dual personalities

On November 15, 1872 the Missouri Republican reported that the Mill Creek sewer of St. Louis, already more than two miles long, was nearing completion. The sewer had been begun in 1860, after Chouteau’s Pond had been drained because of “pollution.” Engineers’ reports outlined the difficulties of the enormous Mill Creek project and stated that it was clear “to the most casual observer that St. Louis without her sewer system would be almost uninhabitable at certain periods of the year.” In fact, it was a serious cholera epidemic in 1866 that gave impetus to completion of the work.

When the sewer was finally finished all the way to Vandeventer Avenue in 1890, it was considered the marvel of its time. It measured twenty feet wide, fifteen feet high, and more than three miles long. Wider than a single railroad track tunnel, the sewer pipe was described as large enough “to allow the passage of a train of cars or a four-horse omnibus.”

The things we take for granted, right?

Information from Frances Hurd Stadler, St. Louis Day By Day

*Walt Whitman