As can be seen clearly labeled on the map above, the town of Bel-Nor began as a real estate development named the Country Club Addition of Normandy Park. In fact, the Normandie Golf Club, which sits to the south of the residential component of the town, lies within its city limits. The old Incarnate Word Convent, whose proposed demolition by UMSL I covered, also lies to the southeast within its boundaries. While the above map is 1909, other sources state that the platting took place in 1921. The land was owned by the Lucas family, of course. To the east is the former Marillac College, also on Lucas land.

While newspaper articles show that real development began in earnest in the mid-1920s, there are still many houses that were built later. That seems to be common in these North County suburb/subdivisions.

To the north was Bellerive Country Club across Natural Bridge Road, which would become the campus of UMSL.

Harry Elias Prettyman was the real estate developer of the addition.

And this was also a late design by famed streets planner Julius Pitzman.

And yes, there were racial covenants originally that were rendered unconstitutional by the famous St. Louis originated case of Shelley v. Kraemer.

Architecturally, the neighborhood is typical of the 1920s and 30s overall, even if there are later additions, with a lot of Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival houses, and then we see the appearance of Gingerbread style houses.

Something that is totally missed in the study of St. Louis population numbers, which typically focuses on the dramatic drop in the population of the city and the rapid growth of the county after World War II is this fact: between the 1920 and 1930 census, the population of St. Louis County grew from 100,737 to 211,593, an increase of 110%. This did not seem to come at the expense of the City of St. Louis, which grew from 772,897 to 821,960. Certainly the city was slowing, but it did not lose population. But things were happening out in the County.