Tums in the City

Posted by Deirdre Oakley, ST. LOUIS, MO – Having a manufacturing plant in the middle of a city seems like a thing of the past. But not in St. Louis where Tums – yes those famous antacid tablets -- have been manufactured for the past 83 years at 320 South Broadway right across the street from the Busch Stadium. According to a 2010 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, the five-story, city block-long plant is where 99.9 percent of Tums are produced. Its presence harkens to an inner city industrial past bringing a different kind of symbolic meaning to the timelessness of Tums and acid indigestion.

Deirdre Oakley is the Editor of Social Shutter and an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Georgia State University. She can be contacted at doakley1@gsu.edu.