The Image of the City

Abstract

This interdisciplinary urban history examines the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial on the St. Louis riverfront as a case study of the Progressive response to the urban disorder resulting from the modernization of American society during the twentieth century. Using the insights of urban sociologist Anselm Strauss into urban images and urban historian Blain Brownell into civic boosterism as a conceptual framework, this article draws upon original documents such as city plans and newspapers from the turn of the century until the 1947-1948 design competition for the memorial. These materials reveal an enduring pattern underlying attempts by St. Louis commercial and civic leaders to restructure the urban form-of the riverfront into an orderly image consistent with their progressive urban ethos.