat to be southern. Or, perhaps, it is a blending of the accent of the south with the sharper drawl of the west. Then, too, I encountered there men bearing French names (which are p.r.o.nounced in the French manner, although the city's name has been anglicized, being p.r.o.nounced "Saint Louiss") who, if they did not speak with a real French accent, had, at least, slight mannerisms of speech which were unmistakably of French origin. I noted down a number of French family names I heard: Chauvenet, Papin, Valle, Desloge, De Menil, Lucas, Pettus, Guion, Chopin, Janis, Benoist, Cabanne, and Chouteau--the latter family descended, I was told, from Laclede himself. And again, I heard such names as Busch, Lehmann, Faust, and Niedringhaus; and still again such other names as Kilpatrick, Farrell, and O'Fallon--for St. Louis, though a Southern city, and an Eastern city, and a French city, and a German city, by being also Irish, proves herself American.

It is in all that has to do with family life that St. Louis comes off best. She has miles upon miles of prosperous-looking, middle-cla.s.s residence streets, and the system of residence "places" in her more fashionable districts is highly characteristic. These "places" are in reality long, narrow parkways, with double drives, parked down the center, and bordered with houses at their outer margins. The oldest of them is, I am told, Benton Place, on the South Side, but the more attractive ones are to the westward, near Forest Park. Of these the first was Vandeventer Place, which still contains some of the most pleasant and substantial residences of the city, and it may be added that while some of the newer "places" have more recent and elaborate houses than those on Vandeventer Place, the general average of recent domestic architecture in St. Louis is behind that of many other cities.

Portland Place seemed, upon the whole, to have the best group of modern houses. Westmoreland and Kingsbury Places also have agreeable homes. But Washington Terrace is not so fortunate; its houses, though they plainly indicate liberal expenditure of money, are often of that "catch-as-catch-can" kind of architecture which one meets with but too frequently in the middle west. If St. Louis is western in one thing more than another it is the architecture of her houses. Not that they lack solidity but that on the average they are not to be compared, architecturally, with houses of corresponding modernness in such cities as Chicago or Detroit. The more I see of other cities the more, indeed, I appreciate the new domestic architecture of Detroit. And I cannot help feeling that it is curious that St. Louis should be behind Detroit in this particular when she is, as a city, so far superior in her evident understanding and love of art.