Historic Photos Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Lafayette Square Archives

1867: The Lafayette Park House

1874; Missouri Historical Society; photo by Robert Benecke

Crowd management in the park

This victorian home in miniature was built as a single story police station in 1867, around the same time as the fence surrounding Lafayette Park. It was a field office of sorts for the main Soulard Police Station. Police stationed here dealt with the large crowds routinely drawn to events like Thursday concerts. These were held at the bandstand, the ruins of which remain to the northwest of the Park House. In 1873, the Daily Globe reported: “It has been rare that a fine day has called out less than five thousand people to listen to the music.” Historian John Albury Bryan noted,“crowds on Sundays exceeded those of Thursdays.” He quoted the St. Louis Republican from May 23 1877. “Visitors to Lafayette Park on Sunday, between 1pm and 6:45 pm totaled 13,749.”

1901: CF Blanke and the Aerial Globe

C.F. Blanke Building; c/o Paul Sableman; 2015

Ever noticed the 5 story, vaguely moorish looking building pictured above?

1919: The Most Distinguished Woman in Lafayette Square

In his book about Lafayette Square, John Albury Bryan wrote that Phillip North Moore and his wife Eva Perry Moore were the most distinguished couple to have ever lived there.

1878: The Power Couple of the Square

For starters, you won’t find the house and I can’t find a photo. How then to write about the Pulsifers? Probing a more obscure part of Lafayette Square history, it’s instructive in what it touches. Let me draw you a word picture.

1889: A Streetcar History of Lafayette Square

In the summer of 2016 a road crew working on Lafayette Avenue in front of Lafayette Park exposed a pair of iron streetcar rails. On request, they set them aside, and they lay near Lafayette and Missouri for several weeks. Unable to reach any consensus for display, the neighborhood may have lost track of them, but it set me to wondering…

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.

1930: The Dogleg Corner of Lafayette Square

18th Street at Chouteau has a rich history of causing traffic flow issues. Due to a quirk in the layout, there was nearly always a sharp jog (or dogleg) to the west as one headed south, then 18th Street continued as Second Carondolet. It was this way as far back as 1875, as shown in the Compton and Dry pictorial map:

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

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.

1931: Strange Interlude on Park Avenue

July 10, 1931. The Great Depression was in its second full year. Nationwide unemployment stood at 16% (it would rise to 25% by the end of 1932), and year over year growth constricted by 8.5%. Even the news seemed slow that Friday. The afternoon’s Post-Dispatch noted Secretary of State Stimpson, concluding disarmament talks with Italian dictator Mussolini. The German Reichsbank, reeling from its efforts to pay postwar debts and struggling to remain solvent, sought an international loan of $400,000,000 from the Bank of England, the Bank of France, the Federal Reserve Bank and World Bank.

1868: Sculptor, Philanthropist And Mad Doctor

The Lafayette Park Conservancy is a group dedicated to the preservation and improvement of the heart of Lafayette Square. In 2007, it set about restoring its 22 foot tall monument to Thomas Hart Benton. 2008 marked the 100th anniversary of the death of its creator, Harriet Hosmer, and the 140th year of the statue in the park. Therefore, a program was devised to coincide those anniversaries with the unveiling of a thoroughly refreshed Benton in the park.