Old North St. Louis History Trail

The descriptions of historic sites listed below are designed as a self-guided walking tour of Old North St. Louis. Many of the images depict the site as it appeared in past years.

Descriptions and photographs of sites along the History trail were compiled by the Old North St. Louis History Committee.

6. Fourth Baptist Church

Fourth Baptist Church at Twelfth Street location. Source: A Year in the Harvest Field, 1867.

Conceived as a mission to expand the faith in growing areas of the city, Fourth Baptist was one of two churches approved by the congregation of Second Baptist, the St. Louis denominational anchor. By 1862, a classically styled building had been erected on North Twelfth Street (now Hadley Street) in the northwest corner of Jackson Place, one of the three original circular areas established by urban planners to facilitate the neighborhood's cultural growth. A relatively slow moving project, the church, which eventually possessed a Parthenon-like appearance with wooden stairs leading to its main assembly floor, was not used as a place of worship for Fourth Baptist until seven years after its groundbreaking. A dedication that eventually paid off in the form of swelling membership, the congregation of Fourth Baptist was also responsible for two highly successful Sunday-schools which collectively became known in the area as the ‘Benton Mission'. Such prodigious growth, however, prompted the church to consider a new home at its present location on Thirteenth Street. Seemingly cursed by its change in location, Fourth Baptist's membership began dwindling almost immediately after its move in 1887. Reaching the near-catastrophic low of sixty-one members by 1906, the fate of Fourth Baptist in the early twentieth century appeared to be quite ominous. Nevertheless, in a repeat of its earlier history, Fourth Baptist once again demonstrated its resilience by steadily increasing its membership by the 1920s. Resurgent but not affluent by any means, Fourth Baptist began building its present structure in 1924. Based on in part the previous church's architecture and preserving its original cornerstone, this new structure is of largely functional design while accented by such classical features as its embedded columns. Faced once again with financial setbacks, the church called on every skilled member to complete the structure including the Reverend Oliver Shank who had spent some of his youth in the mechanical trades. An example of North St. Louis' cooperative efforts, Fourth Baptist stands as an example of a historical structure that may well have not existed had it not been for the resolution of the community.

7. Maull's Spaghetti Factory

Source: Camille N. Dry, Pictoral St. Louis,1867.

One of the distinctive features nineteenth-century inner-city neighborhoods was their delicate mix of commercial and residential land uses. Established well in advance of local zoning codes and municipal districting, most early St. Louis industries occupied locations within walking distance of their workers. This meant factories were often built next to homes, churches, and shops. Woven into the Old North St. Louis residential fabric was the pasta company of Charles Maull, an immigrant from the contested Franco-German region of Alsace-Lorraine. Starting his business from his home in the early 1870s, Maull developed uniquely sought after pastas ranging from spaghetti to vermicelli. Meeting with success early on, this North St. Louis entrepreneur consolidated his financial gains by changing the company's name to ‘Faust Spaghetti' and purchasing the building we now see before us at Thirteenth Street and St. Louis Avenue in 1901. By the early teens, ‘Faust Spaghetti' was a pillar in the Old North St. Louis economic community and sold its product on a global scale. Additionally, Charles Maull was recognized as an esteemed member of the North St. Louis Businessmen's Association, a group dedicated to the commercial growth of the neighborhood. After passing away in 1917, Maull's company was inherited by his two sons who, after establishing a partnership between themselves and expanding the scope of the business' market, eventually sold its rights to the Kansas City Macaroni Importing Firm in 1929. Although emptied of pasta, this brick factory house did not fall into disuse. Instead, it remained embedded within the community by lending itself first to a local furniture company and then a graphics art firm.

8. Municipal Bath House No. 6

Courtesy of Rob Wilson.

In operation between 1937 and 1965, Municipal Bathhouse Number Six was the last public showering establishment to open in St. Louis and the last to close. Beginning in 1907, the city built a total of six bathhouses to improve hygienic conditions in working-class, immigrant neighborhoods where most households lacked indoor plumbing. These bathhouses were typically open sixteen hours a day and seven days a week to satisfy the high demand for bathing facilities. This particular bathhouse was built on the foundation of an 1870s firehouse. It features an art deco façade typical of New Deal era architecture. Inside the entrance of bathhouse number six, towels were rented and soap was purchased from behind a counter. The bathhouse provided eighteen marble-clad dressing stalls for women and sixteen for men in addition to the showers. During its first year in operation, bathhouse number six was the most extensively used in the city, providing northsiders with over 170,000 showers. As late as 1950, nearly three quarters of homes in the area were still without indoor plumbing or private baths, making this establishment a precious commodity in the neighborhood. Since the closure of the bathhouse, the building has been used as a woodworking shop and a storage facility.

9. Ames School/Old North St. Louis Butterfly Garden

Courtesy of Gloria Bratkowski.

In the 1980s, the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group began beautifying this highly visible site, long a brown vacant lot that the City routinely sprayed with weed killer. A rose bed at the corner, a line of hardy hibiscus, and irises around a large tree stump were the first improvements. A Whittaker Foundation grant for neighborhood greening in 1966 facilitated the lot's transformation into a butterfly garden with perennial flowerbeds, a sign, and a “Monument to the Monarch” sculpture by St. Louis artist Uriel Starbuck. The tree stump rotted but the sculpture was reworked with a new cedar base by Jim Powers of the Sophia Sachs Butterfly House in 1999. The fifth grade classes at Ames Visual and Performing Arts Elementary School helped design and plant the Butterfly Garden and continue to help care for it. Today, the Butterfly Garden has found its way into the unofficial curriculum of fifth grade classes, teaching children about metamorphosis and migration of the Monarch butterfly. A number of Monarchs tagged by Ames students have been recovered in the Mexico overwintering sites.

10. Native American Presence and Influence

The Big Mound, circa 1854. Courtesy of Missouri Historical Society.

According to an 1882, a newspaper article appearing in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat , prehistoric mounds once sat atop the land where William Chambers, Thomas Wright, and William Christy laid out their three circles along Eleventh Street. Although there is no solid proof to support this claim, there are many firsthand reports that verify the previous existence of Indian mounds in the general vicinity of Old North St. Louis. These earthen platforms were constructed sometime between 1000 and 1350 A.D., a time when the great city of Cahokia reached its height on the eastern shore of the Mississippi River. A cluster of twenty seven mounds on the western side of the river indicates that this area was once a suburb of Cahokia. For many years, St. Louis was known as “Mound City” due to the abundance of mounds on the city's north side.

Although the mound builders had long since departed when Europeans settled here in the eighteenth century, other Native Americans continued to populate the region. In general, relations between the new settlers and the indigenous inhabitants of the area were peaceable and shaped by both groups' interest in preserving trade. Indian chiefs regularly visited St. Louis to conduct diplomatic and business negotiations. Not all Native Americans in the region viewed the French colonists as allies, however. During the Revolutionary War, a little known battle occurred in this area in which between 750 and 1200 Indians, directed by the British, besieged the small town of St. Louis. Although the villagers, assisted by a militia contingent from Ste. Genevieve, defended the town successfully, the invaders killed between 20 and 30 colonists who were working the fields of the St. Louis Prairie just beyond the fortified village. An additional 71 men and women were taken captive in what was known as the Battle of San Carlos. The neighborhood of Old North St. Louis now occupies much of what was once the St. Louis Prairie.

Click Here to continue to Trail Sites #11-15.