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place in Lafayette Square, where there is a remarkable amount of preservation with only one demolished house that has been replaced by…
Tag: Lafayette Square
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…
Lafayette Avenue Between Waverly and Simpson Places
The block of Lafayette Avenue heading west between Waverly and Simpson places is very well preserved, with five Second Empire houses, apparently built in two phases. The first house is the home of Dr. Hermann Luyties, the homeopathic physician, who is perhaps most famous today for his burial monument in Bellefontaine Cemetery. Well preserved and…
Waverly Place, Lafayette Square
Waverly Place, just off Lafayette Avenue, is one of the more interesting private streets in Lafayette Square, and in the city in general. It is also, after Vandeventer Place (which was annihilated), perhaps one of the most devastated by demolition, in this case by Interstate 44. Consequently, and perhaps a bit strangely, the southernmost portion…
Lafayette Park United Methodist Church
I knew there was something peculiar about the beautiful Lafayette Park Methodist Church on Lafayette Avenue, at the corner of Missouri Avenue. More about that below. The church is a real survivor; it just avoided being demolished for the construction of Interstate 44. It is a beautiful example of Romanesque Revival, as we’ve seen for…
German House, Lafayette Square
One of the more spectacular buildings in St. Louis, the German House was the center of Teutonic culture in St. Louis for generations. Sadly, it is sitting vacant right now. It’s a huge building, and has a theater out the back, as can be seen here. The parking lot right at the corner with South…
Police Station, Lafayette Park
Boehl and Koenig, Lafayette Park Police Station, Missouri History Museum, N33625 I’ve always known this beautiful little structure in the Second Empire style as the “police station,” but apparently it might be more properly known as the park house. It was built in two sections, in 1867, and 1870. In many ways, we should be…