Built St. Louis
East St. Louis

Tour Sections

Geographically, the developed portion of East St. Louis is shaped like a comet -- a blob-shaped head near the Mississippi River ("Downtown"), with three streamers of neighborhoods trailing off behind it to the east ("North / East / South Neighborhoods").

Introduction 1) Downtown - Collinsville Avenue - Broadview Hotel - Majestic Theater - Murphy Building - Spivey Building - Ainad Temple - Elks Club / Public Library 2) Riverfront

3) North Neighborhoods - Jones Park - Elementis Pigment Plant - Outer North Neighborhoods - Washington Park 4) East Neighborhoods - Central East Neighborhoods - Outer East Neighborhoods - Shop City - Abandoned Grain Elevator 5) South Neighborhoods - Central West Neighborhoods - Central South Neighborhoods - Sauget - Outer South Neighborhoods - Central Industrial Corridor

6) Points North - Fairmont City - National City - Brooklyn - Venice - Madison - Granite City - The industrial levee

The city as a whole is thoroughly sliced and diced by infrastructure: rail lines and train yards, bridges, Interstate highways, factory superblocks, unbuildable marshlands, and streets pointlessly made one-way. Tiny, isolated pocket neighborhoods abound. Driving through the city can be an exercise in frustration, as streets dead-end, peter out into dirt trails, loop back on themselves, or run in the wrong direction for unexpectedly long distances, failing to make the connections one hoped for.

Adding to the confusion, the city's grid is skewed and runs northwest-southeast. Identifiable landmarks are few and far between, and often they are too distant to be much help.