Forward, Into The Past
Near the park gates on the western side of Lafayette Park lies a sunken area hemmed by river birch trees and lined with flagstones. It is lovely in the summer, shady and a bit cooler than the area around it. We call it the rock garden.
It has both history and a little mystery, all its own.
Continue reading “1870: Lafayette Park Rock Garden”
Joseph Alfaro was a truck driver during the postwar years in St. Louis. He and his family sublet two rooms of an apartment from another family on Park Avenue. After three years of this arrangement, the landlord decided the house wasn’t safe with four adults and twelve children in four rooms. The Alfaros were asked to leave.
Alfaro quit his job as a truck driver to look full time for another place to live. Now they had neither a paying job nor a home of their own. They sold their furniture to ensure that their children had food, and hit the road. A homeless man is sad to see, but a homeless family of ten is a tragedy in the making. Joseph and his wife had eight children, ages fourteen years to four months, to consider.
Seeing no alternative, and too proud to beg, the family took to camping in Lafayette Park in mid-August, 1947. After their first night in the park, a Third District police officer found them lodging at the nearby Salvation Army, where they slept for a week.
With their allotted time gone, the Alfaros returned to Lafayette Park. The park superintendent offered to take up a collection to help feed them, but Joseph declined, saying he didn’t want money, just a place for his family.
You have to give kids credit. Over a five day park residency they made the best of the situation.
With old comforters their only camping equipment, they played around the park bandstand, in the shadow of Thomas Hart Benton, famous Missouri statesman. “They are all eaten up with mosquitoes, but they do enjoy themselves during the day, wading in the park pond,” said Mrs. Alfaro.
Both the St. Louis Star and Times and Post-Dispatch reported on the Alfaro’s situation. The coverage drew the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Ball, who took the family into their five room home in Maplewood.
Carl J. Reinecke, president of Reinecke Lumber Company also noticed the Alfaro’s plight. He visited the Hall’s home and offered the Alfaro family full access to the empty third floor of a company storeroom on Cass Avenue. The Alfaros were free to shelter in that space rent free until they could find a more permanent lodging.
Reinecke also gave the thirty-seven year old Joseph Alfaro work at his lumber company.
We’re living in difficult times; difficult mostly due to the way our own society works. We say we’re better than this, or this is not who we are, but empathy has become an emotion in shorter supply. I submit this to remind us all of the profound virtue in simply caring about those with less. Those most worthy of our admiration generally do the most while having the least to gain.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch; August 26 and August 27, 1947
St. Louis Star and Times; August 17 and August 29, 1947
A little known aspect of Lafayette Park history involves its role in expanding our national pastime. In the 1850’s, the mansion of Edward Bredell Sr. stood directly across from the park on Lafayette Avenue. Edward Sr. made his fortune in mining and dry goods wholesaling. He later established the Missouri Glass Company as an enterprise for his son to manage. Edward Jr. attended Brown University, where he likely was introduced to New York rules baseball. Games involving balls and bats in various forms have been described as early as the 1820s, but the New York game was well defined and quickly gained popularity in that area
Continue reading “1860: Lafayette Square on First “In the Gilded Age of the 1890s city parks often hewed to the same starchy formality as was expected of a polite society. Lafayette Park was a strolling park, with pedestrians expected to keep to the graveled pathways. Those who chose to stray onto lawns and flower beds could find themselves confined to the police substation (today’s park house) for an hour, to ponder their errant ways.
This stuffy policy informs a poem which appeared in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat 130 years ago, in February of 1894. Reprinted for your enjoyment here:
Continue reading “1894: Keep Off The Grass”Today’s feature is a recently discovered photo collection – about 45 images of Lafayette Park. They date from sometime after the great tornado of 1896. The trees were slowly reestablishing themselves by 1903. Although the twister took out virtually every old growth tree, some of the smaller ones bent enough to survive the storm. The loss of canopy provided an unintended benefit for today’s observers, however. We get a more unobstructed view of the streets and homes surrounding the park. Close inspection has its rewards.
The 1888 book Commercial And Architectural St. Louis was both city travelogue and advertisement for its many commercial enterprises. It contains some intriguing drawings of Lafayette Park from the late 1880s. Consider that these images pre-date the Great Cyclone of 1896. That cataclysm wrecked much of the neighborhood and everything in the park but the statues and Park House.
Continue reading “1888: Views Of Lafayette Park”I recently took a look at an enlarged view of Lafayette Park, and came away pretty amazed at what the map recognized.
Continue reading “2020: A Walk In Lafayette Park”
Sometimes the research for a historical essay seems linear enough, but then pinballs off at unanticipated angles. I set about to simply find some background on Edward Krausnick, the little-remembered first superintendent of Lafayette Park. What followed is a reminder that real lives seldom follow a linear narrative.
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.”
Continue reading “1867: The Lafayette Park House”
An officially sanctioned “black hip session” seemed unlikely in Lafayette Park during the summer of 1968, but it happened. There have been books written about the single year significance of 1968 in America. It kicked off with the Tet offensive, a coordinated nationwide assault that made the 85,000 US forces in Vietnam look shockingly inadequate for their task.
Continue reading “1968: A Black Hip Session In Lafayette Park”
