Renaissance: A History of the Central West End

Just as stately trees in Forest Park were coming down to make way for the 1904 World’s Fair, elegant homes — designed by the city’s best architects and occupied by its elite— were springing up on surrounding streets, as a vast building boom began. And that was the start of the St. Louis neighborhood called the Central West End, which quickly grew from a sleepy rural outpost to an address for fashionable people and shops, fine cultural institutions and congregations, high-class hotels and hosp…