Laclede's Landing

3 out of 5

St. Louis’s original settlement began in the area occupied by the Gateway Arch and the wharf area known as Laclede’s Landing. Those early buildings and streets were cleared to make room for the park, so these 1850s warehouses and streets are all that remain of the city’s oldest area. Here you will walk St. Louis as its early settlers walked it, on cobblestones and along narrow streets that are part of a grid laid out by founder Pierre Laclède in the late 1700s. The original buildings in this nine-block historic district are gone. Some were made of stone; most, however, were constructed of upright logs covered with whitewash. But the wrought-iron street lamps and warehouses, some still displaying their decorative ironwork, capture what riverboat crews and passengers would have seen when they disembarked in the mid-1800s. Special attractions: Popular music venues and restaurants, historic buildings, museums, nineteenth-century architecture, carriage rides. The trendiest stop is the Planet Hollywood restaurant.