1889: A Streetcar History of Lafayette Square

At the time of the 1904 Worlds Fair, St. Louis had one of the most extensive surface transportation networks in the country. Small wonder that a trolley became a stage for the 1944 film Meet Me In St. Louis.

Horses and cables

St. Louis has a rich history of streetcars. Initially, horses or mules pulled these ‘omnibuses.’ Over time and with the success of existing lines downtown, routes were extended and new lines created. This led to a transport infrastructure with several dozen privately owned companies. In turn, the demand for cars created another business. St. Louis claimed the largest car manufacturer in the world. The St. Louis Car Company produced streetcars, buses, automobiles, seaplanes and even dirigibles from 1887 through 1973, at 8000 Hall Street.

The first transformation in the streetcar lines was from horse to cable drawn coaches. The line that best served the Lafayette Square area was the Peoples Railway. It started as a horse car line in 1859, converting to cable in 1890. 

The cable car runs by mechanically gripping a moving cable, like beginning skiers use a rope tow. Operating and maintaining this cable was not a trivial endeavor. It required a single steel cable twice the length of the line it served. In 1886, the longest cable ever made to that time came by ship from New Jersey to St.Louis. It was 40,000 feet long, 1.75 inches in diameter, and weighed 50 tons. Wound on a spool 10’ in height and 8’ across, it was loaded onto a specially built wagon, like that pictured below. Pulling it required a team of three dozen horses.  

Turning that much weight in cable, let alone cars and riders, required brute force. Coal burning powerhouses with steam boilers created up to 1000 horsepower, and drove things more or less constantly. Conveyor belts fed fuel from giant hills of pea coal. Large amounts of collected rainwater went toward minimizing boiler scaling. Numerous curves in the rail pathway frayed the cables faster than a straight line would have. The Peoples Railway line number one had eight such turns, number two had ten. This kept Peoples from using the electrical energy supply that others around the country were rushing to adopt. The local line chose mule power over cable horsepower until 1890. 

The Peoples people move

In 1889, the Peoples Railway was operating a horse car line from Morgan Street along Fourth and out to Lafayette Park and Grand Avenue. Company directors, observing the successful introduction of cable on other lines, finally took the plunge, despite the daunting number of curves along the line.

As it happened, both of the Peoples lines required a new cable every six to eight months. If the cable frayed and snagged, a frequent occurrence, inspectors went over the entire length of the cable, and clipped out the offending strand. This led to numerous irritating service outages.  

The plant ran continuously for six years, until the great tornado of 1896 tore its roof off. Amazingly, the facility was operational the following day, running in the open air for a while. After repairs, it ran uninterrupted for another five years.

Two companies competing with the Peoples Railway ran lines on Geyer and Park Avenues. These new rivals cut into revenue. Peoples bankrupted in 1897, and sold at a sheriffs sale in early 1899. Its tracks and equipment were nearly worn out. The line converted, like everyone else already had, to more easily maintained overhead electric wires. The cable ran its last circuit on Valentines Day 1901. Peoples Railway holds the distinction of having been the last working cable car line in St. Louis. 

Good news and bad news for the Square

During its heyday, the streetcar brought crowds to Lafayette Park, as well as Schnaider’s and Staehlin’s beer gardens. Unfortunately, its success also served to undo Lafayette Square’s cachet as an upper-crust enclave. The streetcars ferried a democratic cross-section of people from all over the city. The infusion of all these visitors led existing residents to conclude that better privacy lay to the west. 

It’s ironic, as the presence of the streetcar originally served to convince people that a move to Lafayette Square wasn’t some form of rural exile. Below is an early (1865) ad for Lafayette Avenue real estate development facing the park. The streetcar on Mississippi at Lafayette assured buyers that this area was new, but accessible:

The Peoples Railway became part of a consolidation of all St. Louis streetcar lines by a national  holding company. The United Railways Company was run locally as the St. Louis Transit Company. They went bankrupt together in 1919, and the operation ran essentially broke until 1927, when it was taken over by the St.Louis Public Service Commission (precursor to Bi-State and Metro).

A failed model for mass transit

In 1919, St. Louis was the largest city in America with a completely surface-run public transportation system. Rapid transit schemes, like subways,  were considered and debated during the 1920s. Arguments over routing and who would benefit and who would be left out weighed against much progress toward a next generation of mass transit. Entire communities were formed along streetcar lines, and business districts sprang up at their junctions. This made route decisions for rail or subway hotly contested. There was also deep concern at City Hall over the growing migration from city to county. 

The end of the street rails coincided with the introduction of the first bus routes. Flexible and cost efficient buses steadily replaced streetcars over the next forty years. The last streetcar line was the Hodiamont, making its last run from downtown to Wellston in May 1966. 

Before any subway or commuter train plans could come to fruition, buses and cars began dictating development of the area. The focus of attention turned toward facilitating automotive traffic. Outside of Metrolink, we’re pretty much still there today. In fact, we almost lost a good chunk of Lafayette Square to state highway 755, aka North-South Distributor. But of course, that’s another story.  

Resources:

StL Today May 5 2017

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a great series of photos from the city’s streetcar era at https://www.stltoday.com/news/archives/looking-at-the-history-of-streetcars-in-st-louis/collection_d9792eb8-2525-5bd0-a9c4-333b2a5abf39.html#4

Mound City On The Mississippi; St Louis Planning and Urban Design Agency. 

St Louis Plans – The Ideal And Real; Edited by Mark Tranel; Missouri Historical Society; 2007. 

University of Texas Library; http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/street_railway/1901/

Saint Louis Cable Railways; Berl Katz; Electric Railway Historical Society; 1965. 

www.cable-car-guy.com/html/ccstlouis.html. 

Vintage St Louis By Paul Hohmann