Having just looked at all those “county” institutions, I want to briefly look at this interesting cluster of very old wood frame houses that sit on the streets to the north of the former Lunatic Asylum. As mentioned before, in 1875, Pictorial St. Louis shows few if any houses around.

But clearly right after that, based off the form of these houses, development sprang up. Are they housing for the hospital workers?

That is a good question, as simultaneously, clay mines and works opened up in the following decades. Judging by the fact that large tracts of houses were clearly built at the same time, some must be clay industries worker housing, I suspect.

But others must have been built to house the increased needs of the employees of the rapidly growing institutions on the south side of Arsenal. They could not have all lived in employees’ quarters inside the hospitals.

Nonetheless, they are interesting relics of a previous period in St. Louis history.