1956: The First Lafayette Park Playground

An often overlooked memorial

A marker sits on the ground near the Kennett Street entrance to Lafayette Park. It looks like a headstone – concrete chipped by decades of reckless mowing; brass long ago gone green with age. “Creative Play Area” is inscribed on the plaque, and it’s a puzzle, as it overlooks a blank stretch of grass and a large shallow concrete dish. Yep, you’d have to be creative indeed to see it as a special play area. But it didn’t always look this way. The simple marker memorializes a playground once installed here, as well as the man behind it

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1866: Stephen Barlow Rocks Lafayette Park

Stephen D. Barlow was a pioneer; the first to develop land directly opposite Lafayette Park to the east. He was born in Vermont in 1816 and first came to St. Louis in 1839. 

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