Kirkwood is an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, located in
St. Louis CountySt. Louis County is a county located in the U.S. state of Missouri. According to the south side 2000 census, the population was 1,016,315, making the county the most populous in the state of Missouri. Its county seat is Clayton. St. Louis County is part of the sprawling St. Louis Metro Area...
,
MissouriMissouri is a state in the Midwest region of the United States bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Missouri is the 18th most populous state with a 2008 estimated population of 5,911,605. It comprises 114 counties and one independent city....
. As of 2006, the city population was 26,936. The
city was founded in 1853 and is named after
James Pugh KirkwoodJames Pugh Kirkwood was a 19th century American civil engineer.He was born in Scotland in 1807. He worked for the Long Island Rail Road, and gained notice in 1848 for his construction of the Starrucca Viaduct near Lanesboro, Pennsylvania, considered to be the most expensive railroad bridge at the...
, builder of the
Pacific RailroadThe Pacific Railroad was a railroad based in the U.S. state of Missouri. It was a predecessor of both the Missouri Pacific Railroad and St. Louis-San Francisco Railway.The Pacific was chartered by Missouri in 1849 to extend "from St...
through that town. It was the first planned suburb located west of the
Mississippi RiverThe Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
.
The Kirkwood Pioneers and
Webster GrovesWebster Groves is an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, located in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. The population was 23,230 at the 2000 census. The city is named after New England politician Daniel Webster...
Statesmen alternate as hosts of the Turkey Day game, the longest-running
footballAmerican football, known in the United States and Canada simply as football, and often as Gridiron or Tackle football outside North America, is a competitive team sport known for combining strategy with physical play. The objective of the game is to score points by advancing the ball into the...
high school rivalry west of the
MississippiThe Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
.
Kirkwood is an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, located in
St. Louis CountySt. Louis County is a county located in the U.S. state of Missouri. According to the south side 2000 census, the population was 1,016,315, making the county the most populous in the state of Missouri. Its county seat is Clayton. St. Louis County is part of the sprawling St. Louis Metro Area...
,
MissouriMissouri is a state in the Midwest region of the United States bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Missouri is the 18th most populous state with a 2008 estimated population of 5,911,605. It comprises 114 counties and one independent city....
. As of 2006, the city population was 26,936. The
city was founded in 1853 and is named after
James Pugh KirkwoodJames Pugh Kirkwood was a 19th century American civil engineer.He was born in Scotland in 1807. He worked for the Long Island Rail Road, and gained notice in 1848 for his construction of the Starrucca Viaduct near Lanesboro, Pennsylvania, considered to be the most expensive railroad bridge at the...
, builder of the
Pacific RailroadThe Pacific Railroad was a railroad based in the U.S. state of Missouri. It was a predecessor of both the Missouri Pacific Railroad and St. Louis-San Francisco Railway.The Pacific was chartered by Missouri in 1849 to extend "from St...
through that town. It was the first planned suburb located west of the
Mississippi RiverThe Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
.
The Kirkwood Pioneers and
Webster GrovesWebster Groves is an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis, located in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. The population was 23,230 at the 2000 census. The city is named after New England politician Daniel Webster...
Statesmen alternate as hosts of the Turkey Day game, the longest-running
footballAmerican football, known in the United States and Canada simply as football, and often as Gridiron or Tackle football outside North America, is a competitive team sport known for combining strategy with physical play. The objective of the game is to score points by advancing the ball into the...
high school rivalry west of the
MississippiThe Mississippi River is the second longest river in the United States, with a length of from its source in Lake Itasca in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico....
. Held annually,
Thanksgiving DayThanksgiving Day, or Thanksgiving, presently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, has been an annual tradition in the United States since 1863. It did not become a federal holiday until 1941...
2007 marked the 100th anniversary of the first match.
History
Plans for a new community close to St. Louis began following the
St. Louis Fire (1849)The St. Louis Fire of 1849 was a devastating fire that occurred on May 17, 1849 and destroyed a significant part of St. Louis, Missouri and many of the steamboats using the Mississippi River and Missouri River. This was the first fire in United States history in which it is known that a firefighter...
and the 1849
choleraCholera, sometimes known as Asiatic or epidemic cholera, is an infectious gastroenteritis caused by enterotoxin-producing strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Transmission to humans occurs through eating food or drinking water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae from other cholera patients...
outbreak that had killed a tenth of the residents of
downtown St. LouisDowntown St. Louis is the central business district of St. Louis, Missouri, the hub of tourism and entertainment and the anchor of the St. Louis Metropolitan area. The downtown is bounded by Interstate 64 to the south, Jefferson Ave. to the west, the river front to the east, and Cole St. to the north...
. Kirkwood was the first suburban municipality built outside of the Saint Louis City boundaries.
Hiram W. Leffingwell and Richard Smith Elliott bought land from downtown in 1850 at about the same time
James P. KirkwoodJames Pugh Kirkwood was a 19th century American civil engineer.He was born in Scotland in 1807. He worked for the Long Island Rail Road, and gained notice in 1848 for his construction of the Starrucca Viaduct near Lanesboro, Pennsylvania, considered to be the most expensive railroad bridge at the...
was laying out a route for the
Pacific RailroadThe Pacific Railroad was a railroad based in the U.S. state of Missouri. It was a predecessor of both the Missouri Pacific Railroad and St. Louis-San Francisco Railway.The Pacific was chartered by Missouri in 1849 to extend "from St...
. When the railroad reached the community in 1853 they sold lots for the Kirkwood Association. Other Leffingwell developments were to include the construction of Grand Avenue and the establishment of
Forest Park (St. Louis)Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri, opened in 1876 and the former site of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, is one of the large urban landscape parks created during the later 19th century, following the example of Central Park in New York City...
.
The original town plat including
quarter sectionA quarter section, often shortened to quarter, is an area of one-fourth of a square mile, or 160 acres . It was a common size of a tract in homesteading in the United States and Canada.For details on its use, see...
blocks and families could be a block estate of . Deed restrictions prohibited industrial development.
The train station of
Richardsonian RomanesqueRichardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after architect Henry Hobson Richardson, whose masterpiece is Trinity Church, Boston...
style was built in 1893. It is now on the
National Register of Historic PlacesThe National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
and is a symbol of the town. It is the only stop on
AmtrakThe National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak , is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971 to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a blend of the words "America" and "track". It is headquartered at Union Station...
in the Missouri metropolitan area outside of St. Louis.
In 1895 the Meramec Highlands resort on the bluffs above the
Meramec RiverThe Meramec River is one of the longest free-flowing waterways in Missouri—it wanders some 220 miles through six Missouri Ozark Highland counties: Dent, Phelps, Crawford, Franklin, Jefferson, and St. Louis, before it empties into the Mississippi River at Arnold, Missouri and Oakville, Missouri....
.
Among the five buildings on the National Register of Historic Places is a
Frank Lloyd WrightFrank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 projects, which resulted in more than 500 completed works....
house in Ebsworth Park Foundation.
However, Kirkwood has been the site of two sensational crimes in less than 13 months throughout 2007 and 2008.
On January 12, 2007,
Michael J. DevlinMichael John Devlin is a convicted American child molester currently serving three life sentences. He is known for his confessed kidnapping of two boys, Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby.-Early life:...
was arrested for abducting 13-year-old William "Ben" Ownby. Police investigating the case discovered Shawn Hornbeck living at his house. Hornbeck was 11 when he was missing in 2002 and the
Shawn Hornbeck FoundationThe Shawn Hornbeck Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization based in Richwoods, Missouri, devoted to the search for and rescue of abducted children. It runs the Shawn Hornbeck Search and Rescue Team....
had been set up to find him.
On February 7, 2008 a gunman
opened fire inside a Kirkwood city council sessionThe Kirkwood City Council shooting occurred on February 7, 2008, in Kirkwood, Missouri, United States; a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri in St. Louis County. A gunman went on a shooting rampage at a public meeting in the city hall, leaving six people dead and two others injured...
, killing five persons: Council Member Connie Karr, Council Member Michael H. T. Lynch, Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, and two police officers, Sgt. William Biggs and Officer Tom Ballman. Two others, Kirkwood mayor
Mike SwobodaMike Swoboda was the former mayor of Kirkwood, Missouri, first elected to the position in 2000 for a term lasting until 2004, and re-elected in 2004 for a term lasting until 2008....
and Suburban Journals reporter Todd Smith, were wounded. The gunman, Kirkwood resident Charles "Cookie" L. Thornton, was shot and killed by police. Swoboda died, succumbing to cancer as well as complications from the February shootings the same year on September 6, 2008.
Geography
Kirkwood is located at (38.580652, -90.414289).
According to the
United States Census BureauThe United States Census Bureau is the government agency that is responsible for the United States Census. It also gathers other national demographic and economic data. As part of the United States Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau serves as the leading source of quality data about...
, the city has a total area of 9.3 square miles (24.0 km²), of which, 9.2 square miles (23.9 km²) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.1 km²) of it (0.54%) is water.
Demographics
As of the
censusA "census" is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population.In other words every 10 years...next one would be in 2010 The term is used mostly in connection with...
of 2000, there were 27,324 people, 11,763 households, and 7,257 families residing in the city. The
population densityPopulation density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and particularly to humans. It is a key term used in geography....
was 2,961.3 people per square mile (1,143.0/km²). There were 12,306 housing units at an average density of 1,333.7/sq mi (514.8/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 90.76% White, 7.07% African American, 0.11% Native American, 0.81% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.27% from
other racesRace and ethnicity in the United States Census, as defined by the United States Census Bureau and the Federal Office of Management and Budget , are self-identification data items in which residents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify, and indicate whether or not they are...
, and 0.94% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.09% of the population.
There are 11,763.5 households out of which 28.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.5% were
married couplesMarriage is a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged by a variety of ways, depending on the culture or demographic...
living together, 9.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 38.3% were non-families. 33.5% of all households were made up of individuals and 14.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.29 and the average family size was 2.98.
In the city the population was spread out with 23.4% under the age of 18, 5.9% from 18 to 24, 27.6% from 25 to 44, 24.9% from 45 to 64, and 18.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 41 years. For every 100 females there were 84.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 79.4 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $70,261, and the median income for a family was $89,219. Males had a median income of $51,515 versus $36,235 for females. The
per capita incomePer capita income means how much each individual receives, in monetary terms, of the yearly income generated in the country. This is what each citizen is to receive if the yearly national income is divided equally among everyone. Per capita income is usually reported in units of currency per year...
for the city was $32,012. About 2.8% of families and 4.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 6.1% of those under age 18 and 3.6% of those age 65 or over.
External links