Forest Park is a public park in western St. Louis, Missouri. It is a prominent civic center and covers . Opened in 1876, more than a decade after its proposal, the park has hosted several significant events, including the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 (also known as the 1904 World's Fair) and the 1904 Summer Olympics. Bounded by Washington University in St. Louis, Skinker Boulevard, Lindell Boulevard, Kingshighway Boulevard, and Oakland Avenue, it is known as the "Heart of St. Louis" and features a variety of attractions, including the St. Louis Zoo, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Missouri History Museum, The Muny, and the St. Louis Science Center.New York Times (May 9, 2004) .
Since the early 2000s, it has carried out a $100 million restoration through a public-private partnership aided by its Master Plan. Changes have extended to improving landscaping and habitat as well. The park's acreage includes meadows and trees and a variety of ponds, manmade lakes, and freshwater streams. For several years, the park has been restoring prairie and wetlands areas of the park. It has reduced flooding and attracted a much greater variety of birds and wildlife, which have settled in the new natural habitats.
History
Early proposals An 1864 plan for a large park in the city limits was rejected by St. Louis voters. In 1872, St. Louis developer Hiram Leffingwell proposed a park about outside the city limits near land which he owned.Primm (1998), 306. After a period of intense lobbying by Leffingwell, the Missouri General Assembly authorized the city to purchase the land; however, city taxpayers challenged the purchase in court, and in 1873, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the authorization. The next year another developer, Andrew McKinley, prepared another proposal that met legal challenges. The tract selected that became Forest Park included a heavily forested area west of Kingshighway along Olive Street (now Lindell Boulevard).
Creation of the park Using McKinley's proposal as a guide, in 1874 the General Assembly passed the Forest Park Act, which established the park and created a county-wide property tax to fund it.Loughlin, Caroline and Catherine Anderson; Forest Park, pages 5–10. The Junior League of St. Louis, 1986. In November 1874, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the new law and referred all questions of land ownership and value to the circuit court.Loughlin, Caroline and Catherine Anderson; Forest Park, page 11, 13. The Junior League of St. Louis, 1986. The largest parcels of land needed for the park belonged to Thomas Skinker, Charles P. Chouteau, Julia Maffitt, and William Forsyth, who in 1874 and 1875 sold their land to the city. The city purchased the land for $849,058, with another million dollars dedicated to maintenance and improvement.
The state of the parkland in 1876 was rural: on the eastern and western edges of the park were unpaved roads (Kingshighway and Skinker Road, respectively). Flowing through the northern lowlands and turning southeast in the park was the River des Peres, which at times was very low while in some seasons could flood large areas. The southwestern part of the park was heavily forested land, and the east-west Clayton Road ran through the southern part of the park. A railroad right-of-way cut through the northeast corner of the park.
Maximillian G. Kern and Julius Pitzman, the Prussian-born St. Louis surveyor, designed the park's original plan. The park was dedicated June 24, 1876, with a crowd of about 50,000 in attendance. Officials and a band occupied a music stand and podium, and dedicated a statue of Edward Bates, the attorney general under President Abraham Lincoln.Loughlin, Caroline and Catherine Anderson; Forest Park, page 3. The Junior League of St. Louis, 1986. By the early 1890s, streetcar lines reached the park, carrying nearly 3 million visitors a year. A zoological gardens had been established around 1876 in Fairgrounds Park, on the north side of the city; its animals were eventually transferred to the new Forest Park facility.
From the beginning officials sought public transportation to the park. Several routes were evaluated. It was not electric streetcars, but rather cable cars that first gave access to Forest Park. Erastus Wells' Missouri Railway was a cable car line (then known as a "cable road") that ran down Olive Street. It was extended in stages. Access to Lindell Blvd was denied, but a route down Boyle to Maryland and then to Kingshighway was approved. Service began June 1, 1889.St. Louis Globe-Democrat May 25, 1889, p 8. Available on Newspapers.com
Louisiana Purchase Exposition
In 1901, Forest Park was selected as the location of the 1904 World's Fair, known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.Primm (1998), 376. The fair opened April 30, 1904, and closed December 1, 1904, and it left the park vastly different.Primm (1998), 393. In addition to the fair, the park hosted the diving, swimming, and water polo events for the 1904 Summer Olympics.Spalding's report of the 1904 Summer Olympics. pp. 229, 231. Fifteen sports offered Olympic competition events, but women could compete only in archery. The 1904 Games were the first time that African Americans were allowed to compete.
George Kessler, the fair's landscape architect, dramatically changed the park: the wetlands areas in the western part of the park were drained and converted into water features and five connected lakes. Sewer and water lines installed during the fair remained for public use in the park. After the fair, thousands of trees were planted and vistas were created. In 1909, the fair's directors gave the balance of the remaining profits from the fair toward the construction of a monument to Thomas Jefferson, on the former site of the fair's entry gates; when completed in 1913 it became the Missouri History Museum building. Other structures left from the fair include the St. Louis Art Museum, the Apotheosis of St. Louis (a statue of French King Louis IX), the 1904 Bird Cage, (now a part of the St. Louis Zoo), and the Grand Basin, located at the foot of Art Hill, which was the location of the Festival Hall and cascades at the fair. Though often mistakenly counted among relics of the fair, the World's Fair Pavilion in Forest Park is a later structure, constructed in 1909 with proceeds from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.
The Palace of the Arts, a building now known as the Saint Louis Art Museum in Forest Park, was divided into six classifications: painting, etchings and engravings, sculpture, architecture, loan collection, and industrial art. In addition to art displays, many novelties were showcased for the first time at the Fair. Electricity, still considered young at the time, was showcased in a number of ways. Attendees at the Fair were awestruck by the electric lighting, both inside and out, of all of the important buildings and roads. The electrical plug and the wall outlet were also displayed. Two of the more notable technological achievements demonstrated were the x-ray machine and the baby incubator.
River des Peres At one time the River des Peres ran openly through the park, but due to sanitary concerns, a portion was put underground in a wooden box shortly before the 1904 World's Fair. In the 1930s, the portion of the River des Peres that runs through Forest Park was diverted entirely underground in huge concrete pipes. More recently, an artificial waterscape linking park lakes has been created. The river remains underground in the park.
Since the 2000s, the park has restored numerous areas of prairie and wetlands in the park; these new habitats are serving not only to reduce flooding, but to attract a greatly increased variety of birds and wildlife. They provide a richer experience for walkers and bikers in the park, and the restored areas are full of birdsong.
Hospital lease controversy In 1973, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, located across Kingshighway from the eastern edge of the park, leased an area of land in Forest Park located to its south for construction of an underground parking garage. After construction was complete, the surface was restored and a playground was installed; in 1983, the lease was extended to 2050 and the garage was expanded to more than 1,900 spaces.St. Louis Business Journal (March 19, 2006) . Starting in 2006, the hospital engaged the city to renegotiate the lease to allow for the construction of a building on the site, known as Hudlin Park (although part of Forest Park). The hospital proposal also included an extension of the lease by 46 years to 2096, providing the hospital 90 years of tenancy. Under the proposal, the annual rent would increase from $150,000 to between $1.6 and $2.2 million. The hospital sought to lease more than for which it would pay $2.2 million, or as an alternative it would lease the current for which it would pay $1.6 million a year.
Under a January 2007 revised proposal from the hospital, the city would receive $2 million for the lease of , while the hospital would agree to make improvements to two areas in Forest Park. In February 2007, to gain the support of city Comptroller Darlene Green (one of three members of the St. Louis Board of Apportionment and Estimate, a board that recommends lease proposals to the full Board of Aldermen), the hospital agreed to build, fund, and staff a trauma center in North St. Louis.St. Louis Business Journal (February 22, 2007) . In the February 2007 revised proposal the hospital also agreed to retain 15 percent of the land as green space.
Despite considerable protests, the proposal advanced to the St. Louis Board of Aldermen. An activist group called Citizens to Protect Forest Park gathered 28,000 signatures to place a ballot measure that would require citywide voter approval of all leases or sales of park land. But, the ballot measure was enacted in April 2007, two months after the revised lease was approved by the Board of Aldermen.
Use
Forest Park has more than 12 million visitors per year, surpassing the number of annual visitors to both Busch Stadium and the Gateway Arch National Park combined.City of St. Louis Parks Department: Parking and Access Report .The St. Louis Cardinals had 3.3 million visitors in 2010, according to St. Louis Business Journal (October 17, 2010) , while the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial had 2.4 million visitors in 2010, according to National Park Service Statistics . In 2022, Forest Park was named the nation's best city park in the annual USA Today Readers' Choice Awards. The park has a diverse patronage, including tourists and local visitors, visitors to park institutions, and special event patrons, with roughly one third of patrons living within of the park, another third between 10 and , and another third living beyond from the park. 88 percent of park visitors drive to the park, while the remaining 12 percent are split between public transit and walking or bicycling to the park. The park has eleven multi-modal access points, listed below by the edge of the park: East: Clayton Avenue (outbound), Barnes Hospital Drive, West Pine Boulevard West: Forsyth Boulevard, Wells Drive (inbound) North: West Pine Boulevard, Union Drive, Cricket Drive, DeBaliviere Ave South: Tamm Avenue, Hampton Avenue The Hampton Avenue entrance is used by about 60 percent of users entering the park; this has led to traffic congestion issues that have become more problematic in recent years.Fox2Now (April 3, 2011) . To remedy the problem, traffic has been redirected away from the Hampton park entrance and trolley-replica buses have been used to shuttle patrons.Riverfront Times (March 29, 2011) .