When seen against the backdrop of humanity’s history (Homo sapiens have been around for 200,000 years, and we have been civilized for about 7,000 of them), a few centuries don’t really seem like much, just a blip in the timeline, barely noticeable. This year, St. Louis celebrates it's 260th birthday, having been founded in 1764 by Pierre Laclede and his stepson, René-Auguste Chouteau. In the grand scheme of things, 260 years is less than nothing, but as I stand underneath the Gateway Arch today, with the Mississippi River behind me and the cityscape spread out before me, I have to condense everything I see into that short timeframe. In other words, I must acknowledge that just 260 years, the span of two and half human lifetimes have passed since Laclede and Chouteau stood on this exact spot and surveyed around them nothing but rolling hills, trees, and few curious mounds. Fast forward to today, and now it’s all this—skyscrapers and domes and busy streets with electric cars zipping through them, and a colossal arch, one of the tallest structures on Earth, marking the spot where not too long ago there were just snakes chasing rodents between blades of grass trodden by indigenous peoples.

If I trick my imagination just right, I can, whilst standing here beneath the Arch, select a decade in the history of my city and, having done so, any building that’s newer than the date I just selected vanishes, leaving only the still existent buildings that date to the period. That probably sounds confusing. Allow me to explain it this way: suppose I am standing beneath the Gateway Arch and I say, “1850s!” Boom, any building that was erected after that decade vanishes in my imagination, and all that’s left are those few structures in St. Louis which are older than that. In this case, I’m left with the Old Cathedral, the Old Courthouse (both of which date to the 1830s), the Field House (built in 1845), and the Campbell House (built in 1851). Unless my historical appraisal of St. Louis history is way off, those are the only four buildings left standing in downtown.

If I say “1870s,” boom, several buildings reappear, but not too many. There is, in fact, a large number of structures in St. Louis that date to the 1870s, but most of them are further out. They wouldn’t be discernible from the Arch (some exceptions would be the old Post Office, which was finished in 1875, and a few buildings in Laclede’s Landing, the only section left of the old riverfront that wasn’t razed in the 1940s in preparation for the arrival of the Arch). If I say “1890s,” numerous buildings would reappear, including the Wainwright Building, City Hall, Union Station, the Bell Telephone Building, the Christ Church Cathedral, the Chemical Building, the Mississippi Valley Trust Company Building, the Security Building, and a host of others. If I say “1820s,” everything disappears, and I am left with just an empty slope of land careening toward the Mississippi.

I do this mind trick because it amuses me and it alleviates (for a little while, anyway) the intense, unrequited desire within me to travel back in time and experience my city as it would have been during these historic years. I can’t even walk downtown without buildings vanishing and reappearing in my head left and right. Sometimes the cars will vanish as well, and I am left with horses pulling wagons through dirt and cobblestone streets. Even the pedestrians around me are subject to modification. In my mind, their contemporary clothing is exchanged for woolen suits, top hats, corsets, silk parasols, and seductive Empire waists. Coal smoke and industrial soot pervade the air. The breeze smells faintly of tobacco and rope and leather and horse and manure. Steamboats line the levee, gaslights cut the dark, and I’m at home.