What you see today
Near the park gates on the western side of Lafayette Park lies a sunken area hemmed by river birch trees and lined with flagstones. It is lovely in the summer, shady and a bit cooler than the area around it. We call it the rock garden.
It has both history and a little mystery, all its own.
An unusual find in a city park
A young couple came to me at the archives several years ago with a remarkable find. The irrigation system near this grotto area required replacement, and a trencher had laid open some ground in what was once a pond. They noticed something protruding from the dirt, and pulled out a badly rusted gun.
I contacted the arms specialist from the Missouri History Museum, who came out to inspect the gun. She identified it as a Colt Police Positive .38 caliber revolver, manufactured around the early 1910s. Here is a more complete look (with a shorter 4″ barrel) for comparison:
The gun was loaded, and potentially unstable, so caution was advised. It led to a conversation about how it got there. We speculated that someone threw it into the pond decades ago to get rid of evidence. Hard to say for sure.
Starting up a park
Back in 1866, the Civil War ended and the troop encampment in the park had long disbanded. Attention turned to providing wealthy Lafayette Square homeowners with a neighborhood retreat worthy of their Sunday strolls. The board of Lafayette Park was led by superintendent Max Kern and Charles Gibson. They made plans to overhaul the mostly brushy ground and small trees into a proper Victorian era park. A magnificent iron fence first enclosed the area, and planning began.
Stephen Barlow, president of the Iron Mountain Railway, struck a generous deal with the city to provide rock and gravel for pathways and areas of interest within the park. He arranged for the building of a temporary rail spur to the park. Then came 202 carloads of gravel, and 67 carloads of drusy quartz, or ‘mineral blossom’.
Kern landscaped the 33 acre parkland into rolling fields, ponds, paths and woods. Gazebos, a caretaker’s cottage, a boathouse and police station followed in short order. Two statues by eminent sculptors took their place on pedestals. Over a hundred park benches lined the walkways.
A $0.15 entry fee for park visitors helped to defray the costs of park maintenance.
Ambitions have limits
By 1870, Gibson began lobbying for creation of an aquarium in the park. He wanted one along the lines of those he saw in his European travels to Hamburg and Berlin. In March, St. Louisans were invited to subscribe ” toward a first class marine aquarium.” The goal was to raise $2,000, which the park board agreed to match.
In promoting the project, the aquarium was envisioned as a convex roof supported by stone arches, with the area enclosed measuring 34′ x 60′. Eight to ten large tanks, about 5’x10′ in size, would line the sides. As conceived, one side would feature freshwater and the other saltwater species of fish.
The aquarium roof was to be covered with rock and mosses, and the whole structure deeply inset from its surroundings. The intent was to avoid interfering with contours of the new park landscape. It would result in a long, cool grotto, and also provide shelter from summer showers.
The St. Louis Republican announced a ground breaking on July 29, 1870.
Some plans went further over the top. Gibson proposed a fountain of sandstone, with carved birds spitting water toward the center. This was a drinking fountain, and would issue from under the ground, where a metal coil constantly surrounded by ice would provide cold water for visitors.
As it worked out, the budget would not nearly sustain the grandiose schemes for the site. A year later, the Republican of January 15, 1871 reported the entire project “postponed for some time in the future.” Behind the scenes, there was much disagreement about what would be necessary to maintain a saltwater environment, let alone uninterrupted summertime ice. The aquarium itself was now ‘on ice.’
Working plan B
The lowland area for the grotto incorporated into the new park landscape. Filled with water, it became the third of the park’s three ponds. Rockwork, flowers and a couple of fountains accented it as a distinct area within the park. Even without an aquarium, ‘the lagoon’ was a pleasant and popular attraction.
Most ideas for new development ended with the tornado of 1896, which ruined much of the park. A concerted effort to bring things back to life was undertaken by park supervisor Leonard Hunt in 1903. This was part of a citywide preparation for the 1904 World’s Fair. Hunt took a series of side by side photographs, which he stitched together to make early panoramic shots of the park. Here are two views of the grotto from that series.
What became of the rock garden
The city and the neighborhood went through many changes with the great tornado, two world wars and a great depression. By 1948, the city decided that it could no longer maintain the grotto pond. It drained and filled the lagoon with clay, then planted grass.
In the late 1990s, volunteers led by neighborhood botanist extraordinaire Ruth Kamphoefner worked to uncover and rework the old lagoon into a rock garden. This resulted in what you see today. It remains a feature of the park, verdant with seasonal flowers, a tribute to the ongoing work of park volunteers to keep it beautiful.
The Lafayette Park Conservancy (LPC) tends to the park today. The LPC is a 501c3 non-profit organization entrusted with keeping the spirit of the place intact, improving it where possible. It always welcomes donations, volunteers and new members. If you enjoy the park, please consider supporting it. https://www.lafayettepark.org
So, like a revolver in a lagoon that became a rock garden, there are always stories hidden within a place; The older the place, the more layers to the story. Hope you’ve enjoyed this one.
Resources
News stories from the St. Louis Republican of March 27, May 29, and July 29, 1870, and January 15, 1871.
More about Stephen Barlow in my earlier essay at https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1866-stephen-barlow-rocks-lafayette-park/
There is a comprehensive booklet dealing with the history of the Lafayette Park fence. It’s called The Fence Of Lafayette Park, and is available through the LPC.
Mike,
Your lead ins get more clever all the time-a loaded gun! A great article! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for your articles.
We greatly enjoy them.
Enjoyed this. I lived on Benton Pl for a couple of years in the ’60s to help Mary & John McClellan renovate the mansion they bought w/ friends from SLU to be a group home. Whatever happened w/ them and the group home?
Mike,
A gun related anecdote related to me by long ago residents of the neighborhood. Mary and Charlotte Parsons were granddaughters of Leo Rassieur at 2335 Whittemore and grew up there in the 1910s -20s.
During that period a man was shot in the park and their relations beseeched them to move away from this “bad neighborhood.”
The place had changed a lot between the 1890s of Rassieur and the 1920s of his grandchildren. It’s fascinating to me how many turned their backs to the Square following the great tornado of 1896. If it was in Montana, a played-out gold mining town for example, folks skedaddled to the next rumor of pay dirt, leaving their homes behind. Those form ghost towns today. Lafayette Square avoided a similar fate by virtue of some young and cockeyed optimists in the late 60s and 70s. The gold was there all along.