Back in May of this year, I checked in on the massive new development transforming the long moribund northwest side of the Lafayette Square neighborhood. I think most people know the story: the wealthy area declined and industry moved in (though that’s not entirely true, as early sources show that dirty industry had always been…
Tag: Lafayette Square
Development in Northwest Lafayette Square
Update: Construction was continuing in December of 2022. Redevelopment is finally coming to the northwest corner of Lafayette Square, which was long overshadowed by the abandoned site of the former Praxair facility, which exploded years ago. It’s a mixture of a large apartment building along Chouteau Avenue, while there are houses being built along Hickory…
George Washington Statue, Lafayette Park
The George Washington Monument in Lafayette Park is the only public memorial to the president that I know of in the city. On this Presidents Day, I was also thinking that I don’t know of any memorials to Abraham Lincoln. Does anyone know of one? This statue has an interesting story, as it is a…
August Nasse Residence
August Nasse was a grocer and dry goods store owner, first with Bernard Goldschmidt, and then when the latter left the firm, he continued on with Conrad Fink. From the late 1860s, they were located on South Second, near many German businesses, before moving to North Fourth Street. Surviving the Great Fire, the business bounced…
Historic American Buildings Survey: 21 Benton Place
Photographed by Paul Piaget in May of 1960 and cataloged as HABS MO,96-SALU,54, these images shows what #21 Benton Place looked like right before the rehabbing and rebirth of Lafayette Square began. I looked at the west side of Benton Place earlier this week, which you can see here. The story of the house is…
Benton Place, East Side
We looked at the west side of Benton Place yesterday where we went through much of the history, so we’ll jump right in to the houses on the east side of the private place in Lafayette Square, where there is a remarkable amount of preservation with only one demolished house that has been replaced by…
Benton Place, West Side
Benton Place is named after Thomas Hart Benton, and is the first private street designed by Julius Pitzman, who designed the majority of the private streets in St. Louis. Originally, a fifty cent levee was charged per foot of frontage on the place from each resident. A light switch for the streetlights was in #25…
Albion Place
North of Whittemore Place is Albion Place, named after the archaic appellation for Britain. The street was nothing but open land and a sinkhole in 1876; even Park Avenue remained to be developed. An allee of trees may delineate the future alley, but I am not sure. Like its neighbor to the south, it was…
Whittemore Place
Along the west side of Lafayette Square, in between Missouri Avenue and South Jefferson are Whittemore and Albion places. We’ll look at Whittemore Place today. Nothing of the street had been developed by 1876, when Compton and Dry published Pictorial St. Louis, as can be seen above, even though Lafayette Avenue had already been built…
Simpson Place
Back in July, when I looked at Lafayette Avenue in between Waverly and Simpson places in the Lafayette Square neighborhood, I promised I would come back in the fall and look at the latter historic private street once the leaves had fallen off the trees. As mentioned before, the land for Simpson Place was originally…