United States · Missouri · St. Louis
Mark Twain, St. Louis — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Mark Twain fills a wedge of northwest St. Louis between Emerson Avenue and Interstate 70, with Bellefontaine Cemetery across West Florissant Avenue.
About Mark Twain
Where to stay in Mark Twain
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Mark Twain has no hotel. A room booked for a visit here sits somewhere else in St. Louis, and the drive in comes up Interstate 70 or West Florissant Avenue.
The neighbourhood is housing almost end to end, a grid of side streets that takes in Ruskin Avenue, Claxton Avenue and Queens Avenue, while North Kingshighway Boulevard and Union Boulevard carry the through traffic and the bus stops. Walnut Park East picks up across Emerson Avenue, and Penrose lies over Interstate 70. Take a bed in the centre of the city and drive up if this stretch of the north side is your errand.
About Mark Twain
What are the main landmarks in Mark Twain?
The National Register carries a single address in Mark Twain, the Mark Twain Elementary School at 5316 Ruskin Avenue, listed in 2011. Engine House 12 of the St. Louis Fire Department stands at 5214 West Florissant Avenue. Bellefontaine Cemetery and Calvary Cemetery are not part of the neighbourhood, and both lie over West Florissant Avenue to the north-east, where Bellefontaine has taken burials since 1849.
Penrose Park sits beyond Interstate 70. Under a square mile of ground, the rest of Mark Twain is a residential grid.
What is the history of Mark Twain?
Mark Twain carries the pen name of Samuel Clemens, the Missouri author, and so does the highway along its southern edge. The State Highway Department was buying right of way for the Mark Twain Expressway by 1954, and a St. Louis bond issue the following year paid to assemble land for it and two other expressways into downtown; the eight-mile route ran as an alternate Route 40 before it became Interstate 70. Two picture houses served these blocks first.
The Pauline Theatre opened at 5000 Claxton Avenue in the Christmas week of 1915 and ran until April 1956, and the Palm Theatre lasted from 1926 to 1953 before coming down in 1965.
Where is Mark Twain?
Mark Twain is a triangle of northwest St. Louis: Emerson Avenue on one side, Interstate 70 on the second, West Florissant Avenue on the third.
More areas in St. Louis
Updated September 2026