Old North St. Louis, St. Louis — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Old North St. Louis?

Crown Candy Kitchen is the address people name first. Its soda fountain has outlasted most of what stood around it, and the streets behind hold ranks of nineteenth-century brick houses with community gardens worked in among them. St. Stanislaus Kostka Church rises just west.

The Griot Museum of Black History sits on the same side. Downtown, to the south, the Gateway Arch, the City Museum and the National Blues Museum come within a walk, with the Shrine of St. Joseph on the way.

What is the history of Old North St. Louis?

Rows of nineteenth-century brick houses were raised on the ground just north and slightly west of the downtown area, and the survivors of that building period still set the scale of the streets. Parish churches went up alongside them. St. Stanislaus Kostka Church is one of the nearest.

Ground later opened between the houses, and the community gardens that fill it are as much a part of the record as the masonry. Crown Candy Kitchen has held its place through all of it.

Where is Old North St. Louis?

Old North St. Louis fills a tight grid north of the downtown edge, its blocks divided between brick houses and community gardens.