Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 17.djvu/496

* SAINT LOUIS. 454 SAINT LOUIS. miles. The nrca included within these limits is G2.5 square miles. The original site of the city, now a small part of the luisiness district, lay below the crest of a hill, not far from Broadway, the present north and south tliorouj;hfare, which follows the gen- eral course of the river, at a niininunn distance from it ap])roximating one-eighth of a mile. The city lies within a curve of the river having a general easterly direction. The characteristics impressed on the city by its original French founders exist now only in a few streets between Broadway and the river: and even there, except in a few unchanged buihlings, such as the Cath- olic Cathedral on Walnut Street, they are hardly to be detected. The streets are narrower than elsewhere in the city, and the buildings still used or formerly used for residences show the influ- ence of the Colonial style in their arcliitecture. The tendency of the modern city has been toward exact regularity. Wherever possible, its streets have been laid out at right angles from north to south and from east to west. JIarket Street, selected as the original line dividing the city into its northern and southern portions, is no longer a central thoroughfare, but the streets are numbered north and south from it, as they are also west from the river. The chief eastern and western thoroughfares leading out irom the central part of the city are Washington Aveiuie and Olive Street, with Franklin Avenue connecting with Easton Avenue to the north. South of Olive Street, Market con- nects with Manchester Avenue, running through the city southwestwardly, while Chouteau Ave- nue, the next thoroughfare south of Market, runs east and west to Forest Park. Broadway follows the course of the Mississippi from the River Des Peres at the extreme south to the extreme north- ern limit of the city. Grand Avenue, planned as a boulevard spanning tlie city on the west, is now almost centrally located. Jefferson Avenue, east of it, unites with Broadway on both north and south to form a complete thoroughfare. West of Grand Avenue — where the principal ave- nues and boulevards are interrupted by parks and places or by the various 'additions' made to the city independently of each other — thorough- fares are formed only by a connecting series of streets. Buildings. The old Walnut Street Cathedral is the most notable survival of the French period of the history of Saint Louis. The interior of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, the oldest German Catholic church in the city (184.S), is Gothic. The Broadway Court House (1839-62), the best example of the classic style in the city, is in the form of a Greek cross, sur- mounted by a dome 108 feet in height, with a rotunda 60 feet in diameter. The foiir circular galleries within the dome give opportunity for viewing the frescoes by Wimar: panels of '"The Discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto," "The Founding of Saint Louis by Lacl&de," the Indian massacre of 1780. and a landscape panel. There are also figures of Law, Commerce. .Justice, and Liberty. The only public building of the same school of architecture comparable in purity of style is the much costlier Federal Custom House and Post Office (1888). It has a frontage of 132 feet on Olive Street by. 177 feet on Eighth and Ninth, with a height of 184 feet to the top of the cupola surmounting its dome. The new City Hall, in Washington S(iuare, described as Romanesque, distinctly suggests a French hotel-de-ville of the sixteenth century. The blended Renaissance and later niedi:eval intluences of Xortliern Europe again predominate in the architecture of the im- posing L'nion Station, on Eigliteentli and ilarket streets, directly west of the City Hall. The new buildings of the Washington Iniversity, the most extensive and complete in the city, are adapta- tions of the Tudor-Gothic fortified palace. Ital- ian Renaissance is the style of the Museum of Fine Arts, whose facade, with sculptures by Kretschmar, is perhaps the most satisfactory in the city. The Protestant Episcopal Cathedral, dating from early in the second half of tlie nine- teenth century, shows both in exterior and inte- rior the inlluence of the Saxon style in modifying the (iothic. The Shaare Emeth Synagogue, one of the most impressive of the modern religious edifices, shows the Byzantine influence modifying the Gothic in the body of the building, to which is added a campanile of the earlier Italian Re- naissance, adapted to the Gothic. The new Ro- man Catholic Cathedral, the Second Presb.vterian Church, and the majority of the important church buildings erected since 1880 are either • iothic or Renaissance modifications of the Gothic. Of business structures representative buildings are the Laclede, the Union Trust, the new Jler- cantile Library, the Board of Education and Public Library, the Oddfellows' Hall, the Rialto, the Commonwealth Trust, the Equitable, -the Commercial, the Boatmen's Bank, the National Bank of Commerce, and the collection of build- ings known as 'Cupples Station,' where a consid- erable part of the wholesale trade of the city is centred at the most advantageous point for handling freight. The Mercantile Club building is in the business centre. The buildings of the Saint Louis Club, the University, the Mar- quette, the Columbian, the Union, and other clubs away from the business centre, represent different styles of residence architecture. The new buildings of the Saint Louis University, the Central High School, the Young Men's Christian Association, and others of a pub- lic or semi-public character, have a general tendency to reproduce the styles of the palaces and unfortified public buildings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England and France. The Pilgrim Congregational Church, Saint George's (Protestant Episcopal), the Union Jlethodist Episcopal, the CJrand Avenue Presby- terian, the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian), the Beaumont Street Baptist Church, and the several .Jewish synagogues of the west end repre- sent the more modern ecclesiastical architecture of the city. For the buildings of the World's Fair of 1904, see Saint Louis World's F.ir. Parks. The twenty-three public parks, places, and gardens of the city have a total area of 2183 acres, including that part of Forest Park tempo- rarily used as part of the grounds of the Louisi- ana Purchase Exposition. Forest Park, the largest of these, dates from 1874. It is almost directly^Avest of the business centre. Its area of 1371 acres represents a cost of $2,304,669 for ground and improvements. When acquired by the city it was far from the principal residential section, but its attractiveness has exerted so