Touring St. Louis in the 1950s

STUDENT DIRECTIONS

You have just been hired as a tour guide for Dr. Van Bakergem’s Magical Time Travel Touring Company. Your first assignment involves taking a group of Japanese and Brazilian optometrists on a time travel journey to St. Louis during the 1950s. You have one hour to take them around the downtown area and point out several important sites (probably no more than five or six, depending on where they are located.) They are especially interested in the phenomenon of urban renewal and its relationship to other developments, both local and national. They will be very disappointed if the tour does not enlighten them about the broader context of urban renewal.

Your immediate task is to prepare a short brochure of the tour that will introduce them to the main themes of the tour, list the sites to be visited, and describe the importance of each site. You may also provide your guests with three primary source documents that you think would be helpful for illuminating the themes you wish to emphasize. You should include a brief description of these documents and their importance. The brochure should be between two and three pages of double-spaced text. Remember, your guests will be very disappointed if the tour does not provide insight into the larger historical context of urban renewal. Also, they will expect the sequence of tour stops to conform to some logical progression. Finally, since you will be operating the time travel machine, you can choose the specific date on which the tour will take place. The date of the tour should be included in the brochure.