Please join me on July 24 at 6:30 at the Central Library in downtown St. Louis for a lecture about my new book. Please register here.
Today, Des Peres City Hall sits in a verdant park, but originally its building and the surrounding grounds was the Lutheran Children’s or Orphans’ Home. The last of what were multiple buildings on the site, this Colonial Revival structure was built in 1936.
The history of the Children’s Home goes back far in the history of the St. Louis region, starting in 1868, when the first orphanage, a log cabin opened on the property due to the efforts of prominent Lutheran pastor Johann Friedrich Bünger. We’ve looked at his church, Trinity Lutheran in Soulard, and his grave, at the long-suffering Western Lutheran Cemetery in The Greater Ville.
In 1893, a large Romanesque Revival building was constructed, and that was the orphanage replaced by the current structure after a fire in 1935. Note below the obvious central chapel protruding from the back directly opposite the front door. The home closed in 1966.
This barn surely functioned as part of the agricultural aspects of the children’s home. Lutheran Family Services actually developed out of this institution.
Des Peres purchased the grounds in 1973.
Here are a couple of scenes from the orphans’ home.
