The earliest houses in St. Louis stood where the Gateway Arch stands today, built by settlers, within four blocks of the Mississippi River. Behind them, to the west, stretched the prairie that became the cultivating fields for the town's inhabitants. (see 1 - commonfields) Most of these houses had been demolished by the turn of the 20th century, and in the 1950's, the last of them disappeared.

But another group of residences were built in the cultivating fields, and to understand their significance, we turn to the founding of St. Louis in 1764. Pierre Laclede Liguest, who founded St. Louis, chose the place for his fur-trading post atop a high bank west of the Mississippi River. Behind the post, a flat grassy prairie stretched into the distance. Four miles to the south, the prairie rose to a height of two hundred feet. A large rivulet known as the Petite Riviere flowed through this prairie land into a large body of water known as Chouteau’s Pond. (see - 2 pond) The pond's source lay further west, in a series of springs that dotted the grassy landscape. Several large Indian mounds were scattered about the prairie as well as some outcroppings of limestone. Some of the Indian mounds were forty feet high and two hundred feet in circumference. (see - 3 mounds) Early travelers to the country found it the most idyllic place in the Spanish province. Its only drawback to attracting a population was the obvious one--the tiny trading post was said to be deep in the "howling wilderness."

The village of St. Louis resembled a medieval town in Europe. Its habitants lived within the confines of a fortified village and traveled each day to their prairie or cultivation fields, which for some were nearly four miles away. Panoramic drawing of the village of St. Louis and commonfields in 1798 by Nicolas de Finiels. Because the cultivating fields were a great distance from the village, some of the inhabitants built secondary residences for themselves and their workers in these fields.

Incoming settlers were provided with three lots of land. The first lot was the village lot. It generally measured 150 x 300 feet, but often a settler was granted a larger lot if it appeared that he or she was industrious and skillful. The second lot was located in the prairie and allotted for cultivation. This narrow rectangular lot, known as the commonfield lot, measured 1x40 arpents--192.5 feet wide by almost 1.5 miles long. Its shape derived from the medieval practice of tilling the land in strips and the type of plow used by the French settlers.(see - 4 cultivating lot) An inhabitant could be granted more land in the cultivation field when he requested it, but the length of the lot remained the same, though its width changed. The third lot, known as the barn lot, was located at the rear of the village and was used for storing produce and grain. It was generally 150 square feet.

Four major cultivating fields surrounded the village of St. Louis. The first, directly behind the village, opened in 1765 and was called the St. Louis Common Field (or the Commonfield of St. Louis). It was about three miles wide and contained about eighty strips of land. To the north of the village lay the Grande Prairie which was opened in 1767. It was about the same size as the St. Louis Common Field but shaped in a parallelogram which made it appear larger on the St. Louis landscape. To the south of the Grand Prairie was the Cul de Sac Prairie. It was a small field about a half a mile wide, occupied by about ten farmers. It was joined on the south by the Prairie des Noyers which was about a mile across, more rectangular, and held nearly forty strips for cultivation. It is the present site of the Missouri Botanical Gardens. (see 5 - botanical garden) East of the Prairie des Noyers was another large tract of land known as the St. Louis Commons. (see 6 - Commons and Lafayette park) This tract was owned by all the villagers in common for the purposes of cutting firewood, pasturing livestock and hunting game. Never intended to be sold since it was held in common, its boundaries were not fixed because its area expanded as the population of St. Louis grew.

All of the prairies, at different times and under various owners, had some houses upon their commonfield lots. The St. Louis Common Field was closest to the village and directly west of what is now downtown St. Louis, but nothing of it remains today. The Grande Prairie was north of what is now Market Street and Grand Avenue and extended to Natural Bridge Road. No original structures remain there today. The Prairie des Noyers, which today borders the Missouri Botanical Garden, also had dwellings in the beginning but none remain. To the south of the Grande Prairie was the small Cul de Sac Prairie which contained the largest section of the Petite Riviere. Several lot owners had built houses on their field lots. (see 7 - house in the cul-de-sac prairie)

The Cul de Sac Prairie, directly behind the St. Louis Common Field and the furthest cultivating field from the village, was nearly four miles away. Though small compared to the other fields, it had two important advantages. First, the land was flat and very fertile, and second, there were a number of springs in the area which fed the Petite Riviere or little river and flowed into Chouteau’s Pond. (see 8 - springs) A commonfield lot with a spring made an ideal site for a prairie house, and wealthy landowners, who could afford the additional expense, built small houses with an orchard, barns and cabins for their slaves and laborers. The main commonfield house on the cultivating field was known as the plantation house while the other structures, housing slaves or laborers, were usually referred to as outhouses or outbuildings. Today, most of the Cul de Sac Prairie is covered by a railroad yard which extends from Jefferson Avenue to about Vandeventer Avenue.

In 1765, Joseph Taillon, a miller, dammed the Petite Riviere running through his 75 acre property in the St. Louis Commonfield and built a small mill. A year later, he sold the land to Pierre Laclede Liguest who enlarged the tract to about 300 acres and constructed a larger dam. When Laclede died in 1779, Auguste Chouteau bought the tract and began to buy out the property owners in both the St. Louis and Cul de Sac Commonfields. In 1799, Chouteau had amassed about 1100 acres of land, thereafter referred to as the Mill Tract. By enlarging the dam further, he created a thirty acre landmark known for over fifty years as Chouteau's Pond.

When the Americans arrived in Upper Louisiana, there were only a handful of maps, or plats, of the entire territory. The Spanish administration in St. Louis was not equipped for the complex task of surveying land in Upper Louisiana. In 1771, a Martin Duralde surveyed the St. Louis Prairie, but then returned to New Orleans. Auguste Chouteau drew a plat of the town of St. Louis in 1780, and for a short period in 1788 Pierre Chouteau, acting in the capacity of Spanish Surveyor, surveyed the Prairie des Noyers field and a few private parcels of land. Then during the 1790s various engineers and cartographers made additional surveys of the town of St. Louis. In 1795, Antoine Soulard, an engineer and cartographer, was appointed Surveyor General of Upper Louisiana. His principal duty was to provide surveys for land grants. Aside from this, no other surveys were made of the St. Louis area until 1818 when the Surveyor General's Office of the United States Government began charting the Missouri Territory.

Joseph Brown, surveyor for the Missouri Territory, drew the first township plat of the town of St. Louis and its prairie fields. Brown's job was to draw a plat of the current state of land ownership. This plat, designated TR45 NR7E (township range 45, north range 7 east), however did not take into account the placement of the original prairies. (see 9 - 1856 township plat) Brown pushed the Cul de Sac Prairie west in order to make room for the Chouteau Mill Tract. This made the Mill Tract appear to be of earlier origin than the field lots when, in fact, it was later. When Brown made his plat, he positioned the Mill Tract where the Cul de Sac Prairie had been located and then pushed the Cul de Sac field lots west of the Mill Tract instead of adjoining them to the St. Louis Common Field where they belonged.

According to Brown's township plat, the Cul de Sac Prairie thus began at Vandeventer Avenue instead of near Jefferson Avenue. This plat changed the location of the Cul de Sac commonfield lots considerably and at the same time displaced owners from their rightful land claims. The Cul de Sac Prairie had a natural dividing line called the “trait quarre” which separated the Cul De Sac Prairie from the St. Louis Commonfield. The “trait quarre” line was a hundred feet west of Jefferson Avenue. (see 10 - prairie dividing line)

Joseph Alexandre Etienne Motard, a French fur trader, was granted several tracts of land in St. Louis. His largest tract, 238 acres, was located in the Cul de Sac Prairie. From 1768 to 1779, several lots next to Motard were under cultivation and following Chouteau's lead in 1779, Motard acquired them and expanded the property southward and eastward of the “trait quarre” line. (see 11 - Motard's plantation before 1800) In 1800, when he sold it, Chouteau described the property as a 7x40 arpent tract which contained "a few small houses of little value."

Motard's plantation, large for its time, included a plantation house and outbuildings. With several arpents under cultivation, he produced wheat and corn, vegetables, and fruit. The orchard was about three arpents square and contained apple, peach, and pear trees. Two or three servants lived on the property, and in some years Motard hired additional men to help with the cultivation. He went into partnership in 1794 with another inhabitant and they cultivated together. Motard was almost eighty years old when he sold the plantation. Bought by Calvin Adams, an American from Connecticut, for three hundred dollars payable in wheat, he continued farming on the property until 1808. (see 12 - Motard/Adams property after 1804)

One outbuilding remains standing today, located in what is now Lafayette Square.
(see current location of existing outbuilding) Converted into a two story house in 1859, it is not known whether the structure was originally built as slave quarters, a spring house, or a shelter for animals. Though its setting has changed from wilderness to prairie to farm land and finally to city, the house still reflects its commonfield heritage. Today, it is the last of its kind--one of the last voices from the prairie.

Nicolas de Finiels biography and map.