About the Soulard Neighborhood

Soulard sits just south of downtown St. Louis, and it's the kind of neighborhood where you'll want to park the car (or golf cart) and just walk. The streets are narrow, lined block after block with 19th-century brick rowhomes, pre-Civil War structures, old brewmaster mansions and flounder houses — many still bearing the small star-shaped iron plates that anchor their walls (a detail specific to how these buildings were constructed more than 150 years ago - and a current day symbol of the Soulard neighborhood). It's one of St. Louis's oldest neighborhoods, and one of the few where that history is still very much intact. Soulard is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The neighborhood takes its name from Antoine Soulard, a Spanish colonial surveyor, and his wife Julia, who developed the land in the 1790s after fleeing the French Revolution. What they platted grew into a working-class, largely French and German immigrant community, and that layered history is part of why Soulard still feels different from the rest of the city — a compact, dense grid of homes built for people who worked nearby, not for cars. Previously home to dozens of breweries, Soulard is still the home of Anheuser-Busch.

Soulard Farmers Market — widely considered the oldest public market west of the Mississippi River - is filled with vendors that have been setting up stalls of produce, meat, flowers, and prepared food on the same ground for generations. It's still a working market today, frequented by neighbors and tourists alike.

Soulard has one of the highest concentrations of bars and restaurants in the city, many of them family-owned, with a strong live jazz and blues scene that spills out onto sidewalks and patios on a warm night. It's also home to one of the best-known Mardi Gras celebrations outside the Gulf Coast, drawing huge crowds every spring Carnival season. Additional annual neighborhood celebrations include Pride, Bastille Day and Oktoberfest.

Other Soulard Organization to Know