United States · Missouri · St. Louis
Fairground, St. Louis — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Brick two-family flats line the grid at Fairground, a north St. Louis neighborhood named for the fairgrounds that ran beside it until 1902.
About Fairground
Where to stay in Fairground
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
The Gano Avenue grid holds houses, not hotels. Rooms come from the wider St. Louis market, and the 70 Grand bus runs the length of North Grand Boulevard down to the Grand MetroLink station, which makes Grand Center or downtown the sensible base for a day spent north.
Come for the brick streets, Divoll Library, and an hour in Fairground Park. The ground rises gently westward.
About Fairground
What are the main landmarks in Fairground?
Two public buildings do the work. Divoll Library sits at 4234 North Grand Boulevard, a 1966 branch drawn by Lester Haekel of the William B. Ittner firm and named for Ira Divoll, the school superintendent whose 1865 school library grew into the St. Louis Public Library. Eliot School stands a few blocks east at 4242 Grove Street.
William B. Ittner himself designed it, the school closed in 2004, and the building holds a place on the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the history of Fairground?
French colonists worked these blocks as strips of the Grand Prairie Commonfield. The St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Association bought fifty acres from John O'Fallon in 1856 and opened its fair that October, and houses filled the ground beside it through the late 1860s. Benton Barracks took the site.
Union troops trained there through the Civil War, fairs ran on until 1902, and the city bought the grounds in 1908 and dedicated Fairground Park the year after. John Avenue and Gano Avenue carry the given names of J. G. Bryan, and Natural Bridge Avenue that of a stone arch over Rocky Branch Creek.
Where is Fairground?
Glasgow Avenue closes the east and Warne Avenue the west, with North Florissant Avenue on the north and Natural Bridge Avenue on the south beside Fairground Park.
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Updated September 2026