Edith Schaeffer on St. Louis in the mid-1940s:

"St. Louis - with its Forest Park - a wonderful park with rolling ground, trees, a lake, an art museum on top of a hill, a complete zoo, and a marvelous and constantly changing greenhouse where large trees andbasic plants remained, but where flower displays were a kind of succession of 'shows' fitting the season - was to be our home city.  St. Louis - with its Kiel Auditorium and emphasis on symphony concerts, with its lovely big downtown stores (before shopping malls began), when errands could be done so efficiently and one could have special luncheons or a refreshing 'bit' (a salad and an iced coffee) when meeting someone for conversation - was to open new doors for us.  St. Louis - where 'city homes' were solid red brick or stone, on tree-lined streets, some of the more affluent 'private streets' with their magnificent old wrought-iron gates taking one back to another period of history...St. Louis - a city with two universities, medical colleges, and especially good private schools, enormous hospital complexes some very successful business as well as Roman Catholic seminaries, and the Lutheran Concordia Seminary; a city with a wide cross-section of people form the country-club set to the underprivileged - was to be an education for us, in some new ways, as well as a challenge!  St. Louis - called in travel guides 'Gateway to the West' as it stands on the Mississippi River, which connects a fantastic range of places form Minneapolis to New Orleans - was to be our home city, and, as far as we knew, it was to be for a lifetime."

from Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life by Colin Duriez (for my Cross-Cultural Communications class)