Old North St. Louis
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Old North St. Louis is a neighborhood just north and very slightly west of the downtown area of St. Louis, Missouri. Known for the landmark Crown Candy Kitchen, historic 19th century brick homes, and its award-winning community gardens, Old North St. Louis is home to a diverse and active community. The neighborhood now known as Old North St. Louis was established as the independent village of North St. Louis in 1816 and was annexed by the City of St. Louis in 1841. After many generations as a very densely populated neighborhood, Old North St. Louis experienced several decades of population losses and deterioration of the community's housing stock. Over the past several years, however, the community has started to experience a dramatic revitalization led by the community-based Old North St. Louis Restoration Group[2], a non-profit organization. ONSLRG pursues a mission of restoring and developing the physical and social dimensions of the Old North St. Louis neighborhood in a manner that respects the neighborhood's historic, cultural and urban character.
Three separate National Register Historic Districts are located within the boundaries of Old North St. Louis. In the portion of the neighborhood north of St. Louis Avenue, dozens of homes have been rehabbed by individuals and families over the past 25 years. Along North Market Street and one block to the south along Monroe Avenue, new homes are being built and large, formerly crumbling historic buildings are being rehabbed as affordable apartments. In this area, the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group and its development partner, the Regional Housing & Community Development Alliance (RHCDA)[3], have been coordinating a 30-acre redevelopment that will include more than 100 new, historically sensitive homes, alongside dozens of rehabilitated historic buildings[4].
The neighborhood is also home to several churches, such as Saints Cyril & Methodius Polish National Catholic Church, Fourth Baptist Church, Greater Leonard Missionary Baptist, True Gospel Temple, and Parrish Temple CME; and schools, including Ames Visual and Performing Arts magnet school, Webster Middle School, and Confluence Academy charter school; non-profit agencies such as the 100+ year old Grace Hill Settlement House[5], The Haven of Grace, the Urban Studio[6], Places for People, and Stepping Into the Light; and a variety of businesses, including the 130-year-old Marx Hardware, one of the oldest family-owned hardware stores in the U.S.
Among the neighborhood's landmark structures is the "Mullanphy Emigrant Home" building, constructed in 1867 to provide temporary shelter and supportive services to the thousands of immigrants who settled in St. Louis during the years following the Civil War. In the late 19th/early 20th centuries, part of Old North St. Louis was predominantly Irish in population; that section was known as "Kerry Patch", a name no longer applied to the area. For most of its history, the neighborhood has been home to a diverse mix of ethnicities and nationalities, including Polish, German, and Italian. Still home to descendants of these earlier immigrant groups, the majority of residents today are African American.
