Soulard, St. Louis

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Neighborhood	Soulard
Soulard

Location in St. Louis, Missouri
Area
- Total	0.60 sq mi (1.6 km²)
Population (2000)^[1]
- Total	3,187
- Density	5,333.8/sq mi (2,059.4/km²)
Website: http://stlouis.missouri.org/soulard/

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, and was a surveyor for the Spanish government and a refugee from the French Revolution in the 1790s.

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. There are bars on nearly every corner of the neighborhood, and ironically the name soûlard itself is the French word for drunkard.^[2] Though it should be noted that many residential blocks in St. Louis featured a corner store, bar, or soda fountain on every corner. Many of the homes there date back to the mid to late 1800s. It is home to the Lemp Mansion, which has been called by Life Magazine as one of the most haunted places in America. Soulard is a thriving, eclectic area, and is home to the largest Mardi Gras celebration in the American Midwest. It is also home to a large popular Farmers' market, the historic Jesus Church,^{[citation needed]} and the world headquarters of Anheuser-Busch.

1 Mardi Gras
2 Art Galleries in Soulard
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Mardi Gras

A brewer sponsored neon sign commemorating Soulard Mardi Gras 2006.

Soulard hosts the St. Louis Mardi Gras festival, sometimes attracting hundreds of thousands of revelers. But the size of the crowds varies greatly from year to year, with the weather being the biggest factor in determining crowd size. It's been said St.Louis hosts the 2nd largest Mardi Gras party in the country.^[3] The event is much like the New Orleans celebration in that it hosts several parades during the Mardi Gras season. On the second Saturday before Mardi Gras, there is a family-oriented "Krewe of Barkus" 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 streets of Soulard, Geyer, Allen, Russell, Ann, Shenandoah, and others are crowded with people from 7th to 12th Street. The Fat Tuesday parade occurs in the evening, and in recent years has been moved just north of Soulard to downtown St. Louis.