The Saint Louis
Lewis Place Neighborhood Community

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Lewis Place, founded by Benjamin and Talton Turner Lewis in 1893 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, is the oldest grouping of African American private streets in St. Louis. Spanning three blocks and containing turn-of-the-century homes in myriad architectural designs, its entrance is marked by a resplendent brick gate that once served as the dividing line between Lewis Place and the surrounding African American community. The dividing line existed because, until 1945, Lewis Place was exclusively white.The transition from Lewis Place being an exclusively white neighborhood to a black one began in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as large numbers of African Americans began moving from the South and from rural areas of Missouri in search of better housing and employment opportunities. Because of the racially charged atmosphere in St. Louis, these exodusers were forced to settle in poor and overcrowded neighborhoods, residing in the already established black ghettoes of the city. Because of these factors, blacks began to make an exodus from the ghettoes of St. Louis, seeking instead to live in neighborhoods with better living conditions. Many blacks moved or attempted to move into areas that had previously been occupied solely by whites. Lewis Place, like many neighborhoods in St. Louis and the rest of the country, had enacted racial restrictive covenants to prohibit African Americans from buying or living in homes in white neighborhoods. Before African Americans were finally allowed to purchase property on Lewis Place, they were beleaguered by protracted lawsuits and protests from white homeowners. Although the protests and lawsuits stymied the attempts of African American families to occupy the homes they had purchased, many black families displayed resilience and continued to buy so much property in the area that blacks owned most of the houses on Lewis Place by 1945. Lewis Place would remain open to blacks, notably attracting some of the most prominent African Americans in the St. Louis area. Although the community itself declined in the 1970s due to the number of blacks moving farther out to the suburbs, Lewis Place has rebounded and recovered some of its population as a result of the ongoing efforts of the community to preserve its legacy.Disclaimer: The Lewis Place Neighborhood is best understood through concepts instead of focusing specifically on the sites in the neighborhood.A word about architecture: According to the National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, "Lewis Place is an anomaly unique in the city by virtue of its heterogeneous composition consisting of a handful of late nineteenth century Revival style houses and a proliferation of small to medium-sized twentieth century bungalows. From a broader viewpoint these contrasts in style and size are a valuable index of change . . ." (p. 7).