St. Louis: The Evolution of an American Urban Landscape

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Fenced-off Corners, Wider Settings, and the New American Landscape Part I: Laying the Groundwork 2. Lines on the Land: The Lingering Imprint of Colonial St. Louis 3. "The Inhabitants of St. Louis" and Their Land: Redefining Urban Order in Antebellum St. Louis Part II: Building the Fenced-Off Corners 4. Producers: The Evolution of the Private City-Building Process 5. Consumers: Everyday Space in Four Neighborhoods 6. Regulators: Public Improvements in the Urban Landscape Part III: Conceiving the Wider Setting 7. The Evolution of Civic Improvement and City Planning Ideals from 1890 to 1950 8. Epilogue: Rethinking the Contours of Community in the Declining City, 1950 to the Present Notes Index

" Eric Sandweiss's book makes fascinating reading--not only for someone with a love of St. Louis history, but for anyone interested in thinking about the effect of past decisions upon the current state of American cities." --Vince Schoemehl, former Mayor of St. Louis " Sandweiss deftly shows his readers how and why 'form' followed a wide range of functions--economic, political, and social--in St. Louis. [The book] offers a rich and satisfactory account of how city neighborhoods, and especially working-class neighborhoods, were built in the nineteenth century and what happened to them in the twentieth. Sandweiss makes a vital and original contribution to the history of the built environment and does so with unusual acuity, wit, and sympathy." --Elizabeth Blackmar, Professor of History, Columbia University " In this superbly researched and carefully argued study, Eric Sandweiss presents the hidden history of spatial separation and social inequality in cities like St. Louis. Sandweiss shows how seemingly small decisions about ordinary aspects of urban life--like the placement of porches in the front or the back of buildings and the purchase of pavement from private or public funds--activate enduring and seeming irresolvable tensions in urban life. By showing how an unending capacity for change in urban areas frustrates abstract invocations of the common good as articulated by urban planners, Sandweiss directs our attention to more modest--but also more practical--plans for resolving conflicts between the interests of the 'fenced-off corners' of our cities and the needs of the 'wider setting.'" --George Lipsitz, author of A Life in the Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition (Temple) and Sidewalks of St. Louis " Sandweiss engages with an impressive range of sources to tell this story of people's lived experiences and urban imaginations...St. Louis demonstrates how we can think deeply about the spatial dimensions of city life and urban development." --Urban History