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St. Louis is located on the west bank of the Mississippi and is known as the starting point for the great expansion of the United States to the west. The city’s start, however, was French, being founded by French fur traders in 1764 and named after King Louis IX of France.
St. Louis became American in 1803, when the United States bought the French Louisiane, which was a colossal tract of land from the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada. St. In the same century, St. Louis became an important river port on the Mississippi River, and the city was at one time the fourth largest in the United States.
Today you can see many sights in the city, located in the state of Missouri and on the border with Illinois. The steel structure Gateway Arch is St. Louis ’landmark and most famous building. From here you can walk along the Gateway Mall, which provides easy access to the city’s museums, famous high-rise buildings and other interesting places.
There is also a lot to see in the area around St. Louis. A boat trip on the Mississippi is always good, and you can easily visit Mark Twain’s homelands, cities from the French colonial era and in general take a closer look at the area west of the Mississippi and thereby experience the former French Louisiane.
Gateway Arch is a large and famous monument that also stands as St. Louis’ landmark. The Gateway Arch was designed by Eero Saarinen and built in 1963-1965. The arch is 192 meters high, and it is clad in steel and built on the exact spot where St. Louis was founded in 1764. It was also from here that the Lewis and Clark Expedition started on May 14, 1804 on the way through the newly acquired Louisiana territory.
Today, the Gateway Arch has the status of a national park, with the site’s historical importance as the starting point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but also as a memorial to the entire settlement of the west, which the Louisiana Purchase made possible, and Thomas Jefferson’s role in the events. At the foot of the Gateway Arch there is an exhibition building with more information about the national park.
You can get to the top of the high arch, and it takes place in a unique and interesting way. You take a kind of tram, where there are eight small capsules in a train. Each capsule can seat five, and there is one train in both the northern and southern legs. It takes four minutes to get to the top, and along the way the capsules regulate themselves by many degrees to stay level. When you get to the top, there are windows with excellent views of St. Louis to the west and the Mississippi River and the state of Illinois to the east.
Old Courthouse is a beautiful building that was built in several stages in the years 1816-1864 as a courthouse. The beautiful neoclassical building served as both a federal and state courthouse. Henry Singleton’s original building was completed in 1828, but it has changed a lot since then. The building’s 58.5 meter high dome was completed in 1861. With the dome, the Old Courthouse was the tallest building in Missouri until 1894.
The Old Courthouse was a courthouse until 1930, and since then the building became part of first the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and then the Gateway Arch National Park, which commemorates the purchase of Louisiana from France, the settlement of the west, the first civil government west of the Mississippi, and a lawsuit related to slavery in 1857. The lawsuit was brought by the slave Dred Scott, who sued his owner for his freedom. The case started in the Old Courthouse, but was later dismissed in the US Supreme Court.
Basilica of St. Louis, King of France is the name of a Catholic church that was built in the years 1831-1834 as the first cathedral west of the Mississippi River. The church is also called the Old Cathedral, and until 1844 it was the town’s only parish church. However, there was already a wooden church here from 1770, and the first resident priest came here in 1811.
The church gradually became too small for the growing town, and from 1818 the construction of the first stone church started. Population development in St. Louis made the city an episcopal seat in 1826, and Joseph Rosati became the diocese’s first bishop. He initiated the construction of the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France in 1831. The architects Laveille and Morton were responsible for the construction of the church with the beautiful interior.
Today, the Old Cathedral is surrounded by the Gateway Arch National Park in an area where many buildings were otherwise demolished to make way for the national park. However, the old cathedral had a special historical significance, and therefore it was preserved.
Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis is St. Louis’ Catholic Cathedral. It was built as a replacement for the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France, which can still be seen in the city and which today is also called the Old Cathedral. In the latter half of the 19th century, St. Louis grew significantly, and the initiative for the new cathedral was already taken in the 1870s, but it took until 1907 before construction could start. The first service was held in 1914 and the cathedral was formally consecrated in 1926.
The great cathedral was decorated long after its dedication, and the fine mosaics in the church interior were completed in 1988. The result is a magnificent interior that is the city’s most beautiful church room. And it is not least the mosaics that adorn large parts of the church that impress. More than 41 million pieces of glass in countless shades of color have been arranged to form the mosaics. You can also visit an exhibition in the church, where you can learn more about the mosaics and more.
Union Station is a large railway station that was built in 1892-1894 as St. Louis’ main train station. It was the German-born architect Theodore Link who designed the main building of the large railway terminal, while civil engineer George H. Pegram designed the platform halls. The building along Market Street housed ticket offices, hotel, restaurant and the Grand Hall waiting room, which can still be seen with a fine decoration of the large arched ceiling. Outside you can see the station’s 70 meter high tower.
In the old days there was frequent train traffic to and from the station with up to 22 railway companies operating here, and in the 1940s the number of passengers peaked. After that, the number of passengers fell due to increasing car traffic and the arrival of airplanes as a means of transport between American cities. The last Amtrak train left Union Station in 1978, after which the station closed. Today, passenger trains still run to and from St. Louis. Amtrak’s intercity trains run from the modern Gateway Station, located south of Union Station’s old platform concourses.
In the 1980s, the large railway station building was refurbished as a hotel, shopping center and with several restaurants. As something special, a lake was built in the platform halls, where platforms and tracks were removed. However, elements from the old tracks have been preserved. The lake is the center of several eateries, and you can also visit St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station, the Ferris Wheel The St. Louis Wheel and several other attractions.
The Missouri History Museum is a large and interesting museum where you can dive into the history of the state of Missouri. There are many themes and objects in the exhibition, where you can see things from both St. Louis, Missouri and the United States. There are objects from colonial times and from Native American cultures, and from more recent times you can see a replica of Charles Lindbergh’s plane Spirit of St. Louis.
There is also a special focus on the Lewis and Clark expedition carried out in the years 1804-1806, which was a turning point in the country’s history. St. Louis was the starting point for the expedition, which is why the exhibition is particularly interesting at this museum. You can also learn more about the Louisiana Purchase Exposition from 1904, and the museum building was built with profits from that very exhibition. It happened in 1913, and the building is called the Jefferson Memorial Building.
St. Louis Art Museum is an art museum that is one of the leading in the USA, and here you can explore a fine collection of art from almost all over the world and from different periods. You can see works from ancient times to the present day, and Van Gogh, Matisse, Monet and Picasso are among the countless artists represented at the museum. There are also large and fine collections from various countries on the American continents and from Africa, Asia and Oceania.
The museum was founded in 1879 as the Saint Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, and after a few years the institution moved to the current museum building. It had been built as the Palace of Fine Arts for the great exhibition, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, held in St. Louis in 1904. The building was designed by Cass Gilbert, who was inspired by the Baths of Caracalla in Rome.
City Hall is St. Louis’ grand city hall building, and it has been the seat of city government since 1898, although the building was not completed until 1904. Before that, there had been previous city halls, and initially the city government had held meetings in private homes, banks, bars and other available places. The first actual town hall was built in 1827, and several others came after it, but these were eventually destroyed by fires and demolished.
At the end of the 19th century, the then town hall became too small for the growing city, and in 1889 the plan for a new town hall was initiated. After this, the current town hall was built with architectural inspiration from French buildings, and it was designed by the architect George Richard Mann from Eckel & Mann. The interior is beautiful with the town hall vestibules and large staircase.
Citygarden is a sculpture park located as part of the Gateway Mall in central St. Louis. Located between Eighth Street, Tenth Street, Market Street and Chestnut Street, the park was opened in 2009. The idea for the public art park was part of a project to renew and beautify the Gateway Mall area, and the Citygarden was designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.
You can see several sculptures by various well-known artists in Citygarden today, and the idea of creating accessible art has been fully implemented. In this way, the works are almost interactive as part of the equipment of the city and park. Among the best-known sculptures are Igor Mitoraj’s Eron Bendato from 1999 and Fernand Léger’s Femmes au perroquet from 1952.
Gateway Mall is a green belt through St. Louis, which stretches from the Mississippi River to Union Station on one side and between Market Street and Chestnut Street on the other. The idea of the facility came from the city’s Comprehensive Plan from 1907, which embraced the contemporary City Beautiful movement, which in many places in the United States made cities more beautiful for the benefits of citizens.
The plan for the redevelopment of the city center in St. Louis to create a new recreational area was approved by the citizens in 1923, and since then the Gateway Mall has been laid out. Today, you can enjoy some lovely walks through the city, starting from, for example, Gateway Arch National Park, and along the Gateway Mall are several of St. Louis’ most famous buildings. Among other things, you can see the Old Courthouse and St. Louis City Hall.
City Museum is a different kind of museum, which is arranged in a particularly interesting way in the former International Shoe Company building. The museum opened in 1997, and the collections and exhibitions are quite varied, which also applies to the setting around the exhibitions.
The city museum was founded by artist Bob Cassilly and his wife Gail Cassilly. The museum building was formerly a shoe factory with an attached warehouse, but it was largely empty when the Cassilly couple bought it in 1993. Today, you can see from afar that the museum is something special with activities on the roof and around the building, and many highlights await visitors here.
Southwestern Bell Building is a 121-meter-tall high-rise that was built in 1926. The style is Neo-Gothic, and the high-rise stands as one of St. Louis’ beautiful buildings from its time. It was the architects Mauran, Russell & Crowell who designed the house for the telephone company Southwestern Bell.
Southwestern Bell’s new building was the tallest in the state of Missouri when it opened. It was also one of the first to include a terraced top in the construction, which provided more light in the streets around it. It was a construction that arose out of building regulations in New York City from 1917.
The Civil Courts Building is a building that is also called St. Louis’ pyramid. It is one of the famous structures on the Gateway Mall, and it is located in the central axis of the city from the Mississippi River past the Gateway Arch and the Old Courthouse. The building was built as a courthouse in the years 1928-1930 as part of the so-called City Beautiful movement, which resulted in several buildings around Memorial Plaza.
It is the top of the Civil Courts Building that makes the high-rise particularly worth seeing. The top was designed and built with inspiration from the mausoleum in Halicarnassus, which is described as one of the seven wonders of antiquity. The entire top is surrounded by 13 meter high Ionic columns, and at the top of the pyramidal roof are sphinx-like sculptures adorned by St. Louis’ lily, also seen in the city’s flag.
Eads Bridge is a bridge that spans the Mississippi River and thereby connects the metropolis of St. Louis in the state of Missouri with the smaller East St. Louis in the state of Illinois. Completed in 1874, the bridge is the oldest surviving bridge over the Mississippi. The bridge is 1,964 meters long and is named after James Buchanan Eads, who designed the bridge.
The construction required a number of engineering features to withstand the forces of the Mississippi River. Steel was used extensively as a structural material and the foundations were the deepest of their kind at the time at over 30 meters below the water surface. Caissons were used for the work, and the central arch also had the largest rigid span of the time. It was thus a ground-breaking construction that also became the city’s landmark.
The Stifel Theater is a stage in the building that opened in 1934 as the Kiel Opera House in an ensemble with the now demolished Kiel Auditorium. The auditorium stood in the same monumental architecture as the Kiel Opera House, and the cultural ensemble was named after Henry Kiel, who was mayor of St. Louis in the years 1913-1925.
The theater closed in 1991 and has since been renovated and reopened. Today, the Stifel Theater is one of St. Louis’ large stages for various events such as concerts and performances. Throughout history, many great and famous artists have been on stage in the theater, which is still the case.
The Railway Exchange Building is an 85 meter high building that was built in the years 1913-1914 as one of the St. Louis’ significant buildings in its time. The high-rise was the tallest in the city when the office building opened, and the architecture was typical of the Chicago school.
The Railway Exchange Building was designed by architects Mauran, Russell & Crowell and, as its name suggests, was the seat of some administrative offices for the railways in the city. However, it was also a building that offered exclusive retail space on the lower floors, and for many years the flagship store of the department store Famous-Barr was located at the address.
If you look more closely at the house, you can see many details in the decoration. There are approximately 5,000 windows in the large building, the facades of which are clad in glazed cream-colored terracotta decorated with Renaissance motifs of foliage, geometric shapes, Ionic and Corinthian details, scrolls and human faces.
The Bell Telephone Building is an early high-rise construction that was built in 1889 as a telephone exchange and local office for the Bell Telephone Company. Originally, the telephone exchange could be located on a single floor, but in 1919 an extra floor was built on the old high-rise building, which housed the exchange until 1926.
The building is a seven-storey brick and red sandstone office building with shop fronts on the ground floor. Today, it stands in contrast to the modern high-rise buildings in the neighborhood, and it is one of the few preserved buildings in neo-Romanesque architecture from the period around 1900.
Shrine of St. Joseph is a church that was built when Catholic Jesuits established a parish in St. Louis in 1843. The year after the foundation of the parish, construction started, and the church was completed in its first version in 1846. The church was not least built for the large congregation of German immigrants who lived in the area.
Shrine of St. Joseph was later expanded to the version you can see today. This happened several times, for example in the 1860s, when the church’s impressive altar was installed. It was done as a modified copy of St. Ignatius Altar in the Church of the Gesu in Rome. The church is beautifully decorated, and the fine facade was built in 1880-1881.
The church is also known as the home of an authentic miracle. It took place in 1864, when the tuberculosis patient Ignatius Strecker came to the church at a time when the doctors had given up on him and when the family was preparing for a funeral. A Jesuit priest came to the parish to preach about Blessed Petrus Claver, and when Ignatius Strecker touched a relic of Petrus Claver, his recovery started and he was cured. In 1887, after extensive investigations, the Vatican declared the healing of Ignatius an authentic miracle.
The Continental Life Building is an Art Deco skyscraper that opened in 1930. The 87-meter-tall building was designed by local architect William B. Ittner and is typical of its contemporary style. It was Edmund Monroe Mays who built the high-rise to be the seat of his companies Continental-Life Insurance and the Grand National Bank.
The building changed owners in 1955, and in the following years it was occupied by various companies as offices. However, it only took until the 1970s before the characteristic skyscraper fell into disrepair and was no longer used. In the 1990s, Stephen Trampe and Mike Barry invested in the Continental Life Building, which they converted into apartments.
Fox Theater opened in 1929 as one of the leading movie theatres in St. Louis. Called The Fabulous Fox, it was a flagship of William Fox and the Fox Film Corporation along with four other Fox theaters from the 1920s. The rest of these flagships were built in Atlanta, Detroit, New York and San Francisco.
At the opening, the cinema had a capacity of over 5,000 spectators, making it one of the largest cinemas in the USA. It was theater architect Charles Howard Crane who designed the Fox Theater in a beautiful eclectic mix of Asian styles. The style has also been called Siamese-Byzantine, and as a spectator at a performance you can clearly see why.
The cinema was one of St. Louis’ most popular movie palaces up until the 1960s, but then recessions hit and the Fox Theater closed in 1978. However, the building and the theater were saved and renovated so that it could reopen in its splendor in 1982. Since then, the Fox has been a center for various performing arts.
The Grand Avenue Water Tower is one of several water towers in St. Louis, and they stand today as some of the city’s more curious constructions. This water tower from 1871 is 47 meters high and was built as the world’s tallest Corinthian column. The other towers are the Bissell Street Water Tower and the Compton Hill Water Tower.
The tower or colossal column is the city’s oldest of these water towers. It was the architect George Ingham Barnett who designed the building. Inside, the tower was provided with a stand pipe that regulated the water pressure in the area, and the water in the tower was also used by the local fire brigade. The Grand Avenue Water Tower was part of the St. Louis water supply until 1912.
The Wainwright Building is a skyscraper that was built in the years 1890-1891. The building is thereby known to be a very early prototype of later and much taller office buildings in the USA. The 41 meter and 10 storey high skyscraper was designed by architects Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan.
It was the brewer Ellis Wainwright who initiated the construction of the Wainwright Building. He had it built with shops on the ground floor and publicly accessible offices on the first floor, and the floors above were to be built with cell offices. All with simple geometric decorations and with lines that emphasized the height of the house.
The Soldiers Memorial Military Museum is a memorial and military museum where you can see memorabilia and history from World War I and other wars in which the United States has participated. You can also see a black marble cenotaph, in which the names of St. Louis’ fallen during the First World War is engraved.
The museum building was built 1936-1938 and features four sculpture groups symbolizing Courage, Loyalty, Sacrifice and Vision, which were created by the sculptor Walker Hancock. It was the architectural firm Mauran, Russell & Crowell that designed the building in a simplified classicism.
Powell Hall is home to St. Louis’ symphony orchestra and is thereby one of the city’s big and well-known venues. The place opened in 1925 as The St. Louis Theater, and in the first decades there was vaudeville and cinematic movies on the program. The city’s symphony orchestra has played here since 1968.
The last movie shown during the cinema years was The Sound of Music in 1966. After this the cinema closed, undergoing a renovation and redecoration before the first concert could be played two years later. The theater was once named after Walter S. Powell, whose widow donated a million dollars to purchase the building for the new purpose.
U.S. The Custom House and Post Office is one of the large public buildings from the 1800s in St. Louis. The combined post office and customs house was built 1873-1884 in the French Napoleon III style popular in the United States in the decades following the American Civil War. U.S. The Custom House and Post Office is a work of the British-American architect Alfred Bult Mullett, who also designed the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington.
The most important of the building’s facades is the southern one along Olive Street, which has a mansard dome. Each of the facades has a central portion carrying a portico, and the pediment of the Olive Street portico is adorned with the 1877 sculpture America at War and America at Peace by Daniel Chester French. The building housed a post office until 1970, while today it continues to house various federal offices.
Ste. Genevieve is a town where you are set back to an atmosphere from the area’s French colonial times. The city was founded in 1735 by French-Canadian colonists and settlers from east of the Mississippi River as the first permanent settlement in the French territory of Louisiana. The city was named after Geneviève, who is the patron saint of the French capital Paris.
Today you can enjoy a lovely atmosphere in Ste. Genevieve, where there are a number of preserved houses in the so-called French-Creole colonial style. These mainly date from the late 18th century, when there was Spanish rule in Louisiana. The Louis Bolduc House from 1792-1793 is a good example of a house from that time. You can also see Beauvais-Amoureux House from 1792, La Maison de Guibourd from 1806 and Felix Vallé House from 1818.
The Mississippi River is one of the world’s most famous rivers, and in many ways it defined America’s expansion from east to west. You can have a look at the river from a promenade in St. Louis, on drives along the river and on boat trips on it. In many places along the river you can enjoy river landscapes and American cultural history.
For example, you can drive along The Great River Road north of Alton, Illinois, where the landscapes and river are impressive, or board a river cruise from the heart of St. Louis. The most popular trip on the river is a cruise on a classic riverboat. It sails from the area at the southern leg of the Gateway Arch, and along the way there are fine views of the arch, the city and the river.
The Mississippi River originates from Lake Itasca in the state of Minnesota, and it empties into the Gulf of Mexico in a large and natural delta after flowing 3,766 kilometers in the United States. Along the way, the two-kilometer-longer Missouri River empties into the Mississippi, and they form the Missouri-Mississippi river system, which is among the longest in the world.
Hannibal is a city located along the Mississippi River in the state of Missouri. Hannibal was laid out in 1819 and named after Hannibal Creek, which in turn was named after the general Hannibal of Carthage. The railway came here in 1846 and it kickstarted a period of growth.
Today, Hannibal is a city known for being part of American cultural history. It was here that Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, grew up after being born in the city of Florida, which is located in the area southwest of Hannibal.
In Hannibal, Mark Twain found the inspiration for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Today, you can follow Mark Twain’s footsteps by visiting, for example, the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, which was his home in the years 1844-1853. You can also go to nearby Florida and visit Mark Twain’s birthplace, which has the status of a state historic park.
East St. Louis is a city in the state of Illinois, located just east of St. Louis on the opposite bank of the Mississippi River. It is a formerly flourishing industrial city, which however experienced a huge economic and population decline in the latter half of the 20th century.
The main attraction in the city is the Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park, located across the river from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. In the park there is a water jet of 192 metres, which is the same height as the Gateway Arch. It’s called the Gateway Geyser, and from here you can go to the Mississippi River and enjoy a fantastic view of the Gateway Arch and the Old Courthouse.
In the old downtown East St. Louis, you can experience both grandeur and decay. At the intersection between Collinsville Avenue and Missouri Avenue, for example, you can see the fine and former First National Bank building, and a little from here is the Spivey Building, which was built in 1927 as the city’s tallest building. If you continue along Collinsville Avenue, you can see the beautiful, but also dilapidated Majestic Theater from 1928.
St. Charles is an idyllic town located on the Missouri River. The city was established in 1769 and was the state’s first capital. It was founded by French-Canadian fur trader Louis Blanchette with the name Les Petites Côtes. Initially, it was primarily French speakers from Canada who settled in the city, which grew to be an important river port during the American expansion west along the Missouri River.
As a port city, St. Charles also played a role for the famous Lewis & Clark Expedition, which just set sail from here on the trip west. You can see more of that at The Lewis and Clark Boat House and Museum, located on the river. At the museum you can see rebuilt boats from the expedition and learn about the expedition itself and places along the Missouri River.
St. Charles is also known for fine colonial architecture, and you can explore the so-called St. Charles Historic District, covering the old areas along the Missouri and around the paved South Main Street. Here are preserved colonial buildings and other historically interesting buildings such as the First Missouri State Capitol, which served as the state government building from 1821 to 1826.
Springfield is the state capital of Illinois. The city was founded in 1821, and just 16 years later it became the state’s political center, not least thanks to the efforts of the young politician Abraham Lincoln. Since then, Springfield has been closely associated with the later American president, and this history forms an important part of the city’s attractions.
The state of Illinois’ current government building, the State Capitol, is the sixth of its kind in Illinois since the state’s admission to the United States in 1818. It was built 1868-1888. The building is 110 meters high, making it the tallest classical Capitol in the United States. The beautiful, zinc-clad dome measures 28 meters in diameter, and the style is French Renaissance.
1701 S Lindbergh Blvd
plazafrontenac.com
18 S County Center Way
shopsouthcountycenter.com
1155 Galleria
saintlouisgalleria.com
5555 St. Louis Mills Blvd, Hazelwood
stlouisoutletmall.com
18521 Outlet Blvd, Chesterfield
premiumoutlets.com
80 W County Center Dr
shopwestcountycenter.com
The Loop (Delmar Blvd), Central West End (Euclid Ave)
Riverboats at Gateway Arch
Leonor K. Sullivan Blvd
atewayarch.com
St. Louis Zoo
Government Drive
stlzoo.org
Big Joel’s Safari
13187 State Highway M, Wright City
bigjoelsafari.com
City Museum
750 N 16th Street
citymuseum.org
The Magic House
516 S Kirkwood Rd
magichouse.org
Six Flags St. Louis
4900 Six Flags Rd, Eureka
sixflags.com
St. Louis Science Center
5050 Oakland Ave
slsc.org
Overview of St Louis
St. Louis is located on the west bank of the Mississippi and is known as the starting point for the great expansion of the United States to the west. The city’s start, however, was French, being founded by French fur traders in 1764 and named after King Louis IX of France.
St. Louis became American in 1803, when the United States bought the French Louisiane, which was a colossal tract of land from the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada. St. In the same century, St. Louis became an important river port on the Mississippi River, and the city was at one time the fourth largest in the United States.
Today you can see many sights in the city, located in the state of Missouri and on the border with Illinois. The steel structure Gateway Arch is St. Louis ’landmark and most famous building. From here you can walk along the Gateway Mall, which provides easy access to the city’s museums, famous high-rise buildings and other interesting places.
There is also a lot to see in the area around St. Louis. A boat trip on the Mississippi is always good, and you can easily visit Mark Twain’s homelands, cities from the French colonial era and in general take a closer look at the area west of the Mississippi and thereby experience the former French Louisiane.
About the upcoming St Louis travel guide
About the travel guide
The St Louis travel guide gives you an overview of the sights and activities of the American city. Read about top sights and other sights, and get a tour guide with tour suggestions and detailed descriptions of all the city’s most important churches, monuments, mansions, museums, etc.
St Louis is waiting for you, and at vamados.com you can also find cheap flights and great deals on hotels for your trip. You just select your travel dates and then you get flight and accommodation suggestions in and around the city.
Read more about St Louis and the USA
Buy the travel guide
Click the “Add to Cart” button to purchase the travel guide. After that you will come to the payment, where you enter the purchase and payment information. Upon payment of the travel guide, you will immediately receive a receipt with a link to download your purchase. You can download the travel guide immediately or use the download link in the email later.
Use the travel guide
When you buy the travel guide to St Louis you get the book online so you can have it on your phone, tablet or computer – and of course you can choose to print it. Use the maps and tour suggestions and you will have a good and content-rich journey.
Mississippi • Midwest • Cathedrals • Gateway Arch
Overview of St Louis
St. Louis is located on the west bank of the Mississippi and is known as the starting point for the great expansion of the United States to the west. The city’s start, however, was French, being founded by French fur traders in 1764 and named after King Louis IX of France.
St. Louis became American in 1803, when the United States bought the French Louisiane, which was a colossal tract of land from the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada. St. In the same century, St. Louis became an important river port on the Mississippi River, and the city was at one time the fourth largest in the United States.
Today you can see many sights in the city, located in the state of Missouri and on the border with Illinois. The steel structure Gateway Arch is St. Louis ’landmark and most famous building. From here you can walk along the Gateway Mall, which provides easy access to the city’s museums, famous high-rise buildings and other interesting places.
There is also a lot to see in the area around St. Louis. A boat trip on the Mississippi is always good, and you can easily visit Mark Twain’s homelands, cities from the French colonial era and in general take a closer look at the area west of the Mississippi and thereby experience the former French Louisiane.
About the upcoming St Louis travel guide
About the travel guide
The St Louis travel guide gives you an overview of the sights and activities of the American city. Read about top sights and other sights, and get a tour guide with tour suggestions and detailed descriptions of all the city’s most important churches, monuments, mansions, museums, etc.
St Louis is waiting for you, and at vamados.com you can also find cheap flights and great deals on hotels for your trip. You just select your travel dates and then you get flight and accommodation suggestions in and around the city.
Read more about St Louis and the USA
Buy the travel guide
Click the “Add to Cart” button to purchase the travel guide. After that you will come to the payment, where you enter the purchase and payment information. Upon payment of the travel guide, you will immediately receive a receipt with a link to download your purchase. You can download the travel guide immediately or use the download link in the email later.
Use the travel guide
When you buy the travel guide to St Louis you get the book online so you can have it on your phone, tablet or computer – and of course you can choose to print it. Use the maps and tour suggestions and you will have a good and content-rich journey.
City Hall is St. Louis’ grand city hall building, and it has been the seat of city government since 1898, although the building was not completed until 1904. Before that, there had been previous city halls, and initially the city government had held meetings in private homes, banks, bars and other available places. The first actual town hall was built in 1827, and several others came after it, but these were eventually destroyed by fires and demolished.
At the end of the 19th century, the then town hall became too small for the growing city, and in 1889 the plan for a new town hall was initiated. After this, the current town hall was built with architectural inspiration from French buildings, and it was designed by the architect George Richard Mann from Eckel & Mann. The interior is beautiful with the town hall vestibules and large staircase.
Citygarden is a sculpture park located as part of the Gateway Mall in central St. Louis. Located between Eighth Street, Tenth Street, Market Street and Chestnut Street, the park was opened in 2009. The idea for the public art park was part of a project to renew and beautify the Gateway Mall area, and the Citygarden was designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.
You can see several sculptures by various well-known artists in Citygarden today, and the idea of creating accessible art has been fully implemented. In this way, the works are almost interactive as part of the equipment of the city and park. Among the best-known sculptures are Igor Mitoraj’s Eron Bendato from 1999 and Fernand Léger’s Femmes au perroquet from 1952.
Gateway Mall is a green belt through St. Louis, which stretches from the Mississippi River to Union Station on one side and between Market Street and Chestnut Street on the other. The idea of the facility came from the city’s Comprehensive Plan from 1907, which embraced the contemporary City Beautiful movement, which in many places in the United States made cities more beautiful for the benefits of citizens.
The plan for the redevelopment of the city center in St. Louis to create a new recreational area was approved by the citizens in 1923, and since then the Gateway Mall has been laid out. Today, you can enjoy some lovely walks through the city, starting from, for example, Gateway Arch National Park, and along the Gateway Mall are several of St. Louis’ most famous buildings. Among other things, you can see the Old Courthouse and St. Louis City Hall.
City Museum is a different kind of museum, which is arranged in a particularly interesting way in the former International Shoe Company building. The museum opened in 1997, and the collections and exhibitions are quite varied, which also applies to the setting around the exhibitions.
The city museum was founded by artist Bob Cassilly and his wife Gail Cassilly. The museum building was formerly a shoe factory with an attached warehouse, but it was largely empty when the Cassilly couple bought it in 1993. Today, you can see from afar that the museum is something special with activities on the roof and around the building, and many highlights await visitors here.
Southwestern Bell Building is a 121-meter-tall high-rise that was built in 1926. The style is Neo-Gothic, and the high-rise stands as one of St. Louis’ beautiful buildings from its time. It was the architects Mauran, Russell & Crowell who designed the house for the telephone company Southwestern Bell.
Southwestern Bell’s new building was the tallest in the state of Missouri when it opened. It was also one of the first to include a terraced top in the construction, which provided more light in the streets around it. It was a construction that arose out of building regulations in New York City from 1917.
The Civil Courts Building is a building that is also called St. Louis’ pyramid. It is one of the famous structures on the Gateway Mall, and it is located in the central axis of the city from the Mississippi River past the Gateway Arch and the Old Courthouse. The building was built as a courthouse in the years 1928-1930 as part of the so-called City Beautiful movement, which resulted in several buildings around Memorial Plaza.
It is the top of the Civil Courts Building that makes the high-rise particularly worth seeing. The top was designed and built with inspiration from the mausoleum in Halicarnassus, which is described as one of the seven wonders of antiquity. The entire top is surrounded by 13 meter high Ionic columns, and at the top of the pyramidal roof are sphinx-like sculptures adorned by St. Louis’ lily, also seen in the city’s flag.
Eads Bridge is a bridge that spans the Mississippi River and thereby connects the metropolis of St. Louis in the state of Missouri with the smaller East St. Louis in the state of Illinois. Completed in 1874, the bridge is the oldest surviving bridge over the Mississippi. The bridge is 1,964 meters long and is named after James Buchanan Eads, who designed the bridge.
The construction required a number of engineering features to withstand the forces of the Mississippi River. Steel was used extensively as a structural material and the foundations were the deepest of their kind at the time at over 30 meters below the water surface. Caissons were used for the work, and the central arch also had the largest rigid span of the time. It was thus a ground-breaking construction that also became the city’s landmark.
The Stifel Theater is a stage in the building that opened in 1934 as the Kiel Opera House in an ensemble with the now demolished Kiel Auditorium. The auditorium stood in the same monumental architecture as the Kiel Opera House, and the cultural ensemble was named after Henry Kiel, who was mayor of St. Louis in the years 1913-1925.
The theater closed in 1991 and has since been renovated and reopened. Today, the Stifel Theater is one of St. Louis’ large stages for various events such as concerts and performances. Throughout history, many great and famous artists have been on stage in the theater, which is still the case.
The Railway Exchange Building is an 85 meter high building that was built in the years 1913-1914 as one of the St. Louis’ significant buildings in its time. The high-rise was the tallest in the city when the office building opened, and the architecture was typical of the Chicago school.
The Railway Exchange Building was designed by architects Mauran, Russell & Crowell and, as its name suggests, was the seat of some administrative offices for the railways in the city. However, it was also a building that offered exclusive retail space on the lower floors, and for many years the flagship store of the department store Famous-Barr was located at the address.
If you look more closely at the house, you can see many details in the decoration. There are approximately 5,000 windows in the large building, the facades of which are clad in glazed cream-colored terracotta decorated with Renaissance motifs of foliage, geometric shapes, Ionic and Corinthian details, scrolls and human faces.
The Bell Telephone Building is an early high-rise construction that was built in 1889 as a telephone exchange and local office for the Bell Telephone Company. Originally, the telephone exchange could be located on a single floor, but in 1919 an extra floor was built on the old high-rise building, which housed the exchange until 1926.
The building is a seven-storey brick and red sandstone office building with shop fronts on the ground floor. Today, it stands in contrast to the modern high-rise buildings in the neighborhood, and it is one of the few preserved buildings in neo-Romanesque architecture from the period around 1900.
Shrine of St. Joseph is a church that was built when Catholic Jesuits established a parish in St. Louis in 1843. The year after the foundation of the parish, construction started, and the church was completed in its first version in 1846. The church was not least built for the large congregation of German immigrants who lived in the area.
Shrine of St. Joseph was later expanded to the version you can see today. This happened several times, for example in the 1860s, when the church’s impressive altar was installed. It was done as a modified copy of St. Ignatius Altar in the Church of the Gesu in Rome. The church is beautifully decorated, and the fine facade was built in 1880-1881.
The church is also known as the home of an authentic miracle. It took place in 1864, when the tuberculosis patient Ignatius Strecker came to the church at a time when the doctors had given up on him and when the family was preparing for a funeral. A Jesuit priest came to the parish to preach about Blessed Petrus Claver, and when Ignatius Strecker touched a relic of Petrus Claver, his recovery started and he was cured. In 1887, after extensive investigations, the Vatican declared the healing of Ignatius an authentic miracle.
The Continental Life Building is an Art Deco skyscraper that opened in 1930. The 87-meter-tall building was designed by local architect William B. Ittner and is typical of its contemporary style. It was Edmund Monroe Mays who built the high-rise to be the seat of his companies Continental-Life Insurance and the Grand National Bank.
The building changed owners in 1955, and in the following years it was occupied by various companies as offices. However, it only took until the 1970s before the characteristic skyscraper fell into disrepair and was no longer used. In the 1990s, Stephen Trampe and Mike Barry invested in the Continental Life Building, which they converted into apartments.
Fox Theater opened in 1929 as one of the leading movie theatres in St. Louis. Called The Fabulous Fox, it was a flagship of William Fox and the Fox Film Corporation along with four other Fox theaters from the 1920s. The rest of these flagships were built in Atlanta, Detroit, New York and San Francisco.
At the opening, the cinema had a capacity of over 5,000 spectators, making it one of the largest cinemas in the USA. It was theater architect Charles Howard Crane who designed the Fox Theater in a beautiful eclectic mix of Asian styles. The style has also been called Siamese-Byzantine, and as a spectator at a performance you can clearly see why.
The cinema was one of St. Louis’ most popular movie palaces up until the 1960s, but then recessions hit and the Fox Theater closed in 1978. However, the building and the theater were saved and renovated so that it could reopen in its splendor in 1982. Since then, the Fox has been a center for various performing arts.
The Grand Avenue Water Tower is one of several water towers in St. Louis, and they stand today as some of the city’s more curious constructions. This water tower from 1871 is 47 meters high and was built as the world’s tallest Corinthian column. The other towers are the Bissell Street Water Tower and the Compton Hill Water Tower.
The tower or colossal column is the city’s oldest of these water towers. It was the architect George Ingham Barnett who designed the building. Inside, the tower was provided with a stand pipe that regulated the water pressure in the area, and the water in the tower was also used by the local fire brigade. The Grand Avenue Water Tower was part of the St. Louis water supply until 1912.
The Wainwright Building is a skyscraper that was built in the years 1890-1891. The building is thereby known to be a very early prototype of later and much taller office buildings in the USA. The 41 meter and 10 storey high skyscraper was designed by architects Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan.
It was the brewer Ellis Wainwright who initiated the construction of the Wainwright Building. He had it built with shops on the ground floor and publicly accessible offices on the first floor, and the floors above were to be built with cell offices. All with simple geometric decorations and with lines that emphasized the height of the house.
The Soldiers Memorial Military Museum is a memorial and military museum where you can see memorabilia and history from World War I and other wars in which the United States has participated. You can also see a black marble cenotaph, in which the names of St. Louis’ fallen during the First World War is engraved.
The museum building was built 1936-1938 and features four sculpture groups symbolizing Courage, Loyalty, Sacrifice and Vision, which were created by the sculptor Walker Hancock. It was the architectural firm Mauran, Russell & Crowell that designed the building in a simplified classicism.
Powell Hall is home to St. Louis’ symphony orchestra and is thereby one of the city’s big and well-known venues. The place opened in 1925 as The St. Louis Theater, and in the first decades there was vaudeville and cinematic movies on the program. The city’s symphony orchestra has played here since 1968.
The last movie shown during the cinema years was The Sound of Music in 1966. After this the cinema closed, undergoing a renovation and redecoration before the first concert could be played two years later. The theater was once named after Walter S. Powell, whose widow donated a million dollars to purchase the building for the new purpose.
U.S. The Custom House and Post Office is one of the large public buildings from the 1800s in St. Louis. The combined post office and customs house was built 1873-1884 in the French Napoleon III style popular in the United States in the decades following the American Civil War. U.S. The Custom House and Post Office is a work of the British-American architect Alfred Bult Mullett, who also designed the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington.
The most important of the building’s facades is the southern one along Olive Street, which has a mansard dome. Each of the facades has a central portion carrying a portico, and the pediment of the Olive Street portico is adorned with the 1877 sculpture America at War and America at Peace by Daniel Chester French. The building housed a post office until 1970, while today it continues to house various federal offices.
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