Bellefontaine Cemetery dedicated 160 years ago today

On May 15, 1850 the city’s newest cemetery was dedicated (per St. Louis Day By Day by Frances Hurd Stadler):

The story of Bellefontaine Cemetery, a non-sectarian, perpetual care cemetery, begins with the year 1849, when many prominent citizens of St. Louis, who had the welfare of the City at heart, recognized that the old cemeteries located along Jefferson Avenue would soon have to be abandoned, since they were directly in the path of the City’s westward growth. (source)

This cemetery is one of the most beautiful and fascinating places in the city.  If you haven’t been I suggest you plan to do so, it is located at 4947 West Florissant Ave.

Notable Bellefontaine burials from Wikipedia:

• Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858), U.S. Senator
• Kate Chopin (1850-1904)Famous American Author
• Henry Taylor Blow (1817-1875), politician, statesman
• Susan Blow (1843-1916), educator
• Francis E. Brownell (1840-1894), soldier during the American Civil War, Medal of Honor recipient
• Don Carlos Buell (1818-1898), American Civil War general (Union)
• William Seward Burroughs (1857-1898), inventor
• William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), author
• Adolphus Busch (1838-1913), brewing magnate
• Robert Campbell (1804-1879), frontiersman, banker, real estate mogul, steamboat owner
• William Chauvenet (1820-1870), scholar, educator
• Martin L. Clardy (1844-1914), U.S. Representative
• William Clark (1770-1838), explorer
• Charles B. Clarke (1836-1899), prominent architect, designer of the Fagin Building (1888)
• Nathan Cole (1825-1904), U.S. Representative and Mayor of St. Louis
• Alban Jasper Conant (1821-1915), artist, author, educator
• Phoebe Wilson Couzins (1842-1913), pioneer suffragette
• Ned Cuthbert (1845-1905), baseball player
• James Eads (1820-1887), engineer and inventor
• Aaron W. Fagin (1812-1896), milling magnate, millionaire, and builder of the Fagin Building (1888)
• Gustavus A. Finkelnburg (1837-1908), U.S. Representative and Federal Judge
• Della May Fox (1870-1913), actress, singer
• David R. Francis (1850-1927), statesman, United States Secretary of the Interior
• Frederick D. Gardner (1869-1933), governor of Missouri and St. Louis funeral director and coffin manufacturer
• Jessie L. Gaynor (1863-1921), composer of children’s music
• Henry S. Geyer (1790-1859), U.S. Senator, lawyer
• James Eads How (1874-1930), son of wealthy St. Louis family, known as the “Millionaire Hobo”
• Benjamin Howard (1760-1814), first governor of Missouri Territory
• Anthony F. Ittner (1837-1931), Missouri politician, brick manufacturer
• Caroline Janis (1864-1952), painter and sculptor, member of “The Potters”
• Albert Bond Lambert (1875-1946), aviator
• John Edmund Liggett (1826-1897), owner of Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company, South St. Louis
• Theodore Link (1850-1923), architect of St. Louis Union Station
• Naphtali Luccock (1853-1916), a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church
• James Smith McDonnell (1899-1980), founder of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation
• John McNeil, Civil War general (Union)
• Charles Nagel (1849-1940), last United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor, lawyer
• Trusten Polk (1811-1876), elected both governor and U.S. senator in 1856
• Sterling Price (1809-1867), American Civil War general (Confederate)
• Mary Marshall Rexford (1915-1996), Red Cross worker and the first woman to land on Utah Beach on D-Day
• James McIlvaine Riley (1849-1911), Co-founder of Sigma Nu International Fraternity
• Irma S. Rombauer (1877-1962), author of The Joy of Cooking
• James Semple (1798-1866), Illinois state senator
• Henry Miller Shreve (1785-1851), inventor
• Luther Ely Smith (1873-1951), founder of Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
• Theodore Spiering (1871-1925), violinist, conductor, and teacher
• Edwin O. Stanard (1832-1914), Lieutenant Governor of Missouri and U.S. Representative
• George Strother (1783-1840), Virginia congressman and lawyer, collector of public money in St. Louis (reinterment)
• Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
• Charlotte Dickson Wainwright, within architect Louis Sullivan’s 1892 Wainwright Tomb
• Erastus Wells (1823-1893), U.S. Representative and businessman

Impressive!  Interestingly a few hours before I had a massive stroke on 2/1/2008 I called Bellefontaine for information on plots.  The information arrived in my mail just days later while I was sedated in ICU.  I’ve since decided on cremation.

– Steve Patterson

Sidewalk collapsing into vault on 8th Street

Many of the buildings downtown have vaults under the public sidewalks.  These are spaces that extend the basement past the exterior wall to fill the space under the sidewalks, but the sidewalk can show signs of stress.

Such is the case of the sidewalk on the west side of 8th Street between Olive and Chestnut Pine, adjacent to the vacant Arcade Building..  The sidewalk has reached a point where it needs to be addressed so that it doesn’t collapse as someone walks across it.

– Steve Patterson

Urban Review Radio tonight at 7pm CST

Tonight (Thursday May 13, 2010) at 7pm CST I will be taking your phone calls on my online “radio” program.  The title for tonight’s show is: Open Chat with Steve Patterson.  Creative huh? The toll-free call-in number is 1 (877) 259-0877.

If you can’t listen live the show will be available for playback on demand.  The shows can be found at UrbanReviewRadio.com. If you have topics you’d like me to talk about please list them in the comments below or call in tonight.

– Steve Patterson

Poll results: Readers think Arizona’s immigration law is unconstitutional

The following are the results of the poll from last week:

Q: Thoughts on Arizona’s new immigration law? Pick one:

1. The law is unconstitutional. 63 [38.89%]
2. Something was needed, but this law goes to far. 40 [24.69%]
3. The law is just right, good job Arizona. 38 [23.46%]
4. The law doesn’t go far enough, should be tougher. 13 [8.02%]
5. Other answer… 6 [3.7%]
6. No opinion 2 [1.23%]

During the week the #2 & #3 answers switch places back and forth.

The “other” answers provided by readers were:

1. Pandering to angry whites; won’t be enforced.
2. Bad law, but Federal Government’s fault for not addressing immigration refo
3. Maybe we can attract more immigrants to STL instead of Arizona! We have the room!
4. unconstitutional and needs to ban any illegal immigrants from all over the world
5. Could they make the police state any more blatant?
6. It’s unconstitutional. But it highlights the failures of the Federal govern

If a silver lining exists it is that the issue may now get the proper attention in Washington.

– Steve Patterson

Aloe Plaza dedicated 70 years ago today

Saturday May 11, 1940 the public plaza known as “Aloe Plaza” was dedicated – seventy years ago today.The population in 1940 was 816,048, more than double our current population.

Located across Market St from Union Station, Aloe Plaza, has a long history:

The central corridor of St. Louis, from Tucker Boulevard (formerly Twelfth Street) on the east to Grand Boulevard on the west, was densely populated at the turn of the twentieth century. The area was a mixture of mansions and tenements, shops of all kinds, businesses, factories, dance halls, taverns, clubs, restaurants, churches, schools and other institutions.

Civic Improvement League, organized in 1901, called for razing the area to create a central parkway. The 1920s saw the clearing out of a portion of the area with the creation of the Soldiers Memorial and Plaza, Kiel Auditorium, the widening of Market Street and the construction of the Aloe Plaza opposite Union Station.

Development of the Aloe Plaza was made possible by an $87 million bond issue in 1923. The funds were used for widening Olive Street and the clearance and development of land for several plazas in the area bounded by Market, Chestnut, 12th and 20th Streets.

Aloe Plaza was named in honor of Louis P. Aloe, who died in 1929. He served as President of the Board of Alderman from 1916 to 1923 and led the movement for passage of the bond issue.

In 1909 the two block area that would become Aloe Plaza contained many buildings, including seven hotels:

The story of why the Civic Improvement League targeted this area for redevelopment is fascinating and unknown to me until yesterday.  A shooting in St. Louis led to the song Frankie and Johnny and several movies.  Here is the history as told on the Wikipedia entry for the song:

It has been suggested that the song was inspired, or its details influenced, by one or more actual murders. One of these took place in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 15, 1899, when Frankie Baker, a 22-year-old dancer, stabbed (or shot) her 17-year-old lover Allen “Al” Britt, who was having a relationship with a woman named Alice Pryor. Britt died of his wounds two days later. On trial, Baker claimed that Britt had attacked her with a knife and that she acted in self-defense; she was acquitted and died in a Portland, Oregon mental institution in 1952.

The shooting took place at a boarding house on a street the ran perpendicular to Market St between 14th & 15th.  This street was later eliminated from the grid for the construction of the Kiel Opera House, which opened in 1934.  To the west at 18th you had Union Station which had opened just 5 years prior to the shooting in 1894.  Visitors arrived in St. Louis via train but civic leaders didn’t like the elements that surrounded the station.  Reasons given was the area was rundown and dangerous — I think it was because the area was predominantly black.  At a time when segregation was the norm, St. Louis didn’t want to welcome visitors to the black part of town.  Keep in mind the new train station was far west when built.

The song was a huge hit with many variations and led to films in 1936, 1966 and 1991.  Here is the trailer to the 1966 film starring Elvis Presley:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IDmVrECDi4

The actual people involved in the 1899 shooting were black, not white.

The city’s 1947 Master Plan indicates “The Aloe Plaza and Milles Fountain make a distinguished gateway to the city.” The cost listed was $2,600,000.  The sculpture and fountain by Milles was controversial at the time:

The fountain, originally named “The Wedding of the Rivers,” depicts the union of the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers, represented by the two central figures. Accompanying the two main figures and forming a wedding procession are 17 water spirits, symbolic of the smaller streams that empty into the two major rivers.

An uproar arose over the nudity of the male figure, representing the Mississippi River and the female figure, the Missouri River. In deference to the criticism, the name of the fountain was changed to ,”The Meeting of the Waters.”

I think we should restore the name to “The Wedding of the Rivers” as originally intended by Miles.

Note that when Aloe Plaza was dedicated 70 years ago the buildings along the riverfront were just being razed.  The competition that gave us the Arch wasn’t held until 7 years later.  Clearly the city was busy razing buildings in many areas.  Despite my issues with the bad planning and reactionary policies that got us to today, the sculpture and fountain in Aloe Plaza always make me smile.

– Steve Patterson