ABSTRACT
The physical form of Forest Park reflects each of the three major eras in its design and construction. It combines late nineteenth-century American Pastoral landscape with Beaux-Arts / City Beautiful symmetry (from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904), and the renaturalizing ethos of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The park also reflects the rise and fall and relatively recent recovery of its host city. In common with most cities in the United States, St Louis suffered severe post-war population shrinkage and accompanying symptoms of rising crime and unemployment. Its population in 1970 was smaller than in 1920. The challenges confronting the park were exacerbated by the relatively small land area of the city – 62 square miles (160 square kilometres) – and the relatively large area of Forest Park – one of the ten largest urban parks in the country. By comparison, the estimated population of St Louis in 2012 was 318,172, making it the 58th most populated city and 19th most populated metropolitan area in the country (www.census.gov).
