St. Louis Walk of Fame

ABOUT THE WALK OF FAME

Introduction From the Walk of Fame Book

Embedded in the sidewalk along Delmar Boulevard in the Loop area of University City, Missouri, is a succession of large brass stars. Every star is accompanied in the pavement by a bronze plaque and each set commemorates the life and achievements of an extraordinary man or woman who is associated with St. Louis. Ulysses S. Grant is there, as is T.S. Eliot, Josephine Baker, Scott Joplin, Susan Blow, Stan Musial, Joseph Pulitzer, Chuck Berry, Tennessee Williams, Charles A. Lindbergh, Betty Grable and many others, 50 [now 116] in all.

Joe Edwards, proprietor of the Rock ‘n Roll restaurant and pub called Blueberry Hill, conceived the St. Louis Walk of Fame as a way not only of commemorating St. Louis’ many contributions to art and literature, music and science, athletics and entertainment, journalism and politics, but also as a way of adding some further enrichment to one of the country’s most unusual stretches of urban thoroughfare. Thus since 1989 the Walk of Fame has paid simultaneous tribute to men and women of distinction, to a great metropolitan community and to the street where small business people earn their livings in their own ways.

For Delmar Boulevard is not so much America as it is, but America as it will be. Walk up and down it to inspect the stars and plaques, to read the names and the brief commentaries and to let memory and imagination do their work, and you see black people and brown, yellow people and white people, old people, children, men and women of ordinary aspect and youth dressed in the costumes and styles of eras that may never be -- all these colors and ages and appearances, together.

Here along Delmar are all the things human beings have to have: old books, new books, hardware, good beer, arts and crafts, fresh oysters and fresh ground coffee and fresh bread, fruits and vegetables that you can pick up and shake and tap, newspapers, fresh flowers, movies, music recorded and music played live, hummus and sushi and barbecue, the delicate and colorful works of ethnic cultures and baseball cards.

America as we knew it and America as it remakes itself in the image of the world -- all right here, all right now, static and in motion, up and down and all around the procession of stars, each one celebrating a St. Louisan who did something few people or none have ever done better. Miles Davis. Cool Papa Bell. William Burroughs. Masters and Johnson. Charles M. Russell and Eugene Field and more to come. The accomplishments of these men and women in the pavement go beyond their city or their fields of endeavor; for they also have given form and meaning to the larger America that you see along Delmar Boulevard as you walk among the stars.

(William F. Woo was editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Part of this introduction is adapted from his keynote speech at the Walk of Fame induction ceremony in 1991.)