The St. Louis Schools of William B. Ittner

In 1897, a man named William B. Ittner became the Commissioner of School Buildings for the Board of Education in St. Louis.  It was a new position, created to oversee an ambitious plan to design and build scores of new public schools in St. Louis city. Before this, school buildings in St. Louis were vastly unappealing structures….

Tower Grove Park & A Fantastic Manhattan

Most St. Louisans will agree that Forest Park is the flagship park of their city. Bigger than Central Park in New York City, Forest Park has museums, golf courses, restaurants, lakes, fountains, trails, and countless other amenities. It’s a magnificent park.  The site of the 1904 World’s Fair, I’d go as far as saying it’s…

Rough Day at the 1904 Olympic Marathon

On August 30, 1904, thirty-two athletes from four nations lined up for a forty kilometer race at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. It was the marathon race at the III Olympiad, and what happened over the next twenty-five miles or so is one of the best stories in the history of the sport. I’ve…

Olympic Lake, Olympic Drink

This is the corner of Skinker Boulevard and Wydown Boulevard on the western edge of Forest Park in St. Louis. At the World’s Fair in 1904, a large man-made lake existed on this exact location. It was called the “U.S. Life Saving Exhibition Lake”. The Coast Guard used it to stage life saving techniques during…