Dividing the City: Race-Restrictive Covenants in St. Louis and St. Louis County Main Menu About the Map The Map

About the Map

35914
Dividing the City documents the scope, timing, and geography of private racial restrictions on property in St. Louis.  We worked from a detailed register of St. Louis restrictions, recorded over the last century by one of the City’s major title and abstract firms.  Between 1850 and 1950, this register catalogues 1941 restrictive covenants, 840 of which (43 percent) including restrictions on racial occupancy.  The register lists restrictive agreements by the Recorder’s book and page number and the date recorded, and indicates the presence of a racial restriction, a reversionary clause, or an expiration date.  Because the “Yes/No” recording of racial restrictions was incomplete, we examined every deed record in which that field was marked “Yes” or left blank.  Of the full catalogue 414 were originally coded as racial restrictions, and 426 of the 584 restrictions in which this field was blank, were found to have racial restrictions. 
   
We copied and examined each deed record and catalogued its key elements—including the date, the type of agreement, the expiration term and date, the language of the racial restriction, the presence of other restrictions, and (when relevant) the number of signatories to the agreement.  We then matched the spatial information in each record (usually a legal descriptions or city block reference) to the City of St. Louis parcel data (2003) and mapped each restricted parcel by date and type of restriction.  Of the 840 racial restrictions identified in the original register, 72 were duplicates (or filings which merely added signatories to existing restrictions) and 5 rescinded standing agreements—leaving a total of 763 unique restrictive covenants or agreements.   

This page has paths:

  1. Dividing the City Colin Gordon