Illustration by Camille N. Dry, via Wikimedia
The Eads Bridge: game changer...or just a really big, really well-designed bridge?
I’ve been seeing the phrase “game changer” used a lot lately in St. Louis, and I thought I would do some research into when it first appeared, and even perhaps who invented it. After all, it seems like new “game changers” are being heralded all the time in St. Louis over the last couple of years, whether it’s a new office building, a renovation of a famous landmark, or the construction of a shining new apartment tower. First, according to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, which says the phrase was first used in 1993, a “game changer” is defined as:
“A newly introduced element or factor that changes an existing situation or activity in a significant way”
So now that we’ve established that, I turned to old newspaper stories about important landmarks in St. Louis history, hoping to determine if the first use of the word predates 1993. I would have preferred to have gone through all of the original papers of Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau, but unfortunately, I did not have the time or the expertise to read any original French script the two may have written in regards to a changeur de jeu when St. Louis was founded in 1764.
Moving up a bit, I was certain that James Eads or newspapers would surely have referred to the opening of the new bridge in 1874 as a “game changer,” allowing for massive savings in time for the moving of railcars over the Mississippi. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did in fact feature a grand two-page spread of the festivities on July 4, 1874 but did not mention anything about any game changing.
Perhaps then, the World’s Fair in 1904, I thought? Again, no luck. I next tried looking around at other major events in American cities, such as the reversing the flow of the Chicago River or the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. It seems like there really is no mention of the term “game changer” until the 1990s, just as Merriam Webster says, and then at first, it generally refers to actual sports contests, where someone actually changed the outcome of a game.
But then, inevitably, insufferably, the term starts to creep in, usually in regards to some new project that most definitely is not really changing any game’s outcome. Just a couple of days ago Metro announced that it is buying electric buses. That is fantastic, and the reduction in carbon emissions from those new buses is great news for a city with a notoriously high rate of untreated asthma. But is it really a “game changer?” According to datausa.io, 91% of St. Louisans drive a car to work, whether by themselves or in a carpool, which of course is unaffected by electric buses.
Another article refers to the moving of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency to the St. Louis Place neighborhood as a “game changer,” and I have heard scattered anecdotal reports of land speculation causing land prices to rise in the nearby blocks of JeffVanderLou. In what could be a modern-day, St. Louis version of The Music Man, we are led to believe that capital will now flow into North St. Louis, with Paul McKee’s quixotic dream mystifyingly still alive. Speaking with employees of the agency off the record, I have learned that many are dreading the move to the new location, which is inconvenient to South County, where many of the agency’s staff lives.
On Valentine’s Day, the Post-Dispatch reported that Steve Stenger referred to the Crossings at Northwest, the zombie remnants of Northwest Plaza, as a game changer. A renovated stump of what had once been a giant multi-anchor economic engine can hardly be described as having changed North County in a significant way. (Yes, Menard’s is an amazing hardware store, but…)
And sadly, in what I see as proof that St. Louis leadership is just not learning anything from history and repeating the mistakes of the past, I have increasingly heard that the renovation of the Gateway Arch Grounds will be a “game changer” for the city. How do they figure? Isn’t that what they claimed back in the 1960s? The Arch is amazing, and I’m glad that it was built, but under no circumstance has it done anything to prevent the rapid depopulation of huge swaths of the city, the entrenching of generational poverty, and the continuation of institutional racism. Certainly the Arch has helped indirectly generate tax income from tourists who have come specifically to visit the monument, but that is pushing the envelope of believability. Arch attendance has been decaying since it opened, and while we’ll surely see a bump to see the beautiful and well-done renovations, it will not set forth any sort of renaissance.
In fact, no one project will change any game in St. Louis. Year after year, decade after decade, this city’s leaders have tried to find easy solutions, that magical “game changer” that will somehow gloss over the real problems. The real problems, of course, are racism, crime, education dysfunction, a declining tax base, and the overall feeling that St. Louis has seen better days. The term “game changer” originally came from the sports world, and from that world we can learn important lessons: real sustainable success comes from hard work. Where are the Cardinals right now? They’re in Florida, practicing for months before their first game of the season. If only our leaders had such perseverance.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
