Back in St. Louis... Day 1

(click on thumbnails to enlarge)

The Hotel & the Arch

ST. LOUIS, Apr 28, 2007 - I arrived in St. Louis late PM on Sat, Apr 28 for a business conference that's supposed to last till Wed, May 1.  The weather was beautiful.  So I went out for a walk from my downtown hotel.  I thought it would be a short one.  Alas, three hours later, I returned to my hotel with the photos that comprise the Day 1 of my return visit to St. Louis (I was here for the first time in 1983, just passing through, and then again for a longer stay in 2004).

Paris has its Eiffel Tower, London has it Westminster tower with the Big Ben, Tokyo has its Tokyo Tower, New York has its Empire State Building... and St. Louis has its grand arch.  In just the short 42 years since it was completed, the 620-foot tall arch on the west bank of the mighty Mississippi river that symbolizes a gateway to the West, has become a symbol of St. Louis.  The above picture was taken was taken from a downtown street near my hotel.  And the hotel itself has an interesting and rich history...

Here's the Hilton Downtown as it looked the afternoon I checked in (left photo), and the same building in 1926 (right photo), when it was a Laclede Bank (Laclede, obviously a French explorer, is considered the founder of St. Louis, in 1680).  The picture hangs in the hotel lobby.  Speaking of which...

The Hilton architects have done a marvelous jobs of restoring the old bank building to a modern hotel while preserving its Old World charm and character.  The first photo on the left, for exampled, was obviously once the place where the bank tellers worked.  That's now the reception.  And the last photo on the right was evidently once a bank vault, which its two huge doors, glassed over so that guests can see the insides of the bank vault security mechanisms.

On the wall behind the reception hangs this picture of the old St. Louis, depicting the steam ships unloading their cargo on the banks of the Mississippi in the shadows of the old bridge.

Once outside the hotel, I proceeded to walk toward the arch and the river...

This is the Jefferson Memorial on whose grounds the giant arch (in the background) was constructed in the 1950s and 1960s.

A close-up of the Memorial is on the right...

Thought this shot of the Jefferson Memorial and the skyscraper opposite it reflecting in the glass facade of this office building was an interesting sight.  It was a sort of a gateway to the Gateway... that lay to the left of where I was standing.

I particularly loved the shot (right photo) that captured the gleaming sunlight reflecting off the left span of the arch while the white fluffy clouds floated across the sky in the background.

As I kept on walking closer to this enormous Gateway to the West, I spotted a wedding party posing for pictures on a little hill just in front of the arch...

At first, it looked as if they were standing on the edge of a precipice that lay behind them (look at how the trees on the right seem to disappear into this abyss).

And then I took some close-ups, with the zoom and by coming closer to the group.  In this last picture on the right, the photographer must have given them an order to "jump!"  And they all did... :-)

The "mighty Mississippi" that Mark Twain, among others, had memorialized, didn't look particularly mighty on this fine spring afternoon.  Gone were the old steamers, replaced by a modern promenade shared by the tourists and some horse-drawn carriages.  Across the river is East St. Louis, an impoverished part of the city, which is actually in the state of Illinois.

Back at the southern leg of the arch, I found another wedding party trying to shelter themselves from a strong westerly wind.  Right next to them, however, unperturbed by the elements, a Temple University women's softball team posed for a picture with downtown St. Louis as a background.

The Museum

I sought temporary shelter in Museum of Westward Expansion, which is located under the two giant arches...

The museum is really well done and an interesting place to visit even from someone who is from the West (such as yours truly).  Take a look...

Some of these figures are animated and move and talk like real people, such as that sergeant above in what looks like Arizona scenery in the background.

This fine specimen of a wild mustang is grazing near the museum's entrance. Unlike his real wild ancestors, he is quite tame and used to gawking tourists. :-)

As started heading back toward the city, I passed an interesting looking church.  It was Basilica of Saint Louis (left thumbnail).  The arch looked like a giant halo over the church.  As I stepped closer to read about the church history, it dawned on me just how historic this city is, at least in American terms.  There has been a church at this site since 1770 - before the American revolution.  At one stage, it was destined to become a cathedral.  But it never quite made it, so a Pope John XXIII named it a Basilica after a new cathedral was built elsewhere in St. Louis.  So now this church is known as the Old Cathedral.  You can read about its history by clicking on the right thumbnail.

The Ballpark: Busch Stadium

I knew from my past trips where the St. Louis Cardinals baseball stadium was.  And I roughly headed in that direction since had got a ticket for tomorrow's (Sunday night) game against the Chicago Cubs.  Little did I know that I would find myself smack in the middle of the baseball crowd... 

leaving the Busch Stadium today's afternoon game.

As they were filing out, most decked out in Cardinals paraphernalia, I snuck in.  Even from here, you can see the arch.  But I wanted to this these hallowed grounds on which the Cardinals won last year's World Series close up and personally.  So you can join me...

The above thumbnails tell that "inside baseball" tale...

"Midtown" St. Louis

I also knew from my last visit, that if I kept walking west, I would eventually come to a restored Union Station, a famous railroad stop in the middle of this vast country and a wonderful fountain sculpture in front of it.  What I did not know was how far that was and how long it would take me to walk there (the last time Karen and I came here in 2004, we drove here).

The buildings along the Market Street, the wide main avenue that leads from downtown toward the west, attest as to St. Louis' former grandeur.

This ornate stone structure, for example, is the City Hall (as was the previous photo taken from a side street). You may also notice and admiring Cubs fan in front of it.  The Cubs won 8-1 this afternoon, so they had much to smile about.

The imposing structure in the median of Market Street is the Federal Courthouse.  And again, you can see the arch in the background, and even the Jefferson Memorial.

This impressive building, however, is actually rather depressing.  It is vacant structure, a glorified tenement building.  Want to guess that it used to be?  The City Opera!  Sad, isn't it, the way the fine arts are going these days in America, when magnificent opera houses are left to ruin while vulgar comedies, like "Borat" or "Hot Fuzz," sell out.

Finally, I made it to the renovated Union Station.  At its eastern end (above), there is the entrance to the Hyatt Regency Hotel.  The rest of the station is now a big shopping mall (inside), while the restored outside still looks as it did over 100 years ago.

Directly opposite, in the median of Market Street, is that famous sculpture fountain, the ultimate destination of my walk this evening.  It symbolizes the confluence of two great rivers - the Missouri and Mississippi - that meet here in St. Louis.  

By the way, if you look carefully across the street in the leftmost thumbnail, even here you can see a wedding party posing for and taking pictures. :-)  And in the middle left thumbnail, you can see a rainbow across the lower left part of the green-blue glass building.  The third photo from the left shows a panoramic view along Market Street toward the east, while the rightmost one is a similar view of the Union Station.  

After 2.5 hours of walking, I went in there in search of a Starbucks or some other refreshments (I found a Starbucks... it was one of only two such stores in all of downtown St. Louis!).

I finished my walk where I started - in my hotel lobby, where I found this old photo of busy river port of St. Louis.  The date was 1880.

And that's all she wrote on this Saturday, April 28...

A "PS"... coming home from a dinner on Sunday night, I passed the arch again, this time also illuminated by a milky moonlight (see top right of the photo).  It reminded me of my last night in Moscow a month ago, when the moon also appeared over the Kremlin and other sites...

Click here to go to... Day 2

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