| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 595 words from this article are provided below; about 441 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Eric Sandweiss, editor. St. Louis in the Century of Henry Shaw: A View beyond the Garden Wall. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2003. Pp. xviii, 251. $32.50.
During the nineteenth century, St. Louis, Missouri, became one of the nation's largest and most important cities. From a frontier town of 4,600 at its incorporation in 1823, by 1900, St. Louis stood as the nation's fourth largest city with nearly 600,000 residents. The new metropolis served as a great emporium drawing on Mississippi River trade and extensive rail connections to its hinterland and beyond. The city also developed a manufacturing base of considerable import, while its institutions and civic leaders became models for the nation. As with a number of older river cities, St. Louis history writing recently experienced a mini-renaissance including important works by contributors to this volume.	1
This collection of nine essays, commissioned by the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Missouri Historical Society, Tower Grove Park, and Washington University, emerged from a St. Louis conference held in 2000 on the one hundredth anniversary of Henry Shaw's birth. Shaw, a successful and wealthy St. Louis businessman and philanthropist, emigrated to the city from England in 1819; he died in 1889, having contributed significantly to the city and the book's sponsoring organizations. The essays trace St. Louis's nineteenth-century transformation into a western metropolis of "skyscrapers and steel factories, ragtime dance halls and German beer gardens, kosher groceries and Gilded Age mansions" (p. 7).	2
The book covers a range of topics including public culture, "biographical sketches of representative men," African Americans, immigration, economic history, scientific research, public education, theater culture, and literary life. Several essays stand out for their sharp insights into St. Louis and U. S. history. Walter Kamphoefner places his essay on nineteenth-century immigration in the context of a "majority-minority" city, an issue of current and historical interest. As St. Louis evolved from a French village into an American metropolis, immigrants (and migrants) profoundly influenced the city, especially those from Germany and Ireland. By 1860, immigrants constituted half of St. Louis's population, but Irish and German Americans experienced considerable social and spacial distance from each other, as their low intermarriage rate suggested. As a result, St. Louis's political geography varied from the "reigning interpretation of nineteenth-century American politics" in part because of the city's French-Catholic roots (p. 86). In the early years, German and Irish immigrants worked through the Democratic Party; by 1860, Germans, "the most enthusiastic supporters of the Union and emancipation" (save for African Americans), joined with Anglos in the Republican Party, while St. Louis's Irish remained Democratic (p. 89). Moreover, Yankee Protestant Republicans supported German language instruction in public schools that from its institution in 1864 until its termination in 1887, successfully drew as much as eighty percent of German-American children; initially most had attended parochial or private schools.	3
Economic historian James Primm provides valuable insight into St. Louis's development and its rivalry with Chicago. While earlier studies reported the city's business elites to be unwilling "to take risks for the sake of" urban development, Primm demonstrates that they actively engaged in transportation development "with 8 trunk-lines and six short-line railroads serving the city" (p. 131). Similarly, the Eads Bridge across the Mississippi, completed in 1874, along with a diverse economy of commerce and manufacturing, suggest an aggressive business elite. St. Louisians also demonstrated risk taking by creatively inflating the city's 1870 U. S. Census population and economic data, so they could "stay ahead of Chicago" (p. 130).	. . .

There are about 441 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.