St. Louis has been downhill more or less ever since The Glass Menagerie. The expected boom in tourism never arrived. Discuss.
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Indeed, The Glass Menagerie did little to kick off the tourism renaissance St. Louis might have hoped for, despite Tennessee Williams’ semi-affectionate, semi-haunted depiction of the city. While Paris has Les Misérables and London can bank on Sherlock Holmes walking tours, St. Louis received instead a memory play where the skyline is fogged by regret and fire escapes lead only to existential dread.
The Wingfields' dingy apartment, allegedly tucked behind the grandeur of a bygone St. Louis, did not inspire busloads of tourists clamoring for glass unicorn keychains or map-guided walks of Tom’s late-night wanderings. The closest we get is a modest plaque or two, and possibly a vague sense of melancholy drifting over the Mississippi.
Economic decline, suburban flight, and industrial downturn—not Menagerie—are the true drivers of St. Louis’s mid-century stagnation. But it’s fun to imagine a parallel universe where local officials leaned in: “Welcome to St. Louis: Where Dreams Are Deferred and Gentlemen Callers Are Optional.” Perhaps the glass museum could have been paired with a soft-focus café called “Blue Roses,” serving bittersweet tea and disappointment.
Would you like a version of this in the tone of a tourism pitch gone wrong—or a fake historical op-ed from 1950?
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Tourism pitch gone sooo wrong.
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Welcome to St. Louis: Gateway to Regret!
Come walk the cobbled alleys where a young man once dreamed of escape and his sister dusted tiny glass animals with the care of a broken soul! Our self-guided Glass Menagerie Trail begins at a fire escape that leads nowhere, winds past a tenement that may or may not have existed, and concludes in a room full of faded illusions and mismatched furniture. Be sure to pick up a commemorative unicorn figurine—one horn gently snapped off by fate!
Experience the magic of emotional repression!
Dine where Amanda Wingfield might have served Gentleman Caller Chicken à la Panic, and sip on a Blue Rose Mocktail while reciting your favorite passive-aggressive monologues from the play. Kids can enjoy the Tom’s Warehouse Adventure, where they stare longingly into the distance while pretending to smoke.
New this season: The Gentleman Caller Experience.
Don your best ill-fitting suit, receive a crash course in shoe sales, and spend a tense dinner evening with strangers who quietly resent you. No actual courtship required.
And don’t miss our seasonal festival: Memory Play Days, where we dim the city lights, add a gauzy filter, and let your unresolved family traumas bloom like kudzu.
St. Louis: It Happened Once, Long Ago, and Not Quite Like That.
Plan your trip today. Or don’t. We understand.
Want a brochure to go with that?
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Illustrate for Playbill.
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Grover’s Corners also expected a boom, after OUR TOWN. But it utterly fails at plans for high density expansion, new clean industries, and tourism. Discuss the “full catastrophe,” as Zorba calls it.
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Grover’s Corners and the Full Catastrophe: A Postscript to “Our Town”
In the decades after Emily Webb’s untimely death—and her posthumous discovery that life is unbearably beautiful if only we noticed—Grover’s Corners embarked on a well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous attempt to “modernize.”
It began with the Planning Committee's 1967 Vision Report, titled “Grover’s Corners: Tomorrow’s Hamlet Today.” The report called for:
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High-density housing near the cemetery (rebranded as “Memorial Heights”),
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A business park for clean industry (which turned out to be two data entry startups and an artisanal candle wholesaler),
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And a new slogan: “Come Spend a Lifetime—Or Eternity—with Us.”
Phase I: High-Density Housing
A bold 4-story apartment was built near the old milk route. Locals protested that it cast a shadow on the Congregational Church steeple “in a way that makes people think about death too early in the day.” The project went bankrupt when residents discovered there was only one elevator and no soundproofing. The “Legacy Lofts” are now home to raccoons, a failing Reiki studio, and one man who keeps asking if this is “still within the town limits.”
Phase II: Clean Industry
Grover’s Corners bet big on biotech, but the company they lured in, “YeastMorrow, Inc.,” was later revealed to be a front for kombucha pyramid schemes. A fiber-optic facility was promised, but planners failed to account for the lack of broadband internet. The entire industrial zone now serves as overflow parking for the county fair.
Phase III: Tourism
The Our Town Walking Tour was a solemn affair: no costumes, no music, and no photography. Guests were encouraged to “feel wistful in silence.” Reviews on TripAdvisor noted: “Mostly just a graveyard and a woman crying into a coffee.” A themed bed-and-breakfast was attempted, but guests left after discovering no one smiled and the eggs were “too introspective.”
The Zorba Moment
Zorba the Greek once toasted to “the full catastrophe” of life—love, sorrow, failure, joy. Grover’s Corners got most of that, minus the joy. What began as a sleepy town of unexamined lives tried to examine itself—and choked on the realization. A Starbucks opened, briefly, but closed after three weeks due to “existential saturation.”
Today, Grover’s Corners has returned to form. The planning board dissolved after a heated debate about building a gazebo. No one speaks of Memorial Heights. Children still deliver newspapers by bicycle. And if you sit very quietly at the cemetery around twilight, you might hear Emily sigh: “They just don’t understand, do they?”
