“Timeless Elegance” Right on Lafayette Square in St. Louis: 2118 Lafayette
This 4-bedroom single family home at 2118 Lafayette in Lafayette Square in St. Louis came on the market in February 2019.
Built in 1870 on a large 35×165 lot, it has a fully fenced in yard and a 2-car garage.
The homes directly on the Square are larger than those built on the surrounding streets. This is where the rich lived.
This home is 3 stories with 4542 square feet.
It has many of its vintage features including 6 fireplaces, extensive carved crown molding (look at the pictures of the ceiling molding in that parlor. I’ve never seen anything like it) and pocket doors.
The dining room has wood wainscot paneling and a tray ceiling.
The kitchen has been “updated” with maple cabinets, stone counter tops and stainless steel appliances.
There’s a screened in patio off the kitchen.
There’s also a family room on the second floor.
Two bedrooms are on the second floor and two are on the third floor.
There’s a second floor laundry.
The backyard boasts a deck and brick courtyard.
Originally listed at $649,000 in February 2019, it has been reduced $50,000 and is now listed $1,000 under its 2013 purchase price.
Is this too much house for today’s buyers?
Irene Hasegawa at Keller Williams Realty STL has the listing. See the pictures (including cool aerial shots where you can see the park and how far downtown and the Arch are) and a floor plan here.
2118 Lafayette: 4 bedrooms, 4.5 baths, 4542 square feet
- Sold in December 2013 for $600,000 (per Redfin)
- Originally listed in February 2019 for $649,000
- Reduced several times
- Currently listed at $599,000
- Taxes of $9971
- Central Air
- 6 fireplaces
- 2 car garage
- Bedroom #1: 12×15 (second floor)
- Bedroom #2: 15×18 (second floor)
- Bedroom #3: 17×14 (third floor)
- Bedroom #4: 13×15 (third floor)
great house, but look at those aerial shots, other than those few homes and the park its a pretty fugly neighborhood right next to the expressway with not much around. hopefully it looks a lot better now than those pictures from February
Aerial shots are a cool idea, but those are bleak. House is gorgeous, though.
Good (LONG) article about the decline of St Louis: https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/maraprmay-2016/the-real-reason-middle-america-should-be-angry/
“right next to the expressway”
It’s bananas how close 44 and 64 are together thru the city. The freeway routing did STL very few favors.
yeah this home is walled off by expressways in 3 directions in under a mile in each direction, thankfully here 44 isn’t the ugly ass elevated expressway you get in some spots… very close to a massive interchange though which is horrible. Can’t even imagine the smog in the summer with that unbearable heat… ugh
there apparently is some amenities to the east of the park though, more than I thought, (brewery, chocolate shop, restaurant, etc.)
Speaking of “just to the east”, you can get a condo for super cheap:
https://www.redfin.com/MO/St-Louis/1515-Lafayette-Ave-63104/unit-501/home/62709226
Except the HOA is *killer*. And there are still vacant buildings on the campus.
I’m sort of surprised by just how low the pricing is on all of these St. Louis places places, relative to how nice they are. Their equivalents in, say, Atlanta or Denver would be about double the price. It’s like Buffalo or Pittsburgh pricing.
“It’s like Buffalo or Pittsburgh pricing”
Many common themes in those 3 cities over the past 50 years.
“Except the HOA is *killer*.”
Includes heat/AC.
It’s bananas how close 44 and 64 are together thru the city. The freeway routing did STL very few favors
they took a page from Chicago when they realized how the highways are great for penning in the poors and the minorities
“I’m sort of surprised by just how low the pricing is on all of these St. Louis places places, relative to how nice they are.”
It just doesn’t have the job market, for one. It’s just 319,000 people in the city now (metro area is pretty big though.) And demand for city living hasn’t been strong (until the last few years.)
Also, it’s amazing how surprised many of us are to see actual middle class housing (houses that cost between $100,000 and $250,000). This one is more than that, but you can buy a nice historic house for under $200,000 in St Louis.
If I were in the mayor’s office, I’d scrape together some money to put up a big billboard off the 101 in San Francisco advertising the houses and the price to try and lure people to move. Same with LA, DC and Boston.
I don’t think people in the cities where it costs $1 million for a 2-bedroom dump have any idea what is going on in other cities. Kansas City, Louisville, Grand Rapids, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland and Nashville are all still “affordable.”
“there apparently is some amenities to the east of the park though, more than I thought, (brewery, chocolate shop, restaurant, etc.)”
To the north of the park, or about a 5 to 10 minute walk as the park is pretty big, there are some of the top restaurants in the city. That doesn’t say too much as the city entertainment scene was destroyed as everyone fled the city. It is coming back though in some neighborhoods so all the “trendy” places are no longer in the suburbs like Clayton or Webster Groves.
More will go in there because, like Fulton Market, once a neighborhood gets momentum, it normally keeps it. Success begets more success. They are building a hotel next to those restaurants along with more apartments and condos.
It’s funny, sonies, that you are talking about the expressways when the traffic on those roads is less than Lake Shore Drive is on a daily basis and no one on this blog, except for me, has ever talked about living next to all that pollution and how horrible it is.
Same with the Dan Ryan going right through Bucktown, Irving Park and a bunch of other popular neighborhoods.
Those that live by the Old Post Office are also, basically, living next to a major expressway. Same with the West Loop. Those poor souls are walking over the Dan Ryan’s 8 lanes every single day.
Lafayette Square is at a high elevation. Not surprising, the rich people built it so you could see intruders coming from a distance AND you’re not flooded from the river. Standing on the east/west streets, I could see the trees on the other side of the river which was in Illinois. I don’t know if being on top of a hill helps blow out the smog/pollution.
When I was there it was 100 degrees with the heat index and there was no smog warning but it was a holiday weekend with less traffic. There was no yellow haze in the air.
Can this house be moved to a different location? Only half kidding. Hate having the highway right behind it.
“great house, but look at those aerial shots, other than those few homes and the park its a pretty fugly neighborhood right next to the expressway with not much around. hopefully it looks a lot better now than those pictures from February”
Any pictures taken in the winter will show the neighborhood without trees. Chicago is ugly too in the winter. But I agree that they should retake them now that it’s lush and green.
There are 375 homes in the Lafayette Square historic district. There’s an abandoned gas plant that blew up, literally, just to the north, which is going to be redeveloped.
I walked over the highway to the east to get to Soulard. It’s about a 10 minute walk and was no different than walking over the Dan Ryan from the West Loop (with the expressway slightly smaller, actually.) Soulard is a pretty sizable neighborhood to the east.
Between those two neighborhoods and downtown is about 1.5 miles. There is nothing there except industrial buildings, the train, the highway and Purina’s building. It needs to be developed.
To the immediate west is an area that hasn’t gentrified yet.
It isn’t Chicago with 5 gentrified neighborhoods right next to each other. I would describe it as Chicago in about 1992 with the prostitutes still hanging out by the old Chicago Stadium near those abandoned graystones with a few of the loft buildings starting to be converted to lofts but other warehouses sitting empty or still housing businesses.
Ditto with Wicker Park/Bucktown where the gangs were hanging out and drug dealers doing their thing. Milwaukee was mostly abandoned retailers.
Heck, some parts of Milwaukee between Damen and Division are STILL empty or rundown even with the massive gentrification.
It can take 20+ years to turn around a neighborhood.
St Louis’ south side is turning around but it’s not going to happen overnight. It takes dedicated preservationists to go in, save the structures, deal with the drug dealers and crime, and fix up the properties and area.
Strangely, I just read a book on Charleston architecture and in the early 1990s the developers were buying homes and apartments in the historic district with horrible crime and drug dealers. Hard to imagine it now because those same homes are worth several million dollars each.
But Charleston has really gentrified in the last 25 years thanks to the preservationists and the ones who went in there first.
Great article Madeline. Thanks for posting it. You can still see the struggle even just in things as basic as who is funding Fair St Louis (the 4th of July celebration). Once you start losing corporate headquarters, there are fewer and fewer who support the community on something basic like that (or on a 10K run etc.)
It had 23 corporate headquarters and now has 9, mostly due to mergers and acquisitions. And now the advertising industry has been crushed.
This was telling:
“While some new out-of-town owners kept large operations in St. Louis, the city lost entire layers of expertise. Business and account managers were shed in Pillsbury’s 1995 acquisition of Pet Inc. NationsBank purchase of Boatmen’s and Firstar’s acquisition of Mercantile resulted in the exodus of financial analysts and bankers. MetLife’s purchase of General American Life led to the jettisoning of insurance agents. Ralston Purina’s merger with Nestlé prompted the hemorrhaging of food scientists and in-house lawyers. Tyco’s 2000 purchase of Mallinckrodt and Merck’s recent acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich resulted in the departure of pharmaceutical scientists.”
And without the companies, you no longer need the good international airport. There actually is currently NO direct non-stop service from St Louis to Europe from a city that was once the HQ of TWA.
It is trying to stage a comeback by luring tech firms to that Cortex zone. Microsoft decided to put its Midwest headquarters there.
It’s also a great place to do a start-up. Cheap commercial space and talent. And for artists. You could be in a rock band and pay your rent while driving for Uber. If they can lure in more creatives with their great architecture and awesome city amenities like museums, symphony, opera, sports teams, parks and zoo, they can turn it around.
But it’s going to take some time.
Great opportunity for some folks though, especially rehabbers and developers.
Speaking of Fair St Louis – the precursor to FSL was the VP Fair. Creepily racist history of the VP Fair here: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/fair-st-louis-and-the-veiled-prophet/379460/
“they took a page from Chicago when they realized how the highways are great for penning in the poors and the minorities”
Except that 64 and 44 are both on the “white” side of town.
“the Dan Ryan going right through Bucktown, Irving Park and a bunch of other popular neighborhoods”
Are you sure you actually live in Chicago? Or have ever even been here??
“Are you sure you actually live in Chicago? Or have ever even been here??”
Fuck off. Same highway just different name. THE KENNEDY.
And yes, the pollution is much worse than any of those highways in St Louis as there’s much more traffic. Yet no one on this blog has any qualms about living right next to it in Bucktown or buying a house in Old Irving Park, for example. In Old Irving, not only can you smell the pollution but you can hear the cars/traffic loud and clear.
“Same highway just different name.”
Bwahahahahaha. Sure.
“no one on this blog has any qualms about living right next to it in Bucktown or buying a house in Old Irving Park, for example.”
I’m pretty sure I recall multiple discussions involving at least HD, DZ and myself about the pollution close to the Kennedy. And many others comment whenever there is a unit that faces the feeder ramps.
“I’m pretty sure I recall multiple discussions involving at least HD, DZ and myself about the pollution close to the Kennedy.”
Really? When????
One time in 10 years? And that’s only because I brought it up. Everyone here shrugs about it and thinks it’s totally great to live on Lake Shore Drive, or heck, Michigan Avenue, with its thousands of cars daily driving by.
Much worse than anything happening in St Louis, I’m sorry to say.
St. Louis????
WTF?
There’s time to talk about St. Louis while the Milwaukee Ave corridor from Wicker Park to Avondale is being destroyed?
ok, whatever.
http://cribchatter.com/?p=25862 – – A few mentions here. This one eventually sold for $70K below the last ask!
Here’s another:
https://cribchatter.com/?p=13485
HD had earned the rep of not caring about air pollution! That was, imo, HD being contrary HD for yuks.
Here I am again chiming in about air pollution, contra Gary:
https://cribchatter.com/?p=25156
Bobbo no likely air pollution:
https://cribchatter.com/?p=595
Groove, talking about Peterson for darn sakes:
https://cribchatter.com/?p=10590
Yes, Sabrina, you do certainly talk about it at least as much as everyone else combined, but it’s not “once in 10 years” that it’s mentioned by others.
“There’s time to talk about St. Louis while the Milwaukee Ave corridor from Wicker Park to Avondale is being destroyed?”
What’s being “destroyed” about it?
Crap new condo buildings have been built on Milwaukee for the last 20 years. Some replaced other older crap buildings, so I’m okay with that. Certain areas, including in Wicker Park and Bucktown, have done pretty well at preserving a lot of the old buildings.