Since
St. Louis’s beginning as a French village in 1764, the land which is now Lafayette Square had been a
common pasture for village
livestock and had never been privately owned. These commons became encampments for bands of criminals who would attack and rob area travelers. In 1835, now under American rule,
Mayor Darby gained permission from the
state legislature to begin selling the commons to drive the criminals out. When the city began to sell the common pasture, the
Board of Aldermen set aside about for community recreation. The square park was bordered by a street on each side, with the southern street called Lafayette in honor of
Revolutionary War General Marie-Joseph-Paul-Roch-Yves-Gilbert du Motier,
Marquis de La Fayette, who had visited Saint Louis a few years previous during his
famous 1824-25 tour of the United States. In
1837 a real estate panic forced many who had bought land surrounding the Square to cease their payments, thereby causing the land to revert to the City. In the early 1850s, after courts had
adjudicated the ownership of these properties, several prominent Saint Louisans bought most of the land bordering the southern end of the Park. These families built expensive homes along on Lafayette Avenue and secured
state legislation preventing “any
nuisance within a distance of 600 feet from the Park.” On November 12, 1851, the park was dedicated as “Lafayette Square” by City Ordinance 2741. By 1856,
real estate developers had begun to sell
lots on the western edge of the park—along Missouri Avenue—and by 1858 lots on the east side—Mississippi Avenue—were being sold. On Park Avenue—running along the north edge of the Square—the lots were developed by the 1870s. From the 1850s to the 1870s money from neighborhood residents and city coffers went toward improvements of the Square. These included “trees,
shrubbery,
graveling,
fencing[,]” and outdoor concerts. One newspaper called for more funds for improvement, writing that the Square “only needs to be properly improved to be one of the most attractive places in the United States.” During the
American Civil War, Lafayette Square was spared from the riots that plagued other city parks. With the end of the war,
martial law also ended, and lot purchasing picked up. The first
bandstand was constructed in 1867 coinciding with the opening of Benton Place—a private street (or, in the local terminology, "
private place") off Park Avenue. In 1868, an historic crowd of 25,000 to 40,000 gathered to witness the unveiling of a bronze statue of Senator
Thomas Hart Benton. The next year the park received one of the six casts of
Houdon’s life-size
marble sculpture of George Washington, who had fought alongside Lafayette. In the late 1860s, architect Francis Tunica’s design won a competition to build an iron fence—completed in 1869—around the Square. The newspaper the
DAILY DEMOCRAT, June 27, 1870 wrote: "In looking about the city and noting its improvements, we have been struck with the great progress attained in the vicinity of Lafayette Park. Within two years some of the finest residences in the city have been erected and the work is still going on. The beauty of the grounds, the elevation above the city, the character of the buildings, the beautiful shade trees, wide streets, and accessibility to the city by two lines of
horse cars, the restrictions (by
Statute) upon the erection of objectionable buildings or the carrying on of objectionable business, all combined should make this quarter the most desirable in the city for residence." in the Lafayette Square neighborhood in winter The 1870s was a time of flourishing for the Square marked by the continuing development of Benton Place on the north, and regular concerts on Thursdays and Sundays routinely attracting concertgoers numbering in the thousands and sometimes more than ten thousand. At one point, the park was tended to by thirteen
gardeners. The 1880s and early 1890s were marked by organic growth of the neighborhood and increased importance of local churches and schools. On May 27, 1896, Lafayette Square was largely
destroyed by a tornado. The tornado did millions of dollars' worth of damage, and killed many. The tornado uprooted nearly all of the trees in the Park as well as the trees on Benton Place, damaged the fence, destroyed the bandstand, destroyed the Union Club and the
Methodist church at Jefferson and Lafayette Avenues, crippled the
Presbyterian and Methodist churches, tore the roof off the
Unitarian church, and crippled or destroyed many homes on the Square. Although some residents gave up on the neighborhood and moved away, others began to rebuild and by 1904 the Square had improved enough “to earn special commendation from foreign
landscape architects who were visiting the
World’s Fair.” In 1923, the
Missouri Supreme Court declared the 1918 residential zoning ordinance unconstitutional (see City of St. Louis v. Evraiff, 256 S.W. 489 (Mo. 1923)) and businesses began to purchase lots in the area. What the tornado of 1896 had begun, and the encroachment of gas stations and grocery stores continued, the
Great Depression accelerated. ==Lafayette Park==