St. Louis Information, City Guides, St. Louis Neighborhoods

St. Louis General Information

If Mayor Francis G. Slay is to be believed, 2004 was the year that St. Louis ended a half-century of decline and population loss and became "a city on the move." Signs abound that he may be right. The city's once moribund downtown, until a few years ago a collection of empty storefronts and boarded windows, emerged as the region's new dining hotspot. And the city's population, which dropped to about 339,000 in 2000 from a peak of more than 800,000 in the 1950s, appears to be rebounding, if slowly, fueling a demand for lofts in refurbished downtown buildings and contributing to a newfound vibrancy.

The reversal of the city's fortunes date to the late 1990s and early 2000. The opening of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in 2001 and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in 2003 gave St. Louis two marquee attractions in Midtown's Grand Center cultural district and helped put the city on the architectural map. (The museums are housed in adventurously stylish concrete buildings designed by Tadao Ando and Brad Cloepfil, respectively.)

Downtown, a six-block stretch of Washington Avenue west of Tucker Boulevard that stood in for a post-apocalyptic Gotham in Escape from New York (1981) received a $11.7 million face lift in 2003. Although completed nearly two years behind schedule, the Washington Avenue streetscape project has been a hit.

The closure in June 2004 of Tangerine, a restaurant and bar that had been a Washington Avenue fixture for eight years, was seen as a setback, but the street's widened sidewalks and jazzy new street lights have been credited with luring diners, shoppers and club-hoppers to this long-neglected part of the city's center.

St. Louis - which hosts16.7 million leisure and business travelers annually - is the headquarters for eight Fortune 500 companies and other large firms, including Anheuser-Busch, A.G. Edwards, Emerson Electric, May Co. Department Stores and Monsanto, although the acquisition of hometown airline TWA by American Airlines in 2001 dealt a blow both to St. Louis' economy and to the region's pride.

In many ways, St. Louis hasn't changed. It's still a sports town, and plenty of people here live for the Cardinals baseball team. The Hill neighborhood still boasts some of the finest Italian food this side of Little Italy. And charming, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods like the Central West End, Lafayette Square and the University City Loop continue to beguile residents and first-time visitors alike.

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