United States · Missouri · St. Louis
Wydown/Skinker, St. Louis — Area Guide & Where to Stay
A Byzantine Revival dome stands over 225 South Skinker Boulevard in Wydown/Skinker, a St. Louis neighbourhood of tall flats facing Forest Park.
About Wydown/Skinker
Where to stay in Wydown/Skinker
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Wydown/Skinker has no hotel between Forsyth Boulevard and Clayton Avenue, so a bed near it means Clayton over the western city limits or the Central West End on the far side of Forest Park. The reason to be on this side of the line is the Skinker Boulevard frontage, where blocks of nine and ten storeys raised in 1925 and 1926 look over the park. Clayton Avenue closes the south end.
The Central West End puts Forest Park between you and the boulevard rather than beside it. You want this edge if the Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center is why you came and the day is meant to start on foot.
About Wydown/Skinker
What are the main landmarks in Wydown/Skinker?
Wydown/Skinker keeps nearly every landmark it owns on Skinker Boulevard. The Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center fills a Byzantine Revival synagogue raised in 1927 for the United Hebrew Congregation, which worshipped there for 62 years and sold in 1989. Preston J. Bradshaw's Wiltshire and Versailles Historic Buildings stand further south at 724 and 709 South Skinker Boulevard.
Both were finished by 1926. Memorial Presbyterian Church holds a corner inland from the boulevard. The museums a visitor pictures at this corner of the map are all outside the line: the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Missouri History Museum sit inside Forest Park east across Skinker Boulevard, and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum belongs to the Washington University campus north of Forsyth Boulevard.
What is the history of Wydown/Skinker?
Wydown/Skinker took its present shape in three years of the 1920s. Preston J. Bradshaw drew the Wiltshire and Versailles Historic Buildings, nine and ten storeys of luxury flats put up in 1925 and 1926 and turned to face Forest Park across the boulevard. The United Hebrew Congregation followed in 1927, commissioning Maritz and Young, with Gabriel Ferrand as consulting architect, for a domed temple at 225 South Skinker Boulevard.
That congregation stayed 62 years. It left in 1989, and the Missouri Historical Society bought the temple in the same year and made a library of it. The two apartment houses entered the National Register of Historic Places on September 29, 1982.
Where is Wydown/Skinker?
Skinker Boulevard and Forest Park wall the east side of Wydown/Skinker, with Forsyth Boulevard at the top, Clayton Avenue at the bottom, and the city limits behind.
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Updated September 2026