Francis Park Began as a Christmas Present. Here's How St. Louis Hills Still Unwraps It.

On Christmas Eve 1916, the holiday lights were being lit at St. Louis City Hall when a man dressed as Santa Claus walked in carrying a deed. It came from David R. Francis, the former mayor and governor who had led the 1904 World's Fair. Francis was in Russia at the time, serving as U.S. ambassador. The deed transferred 60 acres of his land in the southwest corner of the city for a park.

His message from Russia, as Mike Truax of the 1904 World's Fair Society recounted it in the St. Louis Hills Neighborhood Association's Summer 2020 newsletter, was short:

"St. Louis has done everything for me; I'd like to do a little for St. Louis."

That land became Francis Park. When the neighborhood gathers at Nottingham and Childress for the tree lighting each year, it is marking a Christmas gift at the edge of the gift itself. The man who gave it now stands in bronze on that same edge of the park.

A gift that waited almost two decades to become a park

The basic facts are well documented. The City of St. Louis Parks page for Francis Park lists an ordinance year of 1916 and a size of 60.30 acres. It says Francis donated 60 acres that year. The neighborhood association's own history page puts the gift in 1917, the year after Francis was appointed ambassador. The Christmas Eve 1916 account appears in the association's newsletters, including the Spring 2026 issue's history trivia. A columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch told the same Santa-at-City-Hall story, credited to Stephen Doss of the statue committee.

The Christmas Eve story is the one that stuck, and it explains a lot about how this park still gets used in December.

The gift came before almost everything that now surrounds it. Here is how the pieces arrived:

1. 1916. Francis's deed is presented at City Hall on Christmas Eve, by the newsletter's account.
2. 1920s. Landowners, including developer Cyrus Crane Willmore, begin building on the open land around it.
3. 1935. Funding allows Works Progress Administration crews to build the athletic fields, tennis courts, shelter house, walkways, picnic grounds and landscaping.
4. 1941. Ted Drewes opens its Chippewa custard stand on Route 66.
5. 1952. Ted Drewes starts selling Christmas trees on Chippewa.
6. 1950s. The St. Louis Hills neighborhood is fully built out.
7. 2018. A statue of Francis is installed in the park after a fundraising effort of more than $165,000.

So the park came first, the custard stand's tree lot came about a decade before the last streets were finished, and the donor's statue came last.

The tree goes up in front of the man who gave the park

The Francis statue is by Harry Weber, the sculptor behind the Cardinals figures near Busch Stadium, the Chuck Berry statue and the Lewis and Clark memorial on the riverfront. While the statue was still being planned, Doss described its spot to the Post-Dispatch in holiday terms. "For those who know Francis Park, let's say it's going right in front of where the Christmas tree is during the holiday season," he said. He meant the Nottingham Avenue side, halfway between Tamm and Donovan.

That puts the statue and the tree within sight of each other. The SLHNA tree lighting happens at the park entrance at Nottingham and Childress, and Childress meets Nottingham between Tamm and Donovan. The 2025 lighting was on November 30 at 7 p.m. It had free carriage rides, Santa and Mrs. Claus, Fredbird and Louie, hot chocolate and cookies, and it was held rain or shine. The 2023 lighting was on November 26. Both dates fell on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

As of late October, the SLHNA events calendar has no 2026 tree lighting date posted. Its only listings run through a November 18 board meeting at Buder Library. If the pattern holds, the lighting would be Sunday, November 29, but that is a guess from past years, not an announcement. The association calls the tree lighting one of the three events it sponsors in Francis Park each year, along with Run for the Hills and the Easter Egg Hunt. The St. Louis Hills Special Business District's project tracker lists $7,120 in April 2024 funding for it, describing it as "a long running community event in the park."

Chippewa's half of the season started in 1952

The neighborhood's other holiday landmark is on Chippewa, and it has its own origin story. According to Ted Drewes' company history, Ted Sr. started selling Christmas trees in 1952 because custard sales slow down in winter. In 1962, Ted Jr. bought land in Nova Scotia to grow his own trees instead of buying through a middleman. Each fall, Ted Jr. or his son-in-law Travis would go up to hand-select and harvest Canadian balsam firs. In a 2016 FOX 2 report, Travis Dillon said he had made the trip "every October since 1976," and the station reported he brought back 500 trees in four truckloads that year.

The 2026 season follows the same calendar the lot has always kept. The tree lot page at 6726 Chippewa says it opens the day after Thanksgiving and currently shows "OPENS FOR THE SEASON ON NOVEMBER 27." With Thanksgiving on November 26 this year, that makes opening day a Friday. Trees are sold through Christmas Eve.

The live tree page invites shoppers to "Enjoy Ted's delicious frozen custard while browsing among fresh-cut fir and pine trees." The posted hours are a snapshot from before the season opens, so check them again before you go.

The lily pond has had its own December night

Inside the park, the WPA-era layout gives the holidays a second gathering spot. On December 7, 2024, from 1 to 8 p.m., the team behind Grub and Groove put on "Lights at the Lily Pad, An Enchanted Market" around the Francis Park lily pond. It had carolers, holiday music, hot cocoa and beverage stations, fire pits, a holiday movie screening and food trucks. According to FOX 2's coverage that night, profits went to the nonprofit South City Investment Corp.

The 2024 market is the only edition on record on the neighborhood association's calendar, and no 2026 edition has been announced there. If you go down to the pond anyway, look for Francine the Mermaid. The pond's sculpted resident was unveiled on July 23, 2002, by Ann Layton and artist Robin Murez, and it was paid for by 26 St. Louis Hills donors.

Then the gift spreads out block by block

The last part of the season happens on the streets around the park. The neighborhood association's Christmas Lighting Awards send judges out to the decorated houses. In its Winter 2020 newsletter, the association described committee chairs leading a team that picked the three best-decorated blocks and the ten best-decorated homes. The president's message that issue said the "judging elves" were "out and about." That year, all residents were eligible, with a $50 gift card for winning members and a free membership for winners who weren't members. The Spring 2025 newsletter said the Holiday Lighting Awards needed judges and that you have to be a member to win. No 2026 judging dates have been published.

If you're getting your house ready for the holidays this year and wondering what it would be worth in a St. Louis Hills spring market, I'm glad to walk you through it. Let's connect. Reach out to Stacy Deutschmann for a free valuation, or just to swap notes on your favorite Chippewa tree-lot tradition.