Just north of the new apartment complex at 2200 LaSalle Street is a row of developing townhouses, built with an appreciation of the Lafayette Square historic district. Infill opportunities are scarce in this area, let alone having an entire city block free up. Here’s the story of that area, once known as Sherwood Forest.
This place was inaccessible for years. Enclosed by chain link fence topped with barbed wire, it never looked particularly friendly. Despite its forbidding nature, there was a slow evolution going on in there. It played out over fewer years than you might think.
According to the Sanborn insurance map of 1903, the Heil Packing Company once occupied this tract. It was a fully integrated pork processor, from hog pens to sausage factory. George Heil began this operation a year earlier, following on the success of his father Charles. The elder Heil began his meat packing operation at Chouteau and Vandeventer back in 1879. He sold to Independent Packing Company in 1902. His son began his endeavor in Lafayette Square that same year. By 1949, it was the largest independent pork producer in the nation, employing 275, and processing $8,000,000 worth of hogs each year.
As consolidation in the processing/packing industry proceeded, Heil found it more difficult to compete. In 1964, George Jr, the third generation owner, folded the company. Sold at auction, the site was bulldozed back to an empty lot.
This tract lay immediately north of an area owned by General Motors. It was used for parking and servicing a commercial truck fleet. GM’s intent was to extend its holdings in the area south, between MacKay Place and Missouri Avenue. It considered expanding as far as Park Avenue. This would have made Park effectively part of a truck route. Perhaps it seemed no big deal in the 1960s but this was completely out of phase with the eventual creation of a historic district centered on Lafayette Park.
In an effort to stem the advance of the truck lot, two residents, Alan Doede and Bill Odell bought up the lot we knew until last year as Sherwood Forest. It was fenced off and sat for decades. Luckily, this tract formed a barricade against inappropriate development while waiting for something more consistent with the neighborhood. Homeowners in the northwest quadrant of Lafayette Square were less than thrilled by the vacant property, but it did serve their long range interests.
When Praxair blew sky high in 2005, it widened the blank spaces fronting Chouteau and led to a lot of unoccupied concrete jungle in the area. Sherwood Forest held fast, with seeds falling into cracks in the asphalt, germinating into saplings and then maturing into full trees. They pulled up the asphalt as they grew, allowing further shoots and roots to do their work.
It was an object lesson in the determination and persistence of nature. Those trees became habitat for birds. The fence and greenery sheltered raccoons, possums and an occasional fox. Every so often someone would heave a brandy bottle or a ruined tire over the fence. It mostly remained undisturbed. Sherwood Forest became an unintended consequence of leaving an urban surface untended over time.
The lost in time theme of the area extended to its perimeter as well. Here’s a sticker on a Hickory Street Sherwood Forest light post from the Democratic primary aldermanic race of 1978.
There’s a story in the sticker, but that’s for another episode. Somewhere else it would have been removed long ago. Folks passing by may not have realized the Leisure stickers were even there.
The trees came down and development followed close behind.
So welcome the new Lafayette Reserve, a housing development that mostly meets historical codes. It serves as a springboard for further improvement in the northwest quadrant of Lafayette Square.
One last look back. I was always fond of this example of nature reclaiming what no one else had:
It’s been a long wait for the area residents, but, as many other trees will tell you, persistence pays.
Resources
For more on the 2005 Praxair explosion, see my earlier essay at https://lafayettesquare.org/2020-the-big-dig-in-lafayette-square/
An earlier essay dealt with early Sanborn maps of Lafayette Square.
Thanks to Bill Odell for assistance and proofreading.
For more information on the pending Lafayette Reserve development, visit their website at
