Real estate listings (and a plaque on the wall) claim that this house at 7843 Gannon in U City was built in 1832. County historian Esley Hamilton has his doubts, though.
Here's the Sutter-Meyer house at 6826 Chamberlain Court, which is generally considered to be the oldest house in U City, having been built circa 1873.
This actually isn’t a very straightforward question. There are a number of buildings in St. Louis County from the early 19th century, but let’s focus on St. Louis City for the sake of discussion.
A small outbuilding in Lafayette Square was constructed around 1780, on the property of Joseph Motard. The building is located at 1231 Mackay Place. This is possibly the only surviving building in the city from the colonial period.
A front wall from the Old Rock House was reconstructed in the arch museum. It was built in 1818 and dismantled for the Arch grounds.
The oldest confirmed age brick structure is the Bissell mansion, built in 1823. It was recently put up for sale.
The Emmanuel DeHodiamont house was built as a stone structure in 1829, and had a Carpenter Gothic Revival addition put on around 1875.
The St. Louis Arsenal opened in 1830, and several of the original buildings still stand. The buildings were constructed by the firm of LaVeille and Morton.
The same firm also constructed the Old Cathedral between 1831 and 1834. This is the only piece of land in Missouri that was never bought or sold. This is for sure the oldest church in the city.
A small cottage in the Hyde Park neighborhood was built around the 1830s, but the exact date is unknown.
The old courthouse was built in 1828, but the original section was demolished in 1850, so the oldest remaining portion is from 1839. LaVeile and Morton designed the original building, but the 1839 part was designed by Henry Singleton. The dome was completed in 1862, replacing the 1839 dome.
Carondelet has a number of buildings dating to 1840 or around that time. A house on Ohio Street near Meramec Street was constructed around 1841, in present day Dutchtown. The Lyle House in Carondelet Park was constructed in 1842. There are other frame buildings and a few brick and stone ones that likely date from the same period.
The Grace Church in old north St. Louis was originally built around 1841, but has had several additions.
Beginning in 1838, the current sections of Soulard not cleared for urban renewal were subdivided by Julia C. Soulard. The earliest buildings I have verified were built in 1842. This includes one row house at 1713-19 S. 8th Street, the building that houses Protagonist Cafe, and 1827 S. 9th Street. I’ve done a lot of research in Soulard, and several other buildings had been constructed in the area prior to 1847.
St. Mary of Victories Church was completed in 1843, and St. Vincent DePaul was completed in 1844. The Sisters of St. Joseph Convent is also from 1843.
911 North Tucker was built sometime in the 1840s, as listed by the city.
A Gothic Revival townhouse in Laclede’s Landing was built in 1844 or 1845, next to the Witte Hardware Store Building.
The Eugene Field House and Broadway Oyster Bar buildings were also both constructed in 1845.
The LaSalle Park neighborhood has at least four buildings from the 1840s in addition to the church. The Missouri Candle and Wax Company buildings, a building at 11th and Lafayette, and two buildings on Menard at Marion Street.
The Châtillon DeMenil mansion was built in 1848, and had an addition made in 1863.
Two buildings on Geyer Ave in Soulard were built for Newton L. Payne, and were constructed at some point between 1837 and 1851.
The building at 1225 Macksy Place appears on the 1850 census. However, the city claims it was built by 1838 on their website for the history of the city.
Henry Shaw had his city and country homes both constructed in 1849. Both are still standing in the gardens.
This should cover most of the extant buildings in the city from before 1850. There are numerous buildings from the 1850s that still stand, and almost 100 of them are in Soulard. The Campbell House Museum might be in the top 50 oldest buildings, but it definitely isn’t in the top 25.
Thanks for posting here, Nathan (love your posts on other media).
I understand that the pieces of the Old Rock House were "mishandled" after it was dismantled, so how sure are we that the current reconstruction is even authentic?
This actually isn’t a very straightforward question. There are a number of buildings in St. Louis County from the early 19th century, but let’s focus on St. Louis City for the sake of discussion.
Carondelet has a number of buildings dating to 1840 or around that time. A house on Ohio Street near Meramec Street was constructed around 1841, in present day Dutchtown. The Lyle House in Carondelet Park was constructed in 1842. There are other frame buildings and a few brick and stone ones that likely date from the same period.
St. Louis Fire Capt. Garon Mosby said the house, considered one of the oldest surviving frame buildings in the city, sustained "moderate to extensive" damage.
What a bummer, I suspect squatters, but we'll see. This is a known hot spot for drug addicts. Inaction on historic buildings like this and Lemp are just a constant frustration of living here.
It's heartbreaking and exhausting. Even the fancy metal board-up systems don't seem to be a match for the squatters/arsonists, as we saw in the RWX downtown. Can we fence in vacant landmark properties and house the surliest stray dogs there, in some kind of a symbiotic arrangement? JK, but maybe not...
Does this happen other places? Squatters got into a house inside the city park and set a fire in it? Are squatters just going to burn down all of Carondelet/Patch? I am just absolutely confused how we allow this. We lose buildings to these squatter fires at a ridiculous rate it seems, especially in this same area.
I live in Holly Hills on the north side of the Park. A neighborhood group (Friend of Carondelet Park) has been working for the last 10ish years to "save" the Lyle House. They raised a decent amount of money to that end, but unfortunately could never cement a concrete plan with buy-in from all the relevant parties (City Parks dept., park advisory board, special business district, neighborhood associations, etc.).
Seemingly nobody had the final say on what could/should be done, so instead homeless vagrants decided for us. Very sad, and very St. Louis.
Very sad and very expected. You would think they could have used the money to secure the building until a better plan was in place to restore it. But I guess not.
They did take some steps to secure the the two buildings. Electric has been disconnected, water shut off, and entry points sealed. As someone noted upthread, its hard to really keep out people determined to get in. That said, it appears from the photos the fire may have started in the gangway between the two buildings.
There were two main, competing proposals: create a public museum for the area/park, or rehab to spec and sell or lease to a commercial venture, e.g., coffee shop or even a B&B. Either would have been a heavy lift. The former seemed more feasible, but there was a concern about funding operations and maintenance. Parking was an obstacle for either scenario, and both were cost-prohibitive.
I was just on Maple Place in West End and it was hard to see the DeHodiamont house through all the brush and trees but I think it came through the storm okay, give or take. I thought I was walking outside the tornado zone but there's a stripe of damage in West End and both Maple Place and West Cabanne saw some uprooted trees and some roof damage with other blocks south seeing some isolated damage. I didn't make it further north than Maple so I don't know if it continued but everyone was out working in their yard on Maple Place so I decided I'd be back another day rather than take photos.
