If you want to know what St. Louis looked like in the colonial era, there’s a fantastic video in the newly-renovated museum under the Gateway Arch. Or, you could climb in a car, drive an hour south along the Mississippi, and spend some time in St. Genevieve.
Europeans flock to places like Bruges and Venice, where quirks of history have left cityscapes frozen in time. But few of those travellers would have heard of, much less visited, the first organised European settlement west of the Mississippi, despite its abundant charms and what many claim is the biggest and best-preserved collection of French colonial architecture in the Americas.
Founded in the 1740s, by the closing decades of that century St. Genevieve was a very big deal. Lying close to two major French military instillations along the river, it was the commercial hub of French trade for the whole middle-American river basin. Further north, the Missouri, Illinois and Ohio all joined the Mississippi, making a convenient highway for the continent. (The very reason for St. Louis’ rise a bit later.) French entrepreneurs sent European trade goods out to sell to settlers or swap with native Americans for furs. The houses and shops they left behind show that they managed to carve a gracious lifestyle out of the wilderness.
A row of beautifully preserved houses on S. Main Street, managed as part of the National Park Service, shows this off. High, spacious rooms with broad windows face deep, covered porches. Anyone who’s lived in the Mississippi Valley will instantly recognise the summertime necessity of keeping hot, humid air moving. Everything is built on high stone foundations that would have added to air cooling in the summer, provided ample storage (most of these people were traders) and lifted living areas above floods when those times came. Elsewhere in town are shops and warehouses from those same settlers, all with signs indicated who built what, and when.
As the years passed and ownership of the territory bounced around … Spanish, English, back to French and finally American … more settlers came to this busy little place. It was particularly popular with Germans. Architecture evolved to something a bit closer to East Coast colonial, though deep porches, high roofs and dormer windows remained. Those late 18th and early 19th century houses are dotted about town, too, also marked by the names and dates of their builders.
Then came the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812, so violent they changed the course of the Mississippi. St. Genevieve was no longer a riverside town; now there was about a mile of river bottom to cross to get to the port. It was enough to exacerbate what had already been a gentle decline in favour of St. Louis upriver. Though a few new buildings arrived in the following years, most of the historic district of about 8 square blocks looks like it was frozen in time around 1860. And that is what gives St. Gen its huge appeal for tourists.
Beyond the historic homes run by the Park Service and the associated visitor centres, almost everything is either a boutique hotel, a restaurant or a cute shop. While there are “real” residents on the outskirts, the heart of town is essentially a living museum. There’s only one problem with this: Its tourist existence means that outside of school holidays, St. Gen only really exists on weekends. We stayed over a Monday and Tuesday to discover most of the place shuttered, and nursing a bit of a collective hangover from a huge Oktoberfest party the weekend before.
The result was a ghost town with few places to eat, little to do, empty streets, and a profound silence occasionally broken by the whistle of freight trains passing the edge of town. We were delighted. This was early in the trip, we were after R&R and the silence suited us perfectly.
Mr. B slept in our enormous room at the Audubon Hotel, waking for a lunch excursion before returning for a nap. It was just what the doctor ordered. If you’re looking for excitement, head to St. Gen on the weekend. But if you’re after the peace and quiet of a bygone age, a weekday stay is for you.
WHERE TO STAY
Audubon’s Hotel is shockingly modern for St. Genevieve; the newly-built structure first opened as a bar in 1901 and has had a history of hospitality ever since. It’s currently run by several local families who ran a major restoration effort less than a decade ago. The result is not just gorgeous hotel rooms finished to a high standard, but friendly and personal service that makes you feel like a local from your first belly up to the bar. Each room is named after a different bird, celebrating the legacy of naturalist John James Audubon who, legend has it, first started drawing birds during a winter stuck near here by a frozen Mississippi. Turtle Dove is at the front corner of the building, with three enormous windows screened with plantation shutters looking over the town’s historic district.
WHERE TO EAT
Local traffic made it clear that the Audubon’s was known for both its food and the fellowship at its bar; we ate dinner here both nights. Enormous home-baked pretzels with beer cheese dip were stand-outs. These are served many places in Missouri but we never had better. A wide ranging menu covers American classics (burgers, pizza, grilled sandwiches) and has some more upscale options. There is an impressive number of local beers on tap and the owners are proud of the stock of their bar, including an impressive range of bourbons and a thoughtful wine list.
Two blocks away, The Old Brick House has a similar menu but a darker, cosier atmosphere in a building dating from 1800. You can envision fur trappers congregating at the bar after a hard trip in the wilderness. It’s one of the only places in town other than the Audubon’s that’s open on Mondays. Rather amazingly, it’s the only place outside of Disneyland that I’ve seen a monte cristo sandwich on a menu. Essentially a ham and cheese toasty between two slightly sweet pieces of toasted French bread, there’s probably a good reason this oddity isn’t better known. But it was a fun dose of nostalgia to encounter one.
Just a few shopfronts down is The Anvil Saloon. If fur trappers haunt the Brick House it’s the ghosts of Riverboat passengers from the age of Mark Twain who you’ll imagine here. The high, airy room, massive windows and pressed-tin ceiling panels lend a wonderful atmosphere, but it’s the stunning, high wooden bar that’s the scene stealer. Legend says it came off a riverboat that needed to be relieved of weight when stuck on a sand bar. Tasty and generous salads here, a timely intervention after days of carb and meat heavy meals.
WHAT TO DO
The main attraction of St. Genevieve is its French Colonial architecture, but if you want to wander further afield here are two suggestions.
Unfortunately for tourists and the whole tourism economy, the ferry at St. Genevieve is currently shut down for repairs. When it’s working, a quick hop over the river to see the 17th century remains of the French Fort de Chartres is worth the trip. At the moment, the best you can do is walk or drive to the embarkation point about a mile out of town, where there’s a lovely view of the Mississippi and some pretty riverside woodland if you fancy a picnic.
About 40 minutes’ drive inland is Cave Winery, which I’ll cover in a bit more detail in a later article on the Missouri wine experience. It’s a pretty drive, and the winery has a picnic and drinking area in a cave at the bottom of a woodland walk that’s ablaze with colour this time of year.
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