Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1912 — FINDS LITTLE OF REAL INTEREST IN ST. LOUIS [ARTICLE]

FINDS LITTLE OF REAL INTEREST IN ST. LOUIS

London Critic and Author Pays His Respects to ’. American City. LONDON, (Special)— “No AngloSaxon city is seen to advantage on Sunday," writes William Archer, the dramatic critic, traveller and allaround author, in the London Morning Leader. “In St. Louis it was my fate to spend a Sunday, and regretfully but firmly, I pronounce it the least attractive of all the great cities in the United States. Its situation is undistinguished, its planning is ruthlessly triangular, its public buildings are mean. Even the Mississippi somehow contrives to be unimpressive. It is a wide river, no doubt, but you have to reason with yourself before you dan admit that it is widerthan. the Thamea at Chariug Cross. “Looking back from the Eads bridge at the baAtoss center of the city you see that It contains a .fair number of tall buildings—perhaps from 15 to 20 stories high. But they have neither the soaring audacity of the New York skyscrapers nor the fortress-like grandeur of those of Chicago. They” are featureless blocks •—nothing more. Over them there rests in the soft, muggy air, a pall of smoke that reminds one of Pittsburg, but of the lurid picturesquenesg, the infernal majesty of Pittsburg there is no trace. - , “From a sociotojlcal point of view, however, St. Louis is far from uninteresting. It may be called The PhIP adelphia of the middle west, a gigantic symbol and symptom of middle class prosperity. Of intellectual or artistic ambitions it shows scarcely a trace, but its drygoods stores will compare with any in the world. Evidently the Selfridges of St. Louis cater to an enormous class of people who have plenty of money to spfend. The local millionaires, no doubt, do their shopping in New York. It is middle class prosperity that shouts at us on every hand —an unldea’d smugness of comfort that seems somehow to blend oppressively with the mugginess of the air.”