Culture
With its French past and numerous Catholic immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, St. Louis is a major center of Roman Catholicism in the United States. St. Louis also boasts the largest Ethical Culture Society in the United States. Several places of worship in the city also are noteworthy, such as the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, home of the world's largest mosaic installation.
Other locally notable churches include the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France, the oldest Roman Catholic cathedral west of the Mississippi River and the oldest church in St. Louis, the St. Louis Abbey, whose distinctive architectural style garnered multiple awards at the time of its completion in 1962, and St. Francis de Sales Oratory, a neo-Gothic church completed in 1908 and the second largest church in the city.
Many cultural attractions are located in the Greater St. Louis area, such as the Gateway Arch and the Delmar Loop. The city is also defined by music and the performing arts, especially its association with blues, jazz, and ragtime. St. Louis is home to the St. Louis Symphony, the second-oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, and until 2010, it was also home to KFUO-FM, one of the oldest classical music FM radio stations west of the Mississippi River.
Unique city and regional cuisine includes toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, Provel cheese, the slinger, the Gerber sandwich, the St. Paul sandwich, and St. Louis style pizza.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their ocellated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)