The Cabanne House is named after Jean Pierre Cabanne, one of the landowners of what became Forest Park.

It was designed in 1879 by John McNamara in the Second Empire style as the residence of the park’s superintendent, and functioned as such for years.

It is an amazing surviving example of the exuberant variation of the Second Empire which is now largely lost in St. Louis.

While there are still plenty of Second Empire houses, and particularly row houses, left in the city, very few were designed as free standing country homes, and even fewer are as complex in design as the Cabanne House.