A City Worth Seeing A By G. Prather Knapp RE YOU A TRAVELER for pleasure or profit? Are you interested in the complex mechanism of giant industries? Are you fond of architecture especially that of homes, schools and churches? Are you artistic? Are you a nature lover? Are you a doctor, an educator, a musician, a librarian, an historian, a business executive ? Do you like motoring or canoeing or golfing? Do you like good hotels, good theatres, good restaurants, good crowdsgood living generally? If you can say "yes" to any one of these questions you will find St. Louis a city worth seeing. Entertainment Here is a city modern in office buildings, hotels, parks, cafes and theatres, but at the same time older than the United States and rich in romantic traditions. Here is a city in the heart of hill and valley scenery that equals the Berkshires and the Palisades, but at the same time accessible by twenty-six railroads, midway between the country's geographical and population centers and within a night's ride of thirty million people. Weather Day by day and season for season, St. Louis will give you weather as good as any other American city, and better than most of them. Autumn and Spring are perfect seasons in St. Louis. Winters, though shorter than in more northern cities afford ample opportunities for indulging in winter sports. Summer days, even during a warm wave, are more comfortable than in lake or marine cities where the humidity is greater and increases as the day advances. The prevailing summer breezes are from the Southwest, coming over 300 miles of Ozark Hills. Infant mortality, always an acid test for healthfulness, is lower in St. Louis than in any of the other large cities of the country. The Father of Waters You must come to St. Louis to see earth's noblest river in the most majestic part of its course. The Mississippi is too big to be appreciated from the bridges or the levee front, but take a motor or a street car and see it from the bluffs, either north or south of town. Spread out below you at a distance of some hundreds of feet, broad beyond other rivers, strong in flow beside high white cliffs, island-starred and lost in the haze of distance up stream and down, the Father of Waters is a sight that will make you catch your breath-one that you will remember along with Niagara or the Grand Canyon. It will stir memories of Mark Twain and his tales of steamboat races in the old gambling days or lonesome run-aways on rafts. You will think of Father Marquette and of LaSalle, intrepid French explorers, floating down alone on that broad flood with its impenetrable forests on either bank. Your fancy will picture Laclede and his little band of city builders who in 1764 came up stream from the lower French settlements perhaps to the very spot where you are standing, and founded St. Louis. Your best northern viewpoint will be Chain of Rocks Park and a different but no less majestic Mississippi may be seen at Jefferson Barracks just south of the city limits. Here there is a well-appointed army post and perhaps the loveliest of our national burying places. At the Chain of Rocks you will see a park (woods, fountains, gardens and all) standing on edge on the side of a bluff and below it are the municipal water works where by a unique process the world's largest mechanical filtration plant gives St. Louis water that is crystal clear and chemically pure as well. Two Other Rivers While you are seeing rivers, a short excursion northwest of St. Louis will show you the Missouri. From an observatory tower that raises you higher above the water level than the Washington Monument, you may look out over 'Creve Coeur Lake (where the Indian maiden drowned her 'broken heart') and see the second river of the United States at its widesta few miles above its confluence with the Mississippi. Smaller, but a gem in its way, and the best canoeing stream in America is the Meramec, which flows through a splendid valley of crags and bluff lines. Motor, street car or train will take you to it at Meramec Highlands or Valley Park. From May to October a trip to the Meramec is worth while if you like canoeing and swimming or like to watch aquatic sports. Hotels and Shops In 1904 St. Louis in America" OV ti re br ap tested constantly and not found wanting. Whatever his tastes or the time of his arrival, the visitor to St. Louis will find the sort of entertainment he likes at prices he approves. The shops-from biggest department store to tiniest specialty shop are a revelation to the feminine visitor. She finds unsurpassed quality and variety and as to prices -ask the stars of the theatrical world why they do so much of their outfitting in St. Louis. Homes and It is like turning the pages of a home builders' inspirationbook to pass along any one of a hundred streets and private residence places in St. Louis. You can see houses just as costly elsewhere but no other city shows such a variety of good taste in architecture, so much attention to grounds, shade trees and shrubbery, so many examples of what money and care can do toward making a real home. From the old Cathedral with its ancient French inscriptions, to the new Cathedral which is the largest church in North America and the largest built in modern times, the churches of St. Louis run the gamut of old and LOUIS MO |