Contact:

+1 314 923 2638 (work)
+1 314 631 1058 (home)

william.a.seymour@usps.gov (work)
stdbill.h@pobox.com (standards-related)
was@pobox.com (personal)

The venue:

This is a hotel and convention center in St. Louis Union Station.

The hotel has reserved a block of 15 rooms. They’ll be held until Tuesday, Oct. 28 (the second day of the meeting).

The room rate will be $129/night+tax (currently 16.929%). That includes neither Wi-Fi ($12.95/24 hours) nor breakfast. (Your host has arranged for Wi-Fi in the meeting room, of course, at no charge to attendees.)

You can make your reservations by phone: +1 855 271 3620. Say that you’ll be attending the WG14 meeting to get the room rate.

There will also be a Web page where you can make reservations. The Web page should be available around the middle of April. The URL will be announced when it is.

We will be meeting in Midway Suite III. Facing the hotel’s check-in desk, turn left, walk about half way across the footbridge to the sleeping rooms, and go down the steps on your right. At the bottom of the steps, the meeting room will be on your right. The room will be available each day, Monday through Thursday, from 08:30 to 17:30.

St. Louis will be observing “central daylight time,” UTC−5:00.

Other hotels nearby:

Drury Inn at Union Station
201 South 20th St.

Sheraton City Center
400 South 14th St.

Ten-minute walk west:

Marriott Courtyard
2340 Market St.

Pear Tree Inn
2211 Market St.
(If you stay at the Pear Tree and are walking, cross Market Street at 20^th: there’s not another crosswalk farther west until you get to what’s effectively 26^th street (Jefferson Ave.).)

Places to eat nearby:

In the hotel:

Station Grille (former Harvey House, now part of the Hilton)
assorted fast food places in the former trainshed

Outside the main building but still under the trainshed:

Landry’s Seafood
Hard Rock Cafe

Across 20^th Street:

Maggie O’Brien’s (Irish pub)

In the Drury Inn:

Lombardo’s Trattoria (Italian cuisine)

Getting there:

By plane:

Lambert St. Louis International Airport – IATA code STL

It’s not anybody’s hub anymore; but all the big airlines are there. Southwest, United and Delta seem to have the most service (YMMV). There are non-stop flights from many big cities in the “lower 48” and from Toronto via Air Canada Jazz.

You can take the MetroLink (light rail) Red Line directly from the airport to Union Station. It’s about a half-hour ride. The MetroLink station is on the east side of the Union Station parking lot at 18^th Street & Clark Avenue.

To get to Union Station, walk up the steps at the west end of the platform (the direction the train came from), then turn right and walk north under the trainshed. You’ll eventually bump into it. The hotel’s check-in desk is on the second floor of the former headhouse on the north side of the building.

To get to the Drury Inn, just walk west across the parking lot to 20^th Street.

If you’re staying at the Sheraton, take MetroLink one additional stop (Civic Center). The Sheraton is just across the street.

By train:

The Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center has seven daily Amtrak arrivals and departures. Day trips are possible from a handful of towns in the northern Midwest (principally Chicago); it’s generally an overnight trip from places in the Northeast down to D.C. and out to the western slope of the Rockies; you’d spend two nights on the train from the West Coast or the Southeast. Your host is a passenger train geek; contact him privately to find out more than you want to know. 8-)

Our current train station is about a ten-minute walk from Union Station. It’s next to MetroLink’s Civic Center station which is just across the street from the Sheraton.

By intercity bus:

The train station also serves the hound.

By car:

St. Louis is at the intersection of I-44, I-55, I-64 and I-70. Contact me privately for driving directions in town.

For folks attending both WG14 in St. Louis and WG21 the following week in Urbana,

it’s just a three-hour drive. As of this writing, Greyhound shows seven departures on Friday, Oct. 31, five on Saturday, Nov. 1, and six on Sunday, Nov 2. (Use “Champaign, IL” as the destination.)

Champaign’s Amtrak/Greyhound station is just under a mile (ca. 1.5km) from the Hampton Inn. It looks like there’s a city bus that will take you there.

I’d be happy to take three people with me in my car; but note that I plan to head out in the wee hours of the morning on Monday and return as soon as the meeting adjourns on Saturday. On the plus side, I’d be happy to drop you off at the St. Louis airport on the way back so that you can get a round-trip air fare; but note that we wouldn’t get there until the early evening.

A few things to do or see:

On the riverfront:

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (a.k.a., the Arch) – take any eastbound MetroLink to Laclede’s Landing (or if you want to walk about a mile, just head down Market Street).

The Old Courthouse – the various Dred Scott cases were heard here.

The Old Cathedral

Forest Park:

The site of the 1904 World’s Fair (and where forming version 1 of the IEC was proposed, BTW) – take any westbound MetroLink to the Forest Park station – you’ll be about one block north of the History Museum. (The Forest Park Shuttle runs around the park in the summertime; but as of this writing, I couldn’t verify that it’ll still be running through October this year.)

St. Louis Zoo
St. Louis Science Center
Missouri History Museum
St. Louis Art Museum

Music:

Chuck Berry is alive and well and still doing monthly sets at Blueberry Hill in the Loop. (Won’t know October schedule until September.)

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Jazz St. Louis

Scott Joplin House – a museum…no performances

If you’re here over the weekend, have a car, and want to take a day trip:

Cahokia Mounds, Collinsville, IL – remains of the Mississippian civilization.

Mark Twain’s childhood home, Hannibal, MO – about a two-hour drive on U.S. 61, a little longer on the more scenic state road 79.

Winston Churchill Museum, Fulton, MO – it was in a speech at Westminster College that Churchill coined the term, “iron curtain”.

Ste. Genevieve, MO – the first European settlement west of the Mississippi – about one hour south on I-55. (A handful of the old buildings are still standing, and some have guided tours.)