The history of St. Louis, Missouri, from 1866 to 1904 was marked by rapid growth. Its population increased, making it the country's fourth-largest city after New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago.Arenson (2011), 218. It also saw rapid development of heavy industry, infrastructure, and transportation. The period culminated with the city's hosting of the 1904 World's Fair and 1904 Summer Olympics.
Infrastructure and parks During the Civil War, the infrastructure of St. Louis was neglected. Typhoid fever raged in certain quarters. Another cholera epidemic struck in 1866, killing more than 3,500 people.Primm (1998), 266. In response, the city established the St. Louis Board of Health, which was given power to create and enforce sanitary regulations and monitor the activities of certain polluting industries.Hurley (1997), 152. To rectify some of the problems with the water system, a new waterworks was built in north St. Louis in 1871, accompanied by a large reservoir at Compton Hill and a standpipe at Grand Avenue.Primm (1998), 267. But the system was plagued by high demand and the dumping of waste upriver from the waterworks. The gas light system also saw improvements during the 1870s, when the Laclede Gaslight Company was formed to serve the south side of the city.
In the early 1870s, new industries began to grow in St. Louis, such as cotton compressing, a process in which raw cotton is compressed for easier shipment.Primm (1998), 277. By 1880, St. Louis was the third-largest raw cotton market in the United States, with an overwhelming majority of it transported to the city by railroad.Primm (1998), 278. Among these new railroad connections was the Cotton Belt Railroad, organized in St. Louis in 1879 from smaller lines that connected the region to cotton producers in Texas.
St. Louis also expanded its park system during the 1860s and 1870s.Primm (1998), 306. Besides the common fields which were converted into Lafayette Park, in 1868 Henry Shaw donated land for Tower Grove Park. In 1872, the state legislature authorized the city to purchase more than 1,000 acres for a park. After a series of court challenges, the city completed the purchase of land in a largely rural areaArenson (2011), 205. at the city's western border in 1874 and Forest Park was opened in 1876.Arenson (2011), 199. The editorial staff of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and others initially doubted it, the city eventually grew to surround the park.Arenson (2011), 206. The park site was among the last in St. Louis County (now in St. Louis City) to contain Native American burial mounds. Although it opened as an integrated park, Jim Crow laws eventually restricted the use of the park by African-Americans.Arenson (2011), 207.
Innovation and segregation in schools After the Civil War, school taxes increased and became largely dependent on property values.Primm (1998), 317. By 1870, the public and parochial school systems had 24,347 and 4,362 students respectively. Starting in the 1870s, St. Louis schools adopted William Torrey Harris's discipline and curriculum, which focused on rigorous obedience and training in grammar, philosophy, and mathematics.Primm (1998), 324. Harris also embraced innovation by establishing the first public kindergarten in the United States, under the instruction of Susan Blow in 1874. Despite early objections to the idea, kindergarten was particularly popular in St. Louis, serving 7,800 students by the end of the 1870s.
Segregated schools for African-Americans had begun in the 1820s under the tutelage of ministers John Mason Peck and John Berry Meachum, but these schools were closed by local police. Another school opened under the authority of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in 1845, but a mob attacked the convent and closed the school. Two years later, the state legislature banned education for free blacks (slave education had already been prohibited). Meachum operated school aboard steamboats in the Mississippi River during the 1840s and 1850s; and local black churches also operated secret schools in basements.
In 1864, an integrated group of St. Louisans formed the Board of Education for Colored Schools, which established schools without public finances for more than 1,500 pupils in 1865. The Missouri Constitution of 1865 required municipalities to support black education; in response, the St. Louis Board of Education appropriated .2% of its budget for that purpose.Primm (1998), 318. This sum amounted to $500, meaning that facilities were quite poor; long walking distances from schools were common, and teacher salaries were roughly half of those in white schools. In 1875, after considerable effort and protest from the black community, high school classes began to be offered at Sumner High School, the first high school for black students west of the Mississippi.Primm (1998), 319. However, inequality remained rampant in St. Louis schools.
Railroads, the Eads Bridge and Union Station In addition to connecting St. Louis with the west, the railroads began to demand connections with the east across the Mississippi. From 1820 to 1865 a single ferry company in Illinois controlled the majority of traffic across the river, leading to high costs and delays during winter. Plans for a bridge over the river had begun as early as 1839, but were abandoned due to cost.Primm (1998), 279. After the Civil War bridges across the Mississippi were completed at Quincy, Illinois and Dubuque, Iowa, linking Chicago to western markets at the expense of St. Louis.Primm (1998), 280. State legislators from northern Illinois conspired during the late 1860s to prevent or delay bridge construction originating in East St. Louis, Illinois, in order to cement the position of Chicago as a transit hub.Primm (1998), 281. However, in 1867 leading St. Louis bankers and merchants formed a company to bridge the river from the Missouri side.Primm (1998), 282.
The chief engineer for the bridge project was James B. Eads, a self-taught engineer and accomplished diver and salvage ship operator. During the Civil War Eads aided the Union by designing ironclads. The foot of the St. Louis bridge on the west bank was at the relatively wide Washington Avenue, giving it the advantage of allowing heavy road and rail traffic. Congress had prohibited Eads from building a suspension bridge across the Mississippi due to multiple recent failures, and a truss bridge favored by many bridge builders at the time would require at least five separate spans.Primm (1998), 283. Thus, Eads and his German assistants, Henry Flad and Charles Pfeifer, settled on an arch bridge design with three spans.Primm (1998), 284.
Excavations for the bridge piers began in September 1867 and continued through 1871, using the relatively new pneumatic caisson technique.Primm (1998), 286. However, the effects of pneumatic caissons were poorly understood, leading to the deaths of 14 workers due to caisson disease, also known as the bends.Primm (1998), 287. In March 1870 a doctor was engaged to assist; he recommended a decompression schedule that reduced the problems. In 1871 work began on the superstructure of the bridge, and the upper roadway was completed in April 1874.Primm (1998), 288.
On May 24, 1874, a large crowd of St. Louisans were permitted on the roadway deck, and in June the bridge's weight limits were tested using a coal wagon, a train, and an elephant.Primm (1998), 289. On July 2, 1874, fourteen locomotives loaded with coal pulled onto each span, putting to rest concerns about the bridge's safety. Two days later, as part of the city's Independence Day celebrations, the bridge opened with a parade and a crowd in excess of 200,000. Costs for the bridge exceeded estimates, reaching $6.5 million for labor, land, and supplies, which increased to $9 million when including bond interest.Primm (1998), 291. A 5,000-foot tunnel connecting the bridge with the St. Louis railroad yards and costs to modify streets were approximately $2 million.
To accommodate increased rail traffic, a new railroad terminal, Union Depot, was constructed in 1875, but it was not large enough to consolidate all train service in one location. Due to the Panic of 1873, the terminal, the company owning the Eads Bridge, and the company owning the St. Louis tunnel were purchased by Jay Gould in 1886 for $3.5 million.Primm (1998), 294. In 1889, Gould formed the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (TRRA), which took over operations of the bridge and the train station, and in 1893, the TRRA purchased the Merchants Bridge, a railroad-only bridge built in 1889.Primm (1998), 294. The TRRA then began to plan for a new railroad station in St. Louis, which would replace the 1875 structure and consolidate all St. Louis railroad activity.
The TRRA invited ten architects to submit designs for the station with general requirements as to the size of the building.TRRA (1895), 17. The design by Theodore Link was approved in July 1891.TRRA (1895), 21. Construction costs were $6.5 million, and Union Station formally opened on September 1, 1894.Primm (1998), 295. Although Chicago, Illinois had a greater volume of traffic at its Union Station, more railroads met at St. Louis than any other city in the United States.Primm (1998), 297. Union Station's rail platform expanded in 1930 and operated as the passenger rail terminal for St. Louis into the 1970s.
The development of interurban rail was marked by the 1899 consolidation of 10 independent streetcar lines into two. One of those two, the St. Louis Transit Company, was the target of the St. Louis Streetcar Strike over the summer months of 1900, a strike that developed into a civil disruption, leaving 14 dead and hundreds injured.
Separation from St. Louis County When Missouri became a state in 1821, St. Louis County was created from the boundaries of the former St. Louis subdistrict of the Missouri Territory; St. Louis city existed within the county but was not coterminous with it. Starting in the 1850s, rural county voters began to exert political influence over questions of taxation in the St. Louis County court.Primm (1998), 297. In 1867, the county court was given power to assess and collect property tax revenue from St. Louis city property, providing a financial boon to the county government while depriving city government of revenues.Primm (1998), 299. After this power transfer, St. Louisans in the city began to favor one of three options: greater representation on the county court via charter changes, city-county consolidation, or urban secession to form an independent city.
Early efforts focused on the first option, which was to revise the county charters to force greater representation of city interests on the county court. In spite of efforts by state representatives from the city (including a young Joseph Pulitzer), county lobbyists persuaded the General Assembly to deny changes to the county charter. In 1873, the Democratic Party regained political control in Missouri for the first time after the Civil War, prompting the rewriting of the Missouri Constitution in 1875.Primm (1998), 300. At the convention, St. Louis area delegates took up the question of how to solve the region's city-county disputes.Primm (1998), 303. The delegates ruled out consolidation as too impractical and expensive from a management perspective; separation was considered the primary goal.Primm (1998), 303.