Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
NONONONONONONO. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. One is a rust belt big city (currently being revitalized) with tons of cultural amenities, an important economy, and a unique and special culture and identity. The other is a satellite city of the former and is a post-industrial wasteland.
Don't ever get them confused, that's what scares people away. Don't let ignorance get the better of you, it will spread like a virus.
NONONONONONONO. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. One is a rust belt big city (currently being revitalized) with tons of cultural amenities, an important economy, and a unique and special culture and identity. The other is a satellite city of the former and is a post-industrial wasteland.
Don't ever get them confused, that's what scares people away. Don't let ignorance get the better of you, it will spread like a virus.
Was it ever a part of St. Louis? Or has it always been separate. So East St Louis is like the apocalypse of St. Louis proper??
I think the worst looking ghetto is the white slums of Longview Washington. It has a high crime rate huge drug problem its filthy ugly and dangerous. A bunch of tweekers and wiggers everywhere. This ghetto city also has the highest STD rates in Washington State.
Was it ever a part of St. Louis? Or has it always been separate. So East St Louis is like the apocalypse of St. Louis proper??
East St. Louis was established as a separate municipality in Illinois, across from St. Louis, MO. It was originally called "Illinoistown," but was renamed sometime around the 1840s' to what it is today. Before the Eads bridge was built across the Mississippi River, it was a major railroad terminal for railroads attempting to connect to the Pacific railway and other railroads that had constructed westward from St. Louis via car ferry. After the Eads Bridge (and later the Merchants Bridge and Municipal/MacArthur bridge) were constructed, East St. Louis continued to be a major railroad transfer terminal up until the consolidation of railroads and the decline of the industry in the 1970s and 80s, as the eastern and Midwestern railroads (such as the New York Central, Baltimore and Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nickel Plate, Wabash, Lousville & Nashville, etc) connected with the western routes that terminated in StL (like the Frisco, Missouri Pacific, Rock Island, or CB&Q).
Additionally, when the bridges across the Mississippi (particularly the Eads) were initially built, the Terminal Rail Road Association of St. Louis (TRRA), a switching railroad jointly owned by St. Louis and East St. Louis railroads, began to levy fees and taxes on the soft Illinois coal that crossed the river into St. Louis. Coal mining was a huge industry in Southern Illinois back then, and a lot of it happened close to the St. Louis area (in towns such as O'Fallon or Belleville). This prompted new industries to locate across the river in East St. Louis to avoid the tax and still have access to the coal for power.
East St. Louis continued to be a thriving blue collar manufacturing town until about the 50s, when jobs began to close down or leave for the Sunbelt. Unions were very powerful in East St. Louis, and obviously that raised wages, so companies left for cheaper employment down south in the second half of the 20th century. Additionally, as the bigger companies consolidated, major manufacturing jobs were often concentrated elsewhere, thus leaving many big employers shuttered. Furthermore, as manufacturing jobs left the town, African-American immigrants continued to pour in from the south, seeking jobs. As they were often former agricultural workers, many of them sharecroppers, they were frequently poor and uneducated; their presence also exacerbated racial tensions and hastened white flight from the city. Another huge problem had been around since the city's inception-company towns. The area's major factories, such as Monsanto's chemical plant, Alcoa's aluminum refinery, and the National Stock Yards and their meatpacking plants, had all formed their own little tax havens (Sauget, Alorton, and National City, respectively) to avoid paying taxes to East St. Louis. So EStL got no tax revenue from them outside of the taxes those companies' employees paid, and thus profited little from them in the long term, denying them the ability to build a bigger and better infrastructure system that could sustain them in the future. Infrastructure, ironically, was another downfall of EStL; first railroads, and then later the interstates, sliced and diced the city up into multiple chunks, cutting apart cohesive neighborhoods and communities and destroying homes and businesses. A quick look on Google maps and you can still see this today.
So basically, East St. Louis, though economically tied to St. Louis, had its own rise and fall; its fate was somewhat similar, but far worse proportionally, than its Western neighbor. It is St. Louis's Gary-a blue collar satellite city that's fallen long and hard. Whether it will ever get back on its feet, no one knows, but we can always hope.
Neighborhood I was raised at in Kansas City, MO. This was pretty dangerous in the 80s and 90s. Compared to some hoods I've seen since traveling, doesn't look quite as bad.
Was it ever a part of St. Louis? Or has it always been separate. So East St Louis is like the apocalypse of St. Louis proper??
East St. Louis is in Illinois. St. Louis is in Missouri. You have to cross the river to get over there. It's like Camden to Philadelphia or Newark to New York. East St. Louis is not the east side of St. Louis as is often assumed. People don't say East St. Louis like they say North Philly or Southside Chicago, because its basically a rough post industrial satellite city that has fallen on hard times. St. Louis is actually a beautiful city with a lot of cultural institutions, universities, parks, nightlife etc. it has a lot of rough areas like any city but there is enough there for the city to rebound. East St. Louis on the other hand is basically Camden or Gary on the Mississippi River and a view of the Arch.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
NONONONONONONO. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. One is a rust belt big city (currently being revitalized) with tons of cultural amenities, an important economy, and a unique and special culture and identity. The other is a satellite city of the former and is a post-industrial wasteland.
