United States · Missouri · St. Louis
Greater Ville, St. Louis — Area Guide & Where to Stay
The brick Shelley House stands on Labadie Avenue in the Greater Ville, a north St. Louis neighbourhood wrapped around three sides of The Ville.
About Greater Ville
Where to stay in Greater Ville
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
The Greater Ville has no hotel address of its own, so the bed is taken in Downtown St. Louis or the Central West End and the trip north is made by car. The place covers under a square mile. Dr. Martin Luther King Drive brings a driver in from the south, Natural Bridge Avenue from the northeast, and both land within a few blocks of Labadie Avenue.
If you came for the Shelley House and the Chuck Berry House, one morning on foot is the entire errand.
About Greater Ville
What are the main landmarks in Greater Ville?
The Greater Ville holds two landmark houses. At 4600 Labadie Avenue the Shelley House is the address behind Shelley v. Kraemer, the 1948 decision that made racially restrictive covenants unenforceable in American courts; it became a National Historic Landmark in 1990. The Chuck Berry House stands at 3137 Whittier Street.
Berry wrote and first played Maybellene, Roll Over Beethoven and Johnny B. Goode while he lived there. The institutions people picture when they say the Ville, Sumner High School and Homer G. Phillips Hospital, stand south of St. Louis Avenue in the smaller neighbourhood next door.
What is the history of Greater Ville?
The Greater Ville and The Ville were recorded as one neighbourhood until the mid-1970s, when the Greater Ville Redevelopment Corporation gave the larger ring its own name. African American, German and Irish households shared these blocks in the mid-1880s, and restrictive covenants later barred non-white owners from some of the properties. One such covenant dated from 1911.
It ran with a house at 4600 Labadie Avenue that the Shelley family bought in 1945, and the suit brought against them ended at the United States Supreme Court on May 3, 1948, when Shelley v. Kraemer stripped those covenants of any force a court could give them.
Where is Greater Ville?
The Greater Ville wraps three sides of The Ville, edged by Marcus Avenue, Natural Bridge Avenue and North Vandeventer Avenue. St. Louis Avenue runs below.
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Updated September 2026