German House Archives - Lafayette Square Archives

Flying In The Facade Of History

Desiring a more urban experience, we left the suburbs for Lafayette Square in 2013. The area appealed to us as a distinctive and historic slice of St. Louis. A lovely park, small commercial area and extensive architectural preservation made us want to be part of the neighborhood. It holds both city and national historic district status, and a strong commitment from its residents toward preserving its Victorian look and feel.

Compromising the past

People visiting Lafayette Square for the first time wander the neighborhood in a sort of reverie, wondering about the times, architects, materials and restoration involved in the century-old brick beauties there.

In conjunction with the City of St. Louis Plan Commission, architectural standards for both new construction and exterior remodeling took effect decades ago. Adherence to them has ensured that a uniquely preserved part of Gilded Age St. Louis has remained intact.

A large lot on the southern edge of the historic district sat idle for years. Its redevelopment began around 2019. Neighborhood meetings were arranged to promote the developer’s vision for a new apartment complex. It would have 120 or so units, and blend into the neighborhood, creating attractive infill and opportunity for residential growth.

As the plans developed, historic codes were challenged and overruled, in the interest of moving the project forward. 2200 Lasalle opened in 2023.

2200 LaSalle complex; forrentuniversity.com

What resulted is more an expression of blasé sameness than any compelling or complimentary architectural statement. Its ‘five over one’ design, with a wood frame superstructure atop a concrete podium, is designed to be more economical to construct than a traditional steel and concrete building.

Not that the economy of construction keeps rents affordable. It faces Chouteau Avenue, a fairly nondescript truck route south of downtown. A rooftop pool, underground garage, pet park and fitness center are features intended to attract young professionals. In May of 2025, Apartments.com cited a city-wide average of $1,300 per month rent for a two bedroom unit. A similar space on the second floor of Lafayette Square’s new apartments currently rents for over $2,200 per month. As of July 14, 2025, 2200 LaSalle was approximately 85% rented.

The ubiquity of a contemporary form

The five over one style, also known as Fast-Casual Architecture, took hold around 2010. It has since multiplied around St. Louis like Bradford pear trees. Examples now line Forest Park Avenue, and serve as apartments, hotels, retirement communities and even offices like St. Louis’s otherwise stylistically aware Cortex.

In a recent essay, Cory Lefkowitz opined on the juxtaposition of Fast-Casual Architecture on areas of former distinction:

it’s downright shameful that we deprive ourselves of living in interesting, meaningful, and wonderful places, given the thousands of precedents for inspiration… Instead, we’ve copied and pasted to our society from the most anodyne, the most boring, and the most bleh.

The look has become a contemporary architectural cliche, unbroken walls for streetscape, and a numbing redundancy that makes one city’s residential stock indistinguishable from that of another. Even Kirkwood in St. Louis County has embraced the look. It increases city residency, but diminishes the same charm that attracted residents in the first place.

The James; c/o Parker Pence of The Kirkwood Gadfly

It’s great to have housing, and we need more of it. But we hire large architectural firms to design and build blocks of dull rectilinear boxes, placing them in areas of projected hot demand. It lessens the wonder and attractiveness of nearby areas of genuine interest while adding only rentable space.

Summary

I’ve written a lot about the old German House building at the corner of Jefferson and Lafayette Avenues. Despite a strong architectural and historical significance and prime location, it sits unloved, on sale for a song. Because it’s not easy, and because it’s expensive to do, it resists rehab interest, while McUrbanism prospers. The heritage of the neighborhood would only be enhanced by bringing it back. It would be further credit to a fantastic neighborhood in its fifty year restoration. Perhaps we’re missing something in our priorities.

Resources

Why Everywhere Looks The Same; Cory Lefkowitz; https://marker.medium.com/why-everywhere-looks-the-same-248940f12c4

The Age Of Average; Alex Murrell; https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average?ref=thebrowser.com&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

St. Louis two bedroom apartment cost average from Apartments.com at https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/saint-louis-mo/

2200 Lasalle at Lafayette Square; marketing piece at https://www.2200lasalle.com

The German House in Lafayette Square is available for sale through CBRE at https://www.cbre.com/properties/properties-for-lease/flexindustrial/details/US-SMPL-85559/2345-lafayette-avenue-st-louis-mo-63104

The most recent historic codes for Lafayette Square (December, 2018) are available at https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/city-laws/upload/legislative//Ordinances/BOAPdf/70926.pdf

For more on the story of German House, you can check my archive to the right for September, 2020. Here’s the first in the series from this blog: https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1928-1942-german-house-the-earliest-years/

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.

1929: Launching The German House

Frank Absher of the St. Louis Media History Foundation recently sent me a color postcard from the German House of September 1929. It served as an invitation to the dedication of the huge building that still sits at 2345 Lafayette Avenue. This was its very beginning. KMOX, on the air for four years by then, was on hand to live cast the event.

1955: Bowling At The German House

The St. Louis House at 2345 Lafayette Avenue once boasted a dozen hard maple bowling lanes, and kept them busy for decades. As early as 1930, Obermeyer’s Alleys there made so much noise that German House manager A.G. Barrow decided not to renew their lease, and notified Obermeyer by turning off the lights during play. It was later resolved in the Circuit Court, and bowling resumed.

It was known in the 1950s as Mueller’s Lanes, and business was terrific amid the same postwar fellowship that caused fraternal organizations like the Eagles, Elks and Moose Lodges to thrive.

Bowling became so popular it was televised nationally, and its best practitioners were rewarded like pro baseball players today. In fact, St. Louisan Don Carter was the first athlete ever to sign a $1 million endorsement deal, from Ebonite bowling balls. And did Ebonite know how to promote! Curval grips, indeed…

Soon bowling became freaky styley, and everyone was doing it, from babes in beehives to Give ‘em Hell Harry, with his bowling shirt secured beneath coat, tie and vest. A group of Missouri boosters gifted the White House with two lanes in 1947. Eisenhower (from the opposite party and who famously preferred golf) later turned the space into a mimeograph room.

There’s still a bit of the old spirit around St. Louis today. On the Epiphany Of Our Lord parish web site, the tabs at the top read “Sacraments”, “Parish Life” and “Bowling Alley”. There are upstairs lanes in Maplewood at the Saratoga on Sutton, and downstairs lanes at the Magic Chef Mansion in Compton Heights and Moolah Temple on Lindell Boulevard.

With the rise of television followed by dual income families and finally, the internet and computer gaming, social groups began to fade away. Leagues folded and lanes were torn down for parking lots and condos.

In 2000, a popular book titled “Bowling Alone” was published to explain it all to us, and bowling became the emblem of our failure to connect. It reminded us that we are social animals, and have a tangible need for community. Unsure to what degree we’ve addressed that one, but plead guilty to keeping a neglected Ebonite ball on a shelf in my garage. I belonged to a Tuesday night league during the early 1980’s at Frontier Bowl in O’Fallon, Missouri. It was a hoot.

Incidentally, the Bowling Hall Of Fame and Museum that sat about where Ballpark Village is today, moved in 2009 to Arlington Texas.

It started here in a 50,000 square foot facility, but resides in a less ambitious 16,000 foot space near Globe Life Park, home of the Texas Rangers baseball team. It seems a little forlorn in the boonies between Dallas and Ft Worth, but the 50’s Budweiser team of Carter, Weber, Bluth, Patterson and Hennessey are there in life size cardboard to greet you. In the meantime, we can still claim proximity, at least, to the righteously underrated Horseshoe Pitcher’s Hall of Fame in Wentzville.

Thanks to research sources including:

Missouri Historical Society Andrew Wanko April 10 2017 66 Through St. Louis. https://mohistory.org/blog/66-through-st-louis-crestwood-bowl/

history.com; 2018 Post; This Day In History: April 25, 1947; https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/truman-inaugurates-white-house-bowling-alley

Bowling Alone: The Collapse And Revival Of American Community; Robert Putnam; Touchstone Books; 2001

1956: German House Hosts The St. Louis Symphony

Way back in 1902, Columbia and RCA Victor were locked in a struggle to gain recording dominance of opera music. This was the highest prestige market, and recorded works commanded a premium, as the artists were very expensive to sign, and reluctant to put their voices out there for the general masses.

Victor named its offerings Red Seal, and charged twice as much as for other recordings. The product was, perhaps predictably, seldom a best-seller, although Enrico Caruso is credited with history’s first million selling record, again, in 1902. Victor did establish, with Red Seal, a bar for production excellence that lasted for the next century.

1961: The German House Spiritualists

In this episode we resume piecing together the mystical story of a four story building at 2345 Lafayette Avenue. Here, we take a walk in faith along an assortment of entrepreneurial pathways to Heaven, when the instruments of salvation chose to land at the German House, then called the St. Louis House, and gathered up wool from the local flock.

1946: German House Welcomes The Teen Thirty Club

“At 10:30 o’clock on Saturday mornings, bedlam breaks out in the auditorium of St Louis House, 2345 Lafayette Avenue, Yells, screams, stamping of feet and whistles express the enthusiasm of more than a thousand teenagers for a radio program specially built for them.”

1939 To 1956: German House In The St. Louis House Years

In late August of 1939, Germany signed a mutual non-aggression pact with Russia. This pretty much ended any doubt about Hitler’s intentions toward Europe, or the counterbalancing effects of Communism to Fascism. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.

1928-1942: German House – The Earliest Years

One can’t help but notice the large four story building lying dormant at 2345 Lafayette Avenue. Its boarded up windows give rather a blank countenance to what is, in fact, a fascinating place with a long and somewhat unfortunate history. It was originally called Das Deutsche Haus, or the German House. When all things German fell from favor with the onset of World War II, it was renamed the St Louis House. Join me for a journey back to its beginning.