1842-1925: Lafayette Square Mayors

Beginning with William Carr Lane, 48 elected mayors have served the city of St. Louis. The first 45 were men, and the most recent three have been women. Four of the mayors once called Lafayette Square home. They are: 

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1861: Judge Leo Rassieur

The advent of civil war was a perilous time to be a state in the middle U.S. There were slave states with deep economic interests in that “peculiar institution,” and free states where slavery wasn’t legal. However, four slave states did not secede from the US in 1861: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. These states walked a tricky line, and it required political and sometimes military maneuvering to prevent their secession.  

c/o National Park Service
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1917: The Life and Times of Mayor Henry Kiel

Casting a look back a hundred years in St Louis history, it requires little effort to find a subject with deep roots in Lafayette Square, whose tale is well worth retelling. Here’s the story of the 32nd mayor of St Louis, Henry W. Kiel. 

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