St. Louis Place Neighborhood Overview

Location

This near Northside neighborhood is bounded by Palm Street on the North, Cass Avenue on the South, North Florissant on the East, and North Jefferson on the West.

History

In 1850, John O’Fallon and others platted out St. Louis Place, a portion of the Union Addition. They left a strip of land for public use down the center of the subdivision, creating St. Louis Place Park. The park was enclosed and extensive improvements were made in the 1860s. In 1887, a City Ordinance extended the park southward through the old site of the city reservoir to Maiden Lane. A decade later, a statue of Friedrich Von Schiller, donated by brewer Charles Stifel, was erected in the park. (It was later removed and relocated to Memorial Plaza in 1975.) Most of the large Victorian style residences around the park were built in the 1880s. By late last century, St. Louis Place and the streets west of it, particularly St. Louis Avenue, had become fashionable areas of the city to live.

During the 1840s, German and Irish immigrants established communities in the area north of downtown. A group of Irish from County Kerry settled in the western portion of present-day Carr Square, an area that became known as "Kerry Patch." During the same period, a number of Germans settled north of Carr in what is now the southeastern corner of the St. Louis Place neighborhood. The area was referred to as "Little Paderhorn." The influence of these immigrant communities can still be seen today in some of the churches of the area. St. Liborious, on 19th Street, was built in 1889-90 and named for the patron saint of a section of Westphalia, Germany. St. Stanilaus Kostka Polish Church was the first of its kind in the city. The parish was organized in 1879 for Polish Catholics then residing in the Kerry Patch area.