Though far smaller than in its heyday, the city is still thriving.
When Chuck Berry sang about his hometown in 1959, St. Louis was coming off its peak. The 1950 census put the city’s population at more than 850,000, the highest ever. Today, the population sits at around 275,000 — a decline of two-thirds.
Missouri, alongside Ohio, is ground zero for an intensifying strain of yearning right-wing populism. (Josh Hawley and JD Vance were birds of a feather in the Senate.) It’s easy to see why. The state’s once-largest city rode the wave of American industrialization and then crashed with it, bleeding out to the suburbs. St. Louis is still built like a giant industrial park, with highways more suitable to transporting freight than people. A fifth of its once-humming structures are now abandoned. Large-scale demolition would be considered an improvement project.
And yet the city of old survives. Actually, it’s on the upswing again. Investment is up, and crime is down. The downtown looks brighter and busier than it did decades ago, my mother tells me, even as the population has continued to fall. What remains in St. Louis has stuck around for a reason.
Take, for example, this lovely old courthouse, completed in 1864. You can’t tear this building down!
The courthouse is at the intersection of Dred Scott Way (named after the man, not the Supreme Court decision, thank goodness). It was in the St. Louis courts that Scott’s legal struggle for freedom began. A statue of him and his wife stands nearby.
At the center of the city — as it should be everywhere — is the ballpark. Busch Stadium would be my 15th Major League stadium in five years. The Cardinals played an evening game against their division rivals, the Milwaukee Brewers. Busch’s brick exterior matches the Cardinals’ red. Once you’re inside, the ballpark opens onto the city.
Like St. Louis, the Cardinals are on the up-and-up this season — surprising everyone, including the team. To celebrate the storied franchise’s resurgence, a crew of raucous, shirtless men has taken over a section of the outfield bleachers. Their numbers were thinned on a Monday night, but the energy was strong nonetheless.
You might think the gentleman in the group’s front row is breaking ranks by draping his torso in a Cardinals uniform. But no, that’s head-to-fingers body paint.
Better than the baseball that evening (the Brewers won 4–3) were the St. Louis ballpark delicacies. You know we had to try the bacon-wrapped hot dogs with everything on them — which, we discovered, included baked beans. I’d estimate that was six months off my life expectancy. Worth it.
Somehow not full, I sampled a newer creation. I had heard about the famous gooey butter cake, a decadent dessert featuring two creamy layers of heart failure. Not good enough. How about deep-fried gooey butter cake on a stick?
Oh, and now we must talk about that beer. Believe it or not, I had never tasted a classic Budweiser before. I assumed it tasted something like Bud Light — you know, like rotting water. But at Busch Stadium, and in the hometown of Anheuser-Busch, it was only natural to try the brewery’s historic offering.
Budweiser used to be the best-selling beer in America but was overtaken in 2001 by Bud Light. I can only conclude that we, as a society, have gotten stupider. Because Budweiser is a phenomenal beer. How anyone, let alone millions of people, transitioned from that elixir to its tragic younger cousin is beyond my comprehension. Long live the King of Beers, even if most prefer the prince.
Anyway, St. Louis reminded us on the way out why we should never have slept on the team’s rebuild. Here’s to many more championship flags. (Just not against the Yankees.)
Before we left St. Louis, we had to hit the arch, of course. It’s somehow bigger than I imagined — and I thought it was pretty huge. Like the city that surrounds it, the arch beats expectations.
The Gateway Arch was constructed as a symbolic entrance to the American West. For me, I suppose, it’s a gateway to the American East. It’s good to be back on the road again.
This is an installment in a cross-country road-trip adventure.