Historic Tales of St. Louis

Mark Zeman

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781467153287
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439676899
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The Tales That Made St. Louis St. Louis may be known as the Gateway to the West, but its history holds many stories buried through time that show a different side. Discover which Hollywood leading man and heartthrob originated the custom of leaving a chocolate on a hotel pillow. Learn which high school was named after a senator who was nearly beaten to death on the senate floor. Puzzle over the lavish dinner party held in a sewer, and be amazed to find a masterpiece hidden in the ceiling of a U-Haul building. Author and historian Mark Zeman unveils the forgotten history of St. Louis.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Army Secretly Sprays St. Louis in Chemical Weapons Program
• Automobiles and Roads
• The Battle of Camp Jackson: Suppressing a Confederate Seizure of the Union Arsenal
• The Birth of the Suburb: Village to Metropolis
• Bloody Island: Submarine Telegraph Cables and a Presidential Duel
• Brewers and Their Caves
• The British Crown Jewels and the First Police Department to Use Fingerprints
• The Brown Shoe Company
• Cary Grant Starts a Trend: Chocolates on a Hotel Pillow
• Chinatown: Hop Alley and a President’s Grandfather
• Choking on Progress: The Worst Air Pollution in the Nation
• Cholera Outbreak of 1849 Kills 10 Percent of Population
• Civil War Contraband Hospitals and Black Healthcare
• Civil War Ironclads of James Eads
• Coffee Was King
• Congressman Beaten on Senate Floor and the First Black High School West of the Mississippi
• Daniel Boone’s Real Home
• Denying the Vote
• Double-Wide Alley: Remnant of a Clay Mine Railway
• The Dred and Harriet Scott Case: The Old Courthouse
• Education in St. Louis
• Electric Park at Creve Coeur Park
• The Elephant That Walked across the Eads Bridge
• Eliza Hoole Is Not Buried Here
• The Exorcist House
• Fairground Park and the 1949 Swimming Pool Race Riot
• The Farmers Market Older than the U.S. Constitution
• First Black Church in St. Louis
• First Cocktail Party in the World and the Largest Collection of Mosaics
• First Drive-Up Window
• First Olympics in the USA
• Forest Park’s Aviation Field and Lindbergh’s Airmail Route
• Forest Park Highlands and the St. Louis Carousel
• From Balloon Age to Space Age
• From Horses to Streetcars
• Fur, Hides and the Extermination of the Buffalo
• The Garment District: Washington Avenue Second Only to New York
• Gaslight Square: See Barbra Streisand for Two Bucks
• German Spy Uses Germ Warfare to Kill Mules during World War I
• The Girl in the Shadow Box: A Tale of Unrequited Love
• The Great Cyclone of 1896
• The Great Fire of 1849
• The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery: So You Want to Be in Pictures
• Home and Castle
• Hooverville: Slums on the Arch Grounds
• How Piggly Wiggly Shaped Shopping
• Josephine Baker: The Opera House Built over Her Childhood Slum
• Lavish Dinner Party inside the Mill Creek Sewer
• Masterpiece Hidden in U-Haul’s Ceiling
• Miracle Authenticated by the Vatican
• The Mississippi: Giving Birth to Everything
• Motordrome/Murderdrome at Priester’s Park
• Mounds of Native Americans
• Nation’s First Lynching: Francis McIntosh
• Neither Snow nor Rain
• New Madrid Fault and the Day the Mississippi River Ran Backward
• 1904 World’s Fair and the Pygmy Displayed at the New York Bronx Zoo
• 1904 World’s Fair Flight Cage: The Beginning of the St. Louis Zoo
• 1907 Balloon Race, Grandfather of the Great Forest Park Balloon Race
• Nude Art That Ruffled Feathers
• Old Newsboys Day: Dealing with Poverty
• Pneumatic Mail Tube System
• Prohibition Ends by Redefining Alcohol
• Race Riots of East St. Louis, 1917
• Reinterment of the Dead
• The Revolutionary War Battle in St. Louis
• Revolutionary War Sunken British Naval Artillery
• Reynard the Fox
• The Ruins at Tower Grove Park
• Saving the Vineyards of France from Extinction
• The Search for Planet Vulcan
• Seeds from Space: A Tree Growing in the Botanical Garden
• Social Evil Hospital: First U.S. City to Legalize Prostitution
• Soldiers Memorial Statues and World War II Stolen Art Retrieval
• Spanish Flu of 1918: German Spies, Aspirin and Phonograph Records
• Spiritualism: The Big Con
• St. Louis Eruv
• Three of the Nation’s Remaining Seven Standpipe Water Towers
• Toasted Ravioli
• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: Identity Discovered
• Trains, Union Station and the Whispering Arch
• Twelfth-Century English Chapel Dismantled and Shipped Here
• Underground Cold War Bunker: The St. Louis Civil Defense Control Center
• U.S. Army Retaliatory Execution of POWs
• The Way Out of Darkness: The First School to Teach Braille
• Whiskey Milking Scandal
• World’s First Skyscraper: The Wainwright Building
• World’s Largest Ammo Plant and World War II
• Bibliography
• About the Author