Author Description

From its earliest days as Old Frenchtown, Soulard, St. Louis, has embodied a bold and colorful tapestry of immigrant life in America. With remarkable depth, authors Montesi and Deposki have detailed the birth, destruction, and final restoration of this historic area through over 200 photographs. Bequeathed by the widow of surveyor Antoine Soulard to the city of St. Louis in 1842, what was once a plot of land intended for a vegetable market became a center of a community of popular parks, breweries, churches, and shops. Masses of Eastern European immigrants flocked to Soulard, just outside downtown St. Louis, to start a new life of hope and growth. German, Irish, Italian, and Czech influences can be seen here in the images of the infamous "brew barons," horse-drawn market carts, and "flounder" houses that the authors have reproduced with insightful captions. Captured here in original photographs is the inescapable fury of the Great Cyclone of 1896 that destroyed the area but not its clenched-fist determination to survive. Montesi and Deposki take us on a heroic journey through the annals of time to discover the tenacious heart of a neighborhood now known as St. Louis' most popular venue for jazz and blues