Historic Frenchtown

Historic Frenchtown. . , North 2nd Street Shops , North Second Street was a bustling thriving commercial district. Butchers, bakers, tinsmiths and saddle makers all had shops on the street; many lived above them on the second floor. Farmers brought their grain to the mill located in the 900 block and stayed at the boarding house at the corner of French and Second Street., Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable , A Well known person associated with Frenchtown is Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable, a fur trader of French and African descent who founded Chicago and spent his last ten years in a brick house at the corner of Third and Deactur Street. Du Sable is also buried in the St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery., Traditional Frenchtown Architecture , The Frenchtown neighborhood owes its name to the early French settlers who founded St. Charles and to our distinctive style of architecture. The district has the largest concentration of French-Colonial style architecture in the Midwest. These simple structures, constructed from about 1820-1850, feature an extended main roof over raised open air galleried front porches. They are also often mistaken for duplexes because of their double front doors accessing both the living and dining rooms located on the main level. , American Car Foundry [ACF] Building , The St. Charles Car Company, organized in 1872 and purchased by the American Car Foundry [ACF] in 1899 is located between Second Street and the Missouri River. By the 1890s it employed more than 1800 men and was known worldwide as a leader in streetcar and railcar design. By 1910 at least one member of every household in Frenchtown worked at ACF. By world war one, they manufactured more than 50,000 army escort wagons. During world war two they produced hospital cars and eleven tanks a day rolled out of their shops. , Lewis and Clark , Lewis and Clark dined at a home in Frenchtown before departing on their exploration westward. A note in their journal describes St. Charles as having "about 100 houses, the most of them small and indefferent and about 450 inhabitents. Chiefly French, those people appear pore, polite, and harmonious.", Wabash Railroad Bridge , The arrival of the railroad and large wave of German immigration in the 1830s were spurred by the publication of Gottfried Duden and Louis Eversman's account of the new frontier. By the mid 1800, Frenchtown was a "city within the city".