Chatillon-DeMenil House (Saint Louis, MO)

The Chatillon-DeMenil House survives as one of only a few strong, tangible links to the city’s significant 19th-century French cultural heritage. More than a century of urban redevelopment ravaged the architectural fabric of dwellings and business blocks associated with the French community since the founding of St. Louis as a trading post by Auguste Chouteau and Pierre Laclede Liguest in 1764. For many years the Chatillon-DeMenil house escaped demolition as it stood outside the major thrusts of urban renewal, but eventually it too became threatened and nearly destroyed in the late 1950s when the path of Interstate 55 cut a swath in front of the house. The house encapsulates the important continuity of the French presence in the St. Louis region long after the passing of the colonial era: its French familial continuum extends from the antebellum period before the Civil War, up through the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, and beyond the World War I era.

West portico of the house whose restoration has been on hold since 2013. The east portico of the house was restored in 2012 with a grant from French Heritage Society and funding from local partners.

$5,000 (in addition to a previous grant of $12,500)

Private donor

2021