Letter from the President

We welcome you to Lafayette Square. 

Now that you have found our website, we hope you will make time throughout the year for several in-person visits to our remarkable neighborhood. 

You will especially want to mark each annual calendar for our two popular house tours. Our Spring Home & Garden Tour is held on the Saturday and Sunday of the first weekend of June. In addition to touring a dozen homes and gardens, you will find an antique fair, Spring Market, trolley rides, and vintage baseball on both days. Our Holiday Parlor Tour is usually held the second Sunday in December and includes a Holiday Market and carolers. 

The proceeds of those tours help pay for: public improvements to the streets, alleys, and sidewalks in Lafayette Square; public safety; and especially the ongoing costs to enforce the historic code to ensure the appropriate restoration and preservation of our 19th century homes and commercial buildings as well as our 20th century and 21st century replica homes. 

In the middle of Lafayette Square is the gem of Lafayette Park. It is the oldest public park west of the Mississippi. The park is part of the St. Louis Commons that was set aside by the City of St. Louis in 1767. The park was laid out in 1836 and dedicated in 1851.

What you see now in your visits here is the result of the work done by hundreds of homeowners and business owners since the late 1960’s when the first intrepid restorations began buying up properties that were abandoned and derelict. Devasted by the 1896 tornado, St. Louis’s finest residential community fell into 70 years of decline. The stately homes were sliced up into boarding house rooms, were abandoned or were left in advanced states of disrepair. In 1969, those newly arrived homeowners formed the Lafayette Square Restoration Committee (LSRC) and set out to attract other home buyers and work with city, state, and federal government agencies to gain attention and recognition for the restoration community we have continued to build. 

A major step occurred on December 3, 1972 when the Lafayette Square Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, recognizing it as one of the finest and most intact Victorian residential neighborhoods in the United States.

Please walk our streets and visit our restaurants and shops. You will see our homes, our gardens, our churches, our charter school and, nearby, the Barr Branch of the St. Louis Public Library.

But if you look beyond the physical environment, you will find that for those of us who live here . . . it’s the culture that makes Lafayette Square the special place it has become. Yes, we are a neighborhood, but we are so much more: over the last 60 years we have built a nationally celebrated urban restoration community, one that has worked tirelessly to overcome the decline triggered by a single day of tornado damage that led to seven decades of neglect.

Over your many visits here you will begin to understand the many signs of our restoration community’s culture: the Lafayette Park Conservancy, the Arts Council of Lafayette Square, Spring Home & Garden Tour, Holiday Parlor Tour, concerts in the Park, Light up the Square, Pet Parade, Fall Festival, Cocktails on the Plaza, Friday Night Socials, Neighborhood Yard Sale, Monthly Neighborhood Meetings, the Block Captain network, Tour de Lafayette, New Residents Social, Ladies Libation League, Moms in the Square, the annual Community Directory, the “Square Roots” listing, National Night Out, and the “Lafayette Square Community” Facebook page.

It is the people who live here – now over 2,000 of us in the Lafayette Square Historic District –  who bring our culture to life. It is the residents and business owners who have created and continue to foster Lafayette Square’s identity over the years: an identity shaped by its history, its name, its traditions, its commitments, and its activities.

Vince Volpe

President

Lafayette Square Restoration Committee (LSRC)

The neighborhood association of Lafayette Square

Established 1969. Incorporated 1971.

(dba LSNA since 2022)