Welcome to St. Louis! If you are like many newcomers, most people who live elsewhere, or me when I first moved to St. Louis 20-something years ago, then you probably don’t know much about this place. Well, I have good news for you: St. Louis is special. It’s a place of beautiful parks, vibrant neighborhoods, exciting sports, and enriching cultural institutions. It’s also a place with a rich, diverse, and complex history. St. Louis is the place that:
- Argued it should be the nation’s capital city
- Hosted the United States’ first-ever Olympic Games
- Boasts the oldest bridge on the Mississippi River
- Built one of the 10 buildings that changed America
- Produced one of the country’s first Black female millionaires
- Taught America how to cook
- Both won—and lost!—the 1944 World Series
- Launched the careers of the Father and the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll
- Sent astronauts into space
- Welcomes guests to America’s best urban park
St. Louis is all of this and so much more. Yet a recent survey found that people who don’t live here know very little about it. Soon, however, I’m willing to bet that you too will fall in love with St. Louis. I often find that people who move to St. Louis are even more zealous about expressing their passion for this place than people who’ve lived here their entire lives.
Yes, St. Louis has its quirks. People are going to ask you where you went to high school. We prefer our ravioli toasted. And it’s going to take you a while to figure out how to pronounce some of the street names.
Like any major metro, St. Louis also has its challenges. But what sets us apart is how we come together to address them head on. After all, there’s so much opportunity in the Gateway City. Sometimes even those of us who have called St. Louis home for decades need a reminder of that. That’s why I’m so excited about this publication.
My favorite quote about the city is from Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York City’s Central Park and visited St. Louis in 1863. Here’s what he had to say about St. Louisans and their love of this place: “What they never thought of concealing or suppressing or restraining from its utmost outpouring was their satisfaction in being St. Louisans. No subject was talked about that did not give occasion for some new method of trumpeting St. Louis. It was the same with every man and woman we met in St. Louis. The devout dwellers in Mecca do not worship the holy city more than every child of St. Louis, his city. And the most notable thing I learned of St. Louis was the pleasure of the people to talk about it—what it had been, what it would be.”
That is the spirit we are cultivating in St. Louis today. I hope this publication is one of the sparks that ignites in you a passion for St. Louis. Soon, you might be trumpeting it just as loudly as the people Olmsted described in the 1860s.
St. Louis is a great place. It needs more people who love and champion it, who are happy to share all of the things that make it special. It needs more people like you.
—Jody Sowell
President/CEO, Missouri Historical Society
