There was never really a “Main Street” in colonial and pre-World War II Florissant, but after the onset of suburbanization, St. Francois Street became a de facto shopping strip.
The commercial buildings that were built look like your standard small town storefronts.
Below is the Otto Ripple House. It is a bit of an interesting house in that it is your typical five bay wide house but it looks to be truly one and a half stories, not one or two.
I cringe at the form of many of the post-automobile businesses. To get to these parking spots, cars have to drive across the sidewalks, basically leaving pedestrians with no dedicated space for themselves free of automobiles.
Just one block south, on St. Catherine Street, is the old depot where the streetcar that connected the town to St. Louis stopped.
It has been preserved in a park; I like how they keep the population of the town up-to-date on the front of the building. The elevation does not change, obviously.
This building is a bit of a mystery; I do not know its location. Was it on St. Francois Street, hence its name? Or was it located elsewhere?
My first apartment was second floor 3room in your featured photo. Thanks for sharing this Chris!!!
Wow, no kidding? You wouldn’t happen to know where the last building is, would you?
The previous commenter might chime in with a more definitive answer, but I believe that last building was on St. Francois Street between St. Jacques and Jefferson, where the St. Francois Building is today. There is only one mention online that I could find about St. Francois Cleaners, and that mention referenced that the building was on the Sacred Heart side of the St. Francois Street.