Overview

About 1840, the growing city of St. Louis reached south into the area known as “Frenchtown”, a mix of common fields and farms owned by French immigrants.
With urbanization ever encroaching, various Frenchtown landowners hired surveyors to stake out streets, alleys and sellable lots, continuing the traditional urban grid. Upon her death in 1845, landowner Julia Cerre Soulard, willed two acres of land to the city on the condition that the land be used for a market. (This land was part of a larger land gift Julia’s father gave to her husband, surveyor Antoine Pierre Soulard, upon their marriage in 1795.)

From the 1830s to the 1920s, European immigrants poured into America in successive waves; St. Louis burgeoned. Immigrants constructed Soulard’s buildings on European-style narrow lots using Americanized architectural styles including Federal, Italianate and Second Empire, all wrought in ubiquitous red brick. The constantly shifting, diverse population shared the same streets, stores, schools and churches. Following WWII, suburban flight began, then accelerated. Those of means fled crowded old city neighborhoods; by 1970 Soulard was a bona fide slum.

At that nadir, social activists and urban pioneers began Soulard’s renaissance by organizing its designation as a Federal and Local Historic District. Rehabbers began saving buildings. By the 1980s, the neighborhood was stirring back to life. That same decade gave birth to two small street festivals: Mardi Gras in winter, Bastille Days in summer. Today, Soulard is again a thriving neighborhood, still anchored by its namesake farmer’s market, still rich in architectural charm, and still socially and economically diverse.

This historic overview provided by resident and local historian Jay Gibbs

RESIDENTS: see if you can find your house on this 1875 map.
The neighborhood can be found on plates 5, 7, 8, 27, 28 and 30.