Soulard, St. Louis

Saint Louis
Soulard (soo-lard) is a historic French neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri. It is named after Antoine Soulard, who first began to develop the land. Soulard was a surveyor for the Spanish government and a refugee from the French Revolution in the 1790s.

During the 1840's immigrants from Germany and Bohemia began to settle in the area. Many of the immigrants were employed by the local breweries including Eberhard Anheuser's Bavarian Brewery Anheuser-Busch, Adam Lemp's Western Brewery, Arsenal Brewery, Anthony and Kuhn's, Excelsior, Green Tree and English breweries. The area has numerous caves which provided an ideal cool storage place for beer in the summer.

Other ethnic groups also settled in the area including Syrians, Hungarians, Croatians, Italians and Serbians. They lived in row houses on "half" houses built upon narrow lots and alleys. The two-story brick houses with steep pitched roofs were generally built right up to the sidewalk line in a effort by landowners to get the maximum out of the land.

The proximity to the central area of the city and the development of the railroad along the southern riverfront provided the ideal location for other industries including a cotton compressing company, wood works, lime kilns, flour mills, stoneware, tobacco, matches and ice houses.
Soulard has a fabulous open air farmers market at 730 Carrol Street. The market had humble beginnings in 1779 as a flat meadow that farmers could come to, to sell their locally raised fruit, vegetables, dairy, and livestock. In 1795, Antoine Soulard was given a 122 acre plot that included the market grounds by his father-in-law, Gabriel Cerre. But, when the United States made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Antoine's claim to the land was put in jeopardy. It wasn't until 1836, after a lengthy legal battle and Antoine's death, that his widow, Julia Soulard, acquired the deed to the land. In 1841, she officially set aside two city blocks to be used as a farmers market. Since 1841 the market has had two main buildings, one that was built in the late 1840's and was almost destroyed in the great tornado of 1896, and the second that replaced the first, in 1929. The 1929 building is modeled after a 1419 foundling hospital in Florence, Italy and was built in the Renaissance style. It currently houses the Grand Hall Shops on the first floor and gymnasium/theater on the second floor.

It is a picturesque, residential neighborhood filled with restaurants, bars, and pubs, among other businesses and is one of the oldest communities in the city. The neighborhood of Soulard hosts many events throughout the year, including Mardi Gras and Oktoberfest. It is also known as a neighborhood with a high density of bars, many of which play host to a variety of live music; especially the blues and jazz bands which the city is known for. The barrelhouse blues piano player James Crutchfield lived in the neighborhood from 1984 until his death in 2001, and performed in many of the nightclubs. The district is also host to regular pub crawls which are popular among locals and visitors alike. Coincidentally, the name soûlard itself is the French word for drunkard, though there are many other aspects to the neighborhood than just drinking.[2] Many of the homes there date back to the mid-to-late 19th century and have unique architecture. Soulard is a thriving, eclectic area, and is home to the largest Mardi Gras celebration in the Midwestern United States. It also has a very active community with its own newspaper, "The Soulard Renaissance", as well as organizations such as the Soulard Restoration Group and the Soulard Business Association helping to organize events and keep the neighborhood clean and safe. It is also home to the oldest Farmers' market[3] west of the Mississippi, filled with over 100 vendors that include, farmers,produce vendors, meat shops, spice shop, florist shops, amazing food, and it's world famous Bloody Mary's. Soulard Market is featured in the opening scene of Alan Schroeder's award-winning picture book "Ragtime Tumpie."

Soulard's Historic Churches
St. Vincent de Paul's Church is one of them. The church building, with its Romanesque architecture, was designed by Meriwether Lewis Clark and completed in 1843 on the southwest corner of Ninth Street and Park Avenue adjacent to Highway 55.) The Saints Peter and Paul Church, at Eighth Street and Allen Avenue, was built of limestone from Grafton, IL, in 1854 after the design of Franz George Hempler to minister to the German immigrants. The church, with its Norman Gothic style steeple of more than 214 feet in height, was built to seat 1,500 people. It suffered considerable damage in the tornado of 1896 but was rebuilt soon after. The church was renovated recently in response to the reforms of Vatican II and now features seating arrangement in semi-circles. The oil painted Stations of the Cross along the wall are imported from Beuron in Germany. Just south of the market is the Trinity Lutheran Church at Eighth and Soulard Streets. The original church, built in 1865, was destroyed by the 1896 tornado which roared through Soulard, destroying numerous homes, churches and businesses. The church was rebuilt by its German congregation into its present majestic structure.

Soulard is also home to the North American headquarters of Anheuser-Busch which houses the internationally-recognized St. Louis Brewery.

Mardi Gras A neon sign commemorating Soulard Mardi Gras 2006

Soulard hosts the St. Louis Mardi Gras festival, sometimes attracting hundreds of thousands of revelers.(http://www.mardigrasinc.com/) But the size of the crowds varies greatly from year to year, with the weather being the biggest factor in determining crowd size. It has been said St. Louis hosts the 2nd largest Mardi Gras party in the country.[5] The event is much like the New Orleans celebration in that it hosts several parades during the Mardi Gras season. On the second Sunday before Mardi Gras, there is a family-oriented "Krewe of Barkus" Beggin' Strips pet parade. Participants consist of anyone who dresses up their pet in costume, and walks their pet along the parade route. The parade is followed by the informal Wiener dog races. Then, on the Saturday before Fat Tuesday, the more adult-oriented flesh-for-beads parade occurs, although there have been various attempts to reserve a family section at one end of the route. People from all over come to storm the streets with beers and bead necklaces after the Saturday parade. The east/west streets of Soulard, Geyer, Allen and Russell, and others are crowded with people from 7th to 12th Street. Several VIP tents are available for admission by fee and usually a national recording artist performs for free on a main stage, usually on 7th St. The Fat Tuesday parade occurs in the evening, and in recent years has been moved just north of Soulard to downtown St. Louis. There is also a large Bastille Day celebration in July.