1896: End Of The Lafayette Park Hotel

Lafayette Park Hotel; 1886

Tying loose ends

 I’ve recently written about the old Lafayette Park Hotel. It dated back to about 1875, and rather mysteriously disappeared from view with the great tornado of 1896. Architectural historian Michael Boyd got me started when he asked if I could find anything related to its demolition. I searched high and low. Nope. 

Here’s the first mention I could find of the building on Mississippi Avenue, just south of Park Avenue. It’s from August 29, 1875, a time when building activity was really taking off east of Lafayette Park:

St. Louis Republic; August 29, 1875
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1858: Palmatary Maps The Square

Richard Compton and Camile Dry rightly deserve credit for their amazingly comprehensive 1875  pictorial map of St Louis. It is the standard by which others are judged, and certainly worth your study if new to the subject. I highly recommend the expandable version on the Library of Congress site: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4164sm.gpm00001/?st=gallery

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