LARGEST - Concentration of French Colonial Architecture - St. Charles, MO
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 38° 47.738 W 090° 28.510
15S E 719272 N 4297127
Historic marker at the entrance to Echo Park Area of DuSable Park.
Waymark Code: WM19564
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 11/27/2023
Views: 1
County of marker: St. Charles County
Location of marker: N 2nd St., between Wilkinson St & Bainbridge St., St Charles
Erected by: City of St. Charles
Marker Text:
City of St. Charles, Missouri
Historic Frenchtown
North 2nd Street Shops
North Second Street was a bustling thriving commercial district. Butchers, bakers, tinsmiths and saddle makers all had shops on the street; many lived above them on the second floor. Farmers brought their grain to the mill located in the 900 block and stayed at the boarding house at the corner of French and Second Street.
Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable
A well known person associated with Frenchtown is Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable, a fur trader of French and African decent who founded Chicago and spent his last ten years in a brick house on the corner of Third and Decatur Street. Du Sable is also buried in St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery.
Traditional Frenchtown Architecture
The Frenchtown Neighborhood owes its name to the early French settlers who founded St. Charles and to our distinctive style of architecture. The district has the largest concentration of French Colonial style architecture in the Midwest. These simple structures, constructed from about 1820-1850, feature an extended main roof over raised open air galleried front porches. They are also often mistaken for duplexes because of their double front doors accessing both the living and dinning rooms located on the main level.
American Car Foundry [ACF] Building
The St. Charles Car Company, organized in 1872 and purchased by the American Car Foundry [ACF] in 1899 is located between Second Street and the Missouri River. By the 1890s it employed more then 1800 men and was known worldwide as a leader in streetcar and railcar design. By 1910 at least one member of every household in Frenchtown worked at ACF. By WWI, they manufactured more than 50,000 army escort wagons. During WWII they produced hospital cars and eleven tanks a day rolled out of their shops.
Lewis & Clark
Lewis and Clark dined at a home in Frenchtown before departing on their exploration westward. A note in their journal describes St. Charles as having "about 100 houses, the most of them small and indefferent and about 450 inhabinents, Chiefly French, those people arrear pore, polite, and harmonious."
Wabash Railroad Bridge
The arrival of the railroad and large wave of German immigration in the 1830s were spurred by the publication of Godfried Duden and Louis Eversmans account of the new frontier. By the mid 1800s Frenchtown was a city within the city.