Everyone in St. Louis knows Soulard is an architecturally and cultural rich neighborhood, full of institutions such as Soulard Market. Mardi Gras cements the neighborhood’s prominence in the region’s collective consciousness. While Soulard is everything that the popular imagination says it is, the historic neighborhood is even more fascinating and full of surprises than one might think.
Soulard, as many people know, is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, being first laid out in the early 19th Century just south of what was the original core of St. Louis. Many of the houses date from before the Civil War, and the neighborhood was heavily built up by the time the Compton & Dry View of St. Louis was published in 1876. Originally part of a 122-acre plot of land owned by Antoine Soulard (and then his widow Julia), the market was officially established in 1841. The current market from 1929 is the second on the site, designed by Albert Osburg and based off of one of the most famous buildings from the Early Renaissance, the Foundling Hospital by the great Filippo Brunelleschi. The first building challenged the already established French Market that was located further up Broadway. And yes: soûlard really does mean “drunkard” in French.
But south of the famous market, the rest of Soulard unfolds with the stories of a dense, walkable and impressively intact residential neighborhood. Unlike many of the remaining neighborhoods of St. Louis further west of Jefferson, Soulard’s street wall, or the line where houses sit on their lots, is right up against the sidewalk. It creates a communal space on the street. Likewise, Soulard still possesses a wealth of alley houses, which are now illegal in many American cities. Usually built for lower-income residents on the back part of the lot (remember, the backyards are larger since the front houses are right on the sidewalk), these houses arose from the need for more rental units and income. Usually the first to fall into dilapidation, alley houses were demolished or never built in the more spacious “suburban” neighborhoods west of Jefferson Avenue. Many of course contained latrines outside of the buildings. Nowadays, surviving alley houses provide the perfect location for a home studio or office, or even as they were originally intended, additional rental space.
Perhaps another aspect that has been forgotten now that only Anheuser-Busch remains, the whole neighborhood once served at least a half dozen breweries. For the most part, very few of these former breweries, victims of the success of Anheuser-Busch or Lemp, survived past Prohibition. In fact, several of the breweries’ former locations sit on A-B property. Just a few of these are the Green Tree Brewery on Sidney Street, the Excelsior Brewery on Seventh Street (now a parking lot at A-B), as well as the Anthony and Kuhn’s Brewery on Sidney Street. Most likely the breweries on Sidney took advantage of the rumored cave system that runs along that street, while the Excelsior very well might have used caverns related to the ones under the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. It is fascinating to imagine that after the Civil War, the A-B brewery was not really much larger than some of its neighbors in Soulard. That changed in only a couple of decades, of course.
Finally, the broad artery of Twelfth Street, which was later relieved of heavy traffic when the street was diverted off on to Gravois further north, showcases the economic diversity of Soulard. While regular brewery workers lived in the humble but proud rowhouses further east, the managers, doctors and other businessmen that dominated Soulard life lived up the hill on Twelfth. On the west side, large, spacious lots provided for the building of free-standing mansions, many of which survive to this day. But this author finds the east side of the street just as elegant, with its carefully embellished houses that sit in rows, contrasting with the open lawns on the other side. And standing amidst these rows of houses is the Franz Arzt House, from 1876. In many ways, this stunning Second Empire house could easily be the most beautiful house in Soulard.
So next time you’re visiting Soulard Market, take a stroll down the streets of the neighborhood, and rediscover this icon of St. Louis history.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via e-mail at [email protected].
