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A grand home in Lafayette Square. Photograph by Chris Naffziger
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The Becker-Anthes House. Photograph by Chris Naffziger
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A bricked up door in Benton Place, possibly an old servants' entrance. Photograph by Chris Naffziger
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The Nulson Mansion. Photograph by Chris Naffziger
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Truman Parkway. Photograph by Chris Naffziger
Lafayette Square is a St. Louis success story; street after street of elegant homes have been faithfully restored over the last 40 years, making the neighborhood one of the most desirable in the entire region. But Lafayette Square is an intensely fascinating neighborhood not just because of its grand mansions, but for the small things that hide here and there, often in the open. A recent walking tour of Lafayette Square reminded the author of some of its secrets, and even exposed a couple of new ones.
A reminder of the earliest settlement of Lafayette Square is the Becker-Anthes House, sitting in splendid isolation and ruin on the north side of the neighborhood, at 1111 Missouri Avenue. Originally believed for decades to be a remnant of French Colonial settlement out in the Common Fields of St. Louis southwest of downtown due to its rubble wall construction, recent research reveals that the house is in fact German-American in origin. As is common in the Carondelet neighborhood, stone houses were the first generation of houses in many areas of the city before the region’s bustling brick industry had fully developed. This house dates to around 1844, before the wealthy elite arrived in the 1860s.
When those wealthy businessmen arrived, seeking peace and quiet (and healthy air), they began to settle around the private places around the square. Perhaps the most famous is Benton Place, laid out by the great Julius Pitzman on the north of side of the park. While the houses lining the private street are beautiful in their own right, with expansive views through the trees of the Mill Creek Valley below, Benton Place is actually built on a giant terrace, held up by a massive retaining wall. Down below the wall, one can spot the remnants of a door, now filled with concrete blocks that perhaps once provided access for servants up to the exclusive street above. Every fortress needs a postern gate, it seems.
But fascinatingly, while Benton Place is so famous today, it was not the only private street on the park. The south side of the square actually possessed the largest, most opulent mansions, such as the Solomon Smith Mansion on what is now Mississippi Avenue south of Lafayette. Nearby, Preston Place still exists to the east, even if its opulent mansions are now gone. Nicholson Place, was the creation of Scotsman David Nicholson, who also owned a mansion on his private street. Sadly, the tornado, the interstate and neglect have erased the memory of these other grand residences.
The effects of that infamous 1896 tornado ripping rough the neighborhood, destroying and permanently altering Lafayette Square’s landscape, still exist if one knows where to look, however. For example, the owners of the house at 2011 Park Avenue just recently restored the third floor Mansard roof that had been destroyed in the cyclone’s wake. For the previous one hundred years, the third floor possessed simple red brick, repaired quickly and cheaply after the 1896 destruction. Now, in 2015, the house has returned to its former intact beauty.
Meanwhile, across the square at the corner of Missouri and Lafayette avenues, the McLaughlin Funeral Home tells a similar story of renovation and rebirth after the great cyclone. Formerly the home of German immigrant and industrial John Nulson, the house’s third floor was later renovated after the tornado by Philip and Emily Stock. After closer examination, what was once clearly an Italianate manse was “upgraded” to a mixture of German Renaissance and Baroque architecture for the new, dramatic roof. Contrary to popular belief, the residents of Lafayette hardly gave up after the catastrophe of 1896.
Finally, perhaps the strangest lacuna from Lafayette Square’s history dates to the Twentieth Century, and the story of what almost became reality. Missouri Route 755 was an interstate highway that would have stretched from the junction of I-44 and 55, north over Highway 40 and ending at the McKinley Bridge and I-70. The massive exits and entrances at Lafayette Avenue are remnants of what could have been. The construction of the interstate, which would have separated the neighborhood from the Darst-Webbe housing projects on the east, was controversial, and ultimately died. Today’s Truman Parkway is an attempt at providing the connectivity originally intended for 755. Lafayette Square continues to evolve.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via e-mail at naffziger@gmail.com.
