urbanSTL

OK, I just finished A Universe Less Travelled, by Eric von Schrader. For a first-time novelist, it's surprisingly well written. Not great literature or high art, of course, but much better than lots of today's popular fiction. It's got an easy, natural flow. 

Basically, two very different versions of St. Louis split apart sometime after 1904. One is the city we know today, and the other is a much more prosperous, booming, world-class city. They both exist in the same time, but in "parallel universes". The actual plot doesn't really matter, as it's just a device to explore these different variations of St. Louis.

Some of the areas featured include the Southside National Bank Building, Gravois Blvd. (with an emphasis on Boulevard), South Grand, Tower Grove Park, the Pelican Restaurant, Forest Park, the CWE, Holy Corners, Lindell, Grand Center/Midtown, the VA Hospital, Enright, Downtown, the Riverfront, Eads Bridge, East St. Louis, Cahokia, Crestwood, and Chesterfield. The Arch is featured, of course, but it doesn't exist in the "other" St. Louis; rather, most of the old Riverfront buildings still remain, mixed in with newer mid and high-rise buildings. 

Local people and institutions range from The Veiled Profit Organization to Steve Mizerany (with names changed, of course).   

Anyway, it's a fun read for anyone fond of St. Louis. 

I've been meaning to get around to reading that, looks really interesting. STL on the Air had a nice interview with the author a while back.

Does anyone know if those are real buildings (from some large Asian city presumably) or just a fictional skyline?

kipfilet wrote:Does anyone know if those are real buildings (from some large Asian city presumably) or just a fictional skyline?

Looks like Dubai to me. In particular, Business Bay

Great, thanks!

I have not. I am about to read The Broken Heart of America by Walter Johnson. 

Nice to see this thread revived. So many new books have been released since the last post. Some of the latest additions to my coffee table include:

Southampton St. Louis: An unconventional History, edited by Tim Fox

Renaissance: A History of the Central West End, by Candace O'Connor

Great River City: How the Mississippi Shaped St. Louis, by Andrew Wanko

Capturing the City: Photographs From the Streets of St. Louis, 1900 - 1930, by Heathcott and Dietz

The Lost St. Louis Riverfront, by Thomas Grady

Downtown St. Louis, by Nini Harris 

BTW, here's another thread on STL books, last post 2008:  viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6422

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Jan 02, 2021

Speaking of novels set in St. Louis, has anyone read the 27th City by Franzen?

it's been sitting on my bookshelf for a few years now but the reading of it has not happened yet.

While St. Louis isn't mentioned by name I loved finding the botanical garden in space in Anne Leckie's Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy.

I've been trying to learn new languages over the past decade or so and came across this book in the process. It's entirely about St. Louis (primarily) and Missouri (to a much lesser extent). To my knowledge, this book is only available in Dutch.

The title ("Americans Don't Walk") is indicative of the content, but it's more about the poverty, culture, and racial divide in St. Louis. The author is fair - he did meet friends here and has a fondness for certain things about the city, such as Forest Park - but it is not at all a pretty picture of the city and its suburbs (He rented his first house in one of the diminutive N. County municipalities). He was here, and the book was published, after the Ferguson riots. So it's relatively new.

https://amzn.to/3rOEVe3

There's an interview in English with the author here: https://www.john-adams.nl/interview-arjen-van-veelen/

Hmmm . . . apparently the zombie apocalypse has reached St. Louis:

50 years too late!

^ ha! nice one, kip. made me chuckle.

Hot off the presses: 

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393652666

^premise reminds me of the excellent "Vanished Kingdoms", a collection of histories of countries that while relevant during their time have largely been forgotten in the modern day: https://www.amazon.com/Vanished-Kingdom ... 0143122959

Just picked up this awesome coffee-table book on local architect William Bernoudy. Fantastic book; can't praise it enough:

https://www.amazon.com/William-Adair-Be ... 0826212247

One of the best: Architecture of the Private Streets of St. Louis: The Architects and the Houses They Designed
https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Private-Streets-St-Louis/dp/0826204856/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Architecture+of+the+Private+Streets+of+St.+Louis%3A+The+Architects+and+the+Houses+They+Designed&link_code=qs&qid=1644504822&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-1

framer wrote: ↑

Feb 10, 2022

Just picked up this awesome coffee-table book on local architect William Bernoudy. Fantastic book; can't praise it enough:

https://www.amazon.com/William-Adair-Be ... 0826212247

The one by Osmund Overby? I used to sing with him back in the day. He also wrote about early vernacular houses in central and northeast Missouri. Got to talk with him about vernacular houses some. He was a great guy and is much missed in Columbia.

^Yep. With photos by Sam Fentress and a foreword by Gyo Obata. 

^I need to find myself a copy of that. If I recall correctly one of my professors lived down the street from a house featured in it and an acquaintance actually lived in a second in the same neighborhood. (Which has a third example a few blocks south.) Bernoudy did some truly incredible work. And I've long had a kind of hero-crush on Obata. I'm oddly jealous. I'll have to see if Left Bank or Dunaway have a copy.