Photography by Arthur Witman, courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri
It’s 1958, the year before the tornado hit Gaslight Square, the year that Steve McQueen, the king of cool, was in town filming The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery on The Hill. It’s the year that W.C. Handy died in a Harlem hospital, weeks away from watching Nat King Cole portray him onscreen in The St. Louis Blues (with Eartha Kitt as his love interest.) It was also around this time that the United Way shot a funny little appeal film called 'Till It Helps! in St. Louis. Though it makes it appear as if the city’s population is about one-third nuns, there’s also lots of unscripted documentary footage of downtown St. Louis. The feel of it is shockingly different than now: There are jewelry stores with rotating cases of diamonds in the front window, New York–style grocery vendors with fruit and vegetable stalls, newspaper stands, and our famous old streetcars. But the biggest difference is the dense, shifting crowds of people, shoppers and businessmen and secretaries. And really, that is often the draw of big, busy cities: they are places where you can get lost. Where a solitary person can wander when he or she wishes to be anonymous and unbothered. Like this man, perhaps. With his bow tie and the cig clenched between his teeth, he comes off as a bit ragged and clownish at first—until you really take a look into his eyes and see that he’s got the St. Louis blues, too.
