Fanetti Plaza

Mark Groth

September 3, 2013

Fanetti Plaza is 1 of 108 St. Louis parks. It was established in 1979 and makes up 1.51 acres of the total 2,956 acres of park land in St. Louis.

This triangular park is located between Ivory, Schirmer and Michigan Avenue in the Patch. The city website doesn't give a location or any information on the park.

However, there is a great personal website with plenty of info on the park.

This website is so comprehensive, I'll have little to add.

Anyhow, Fanetti Park was named after Donald L. Fanetti (1922-1977). A commemorative plaque exists in the park and describes Mr. Fanetti as:

FAMILY MAN-HUMORIST-FRIEND

BUSINESSMAN-COMMUNITY LEADER

UNDER-EDITOR BUGLE NEWSPAPER

The Bugle was a humorous newspaper published from 1944 - 1996.

Here's some background on the Bugle from stlmediahistory.com:

After returning from military service in 1944, newspaper founder Donald Fanetti published the first copies of The Bugle. He and his wife, Mary June, came up with many of the humorous features of the paper, such as the “Joke of the Weak” and an advice column from a politically incorrect, battered husband.

“Donald Fanetti was probably one of the funniest guys in St. Louis history,” says Geraci. “He was always pulling stunts and he got away with a lot of stuff that wouldn’t go today. For example, he advertised that was going to jump off the JB Bridge. The cops weren’t happy with that at all. A crowd showed up, and he showed up and jumped from a part of the bridge that was about three feet from the ground. I’m told he went to the Illinois side to do it so the police on this side couldn’t grab him”

Stunts like the JB Bridge caper brought Fanetti and The Bugle to the attention of the late KMOX Radio personality Jack Carney. Carney would occasionally have Fanetti on his popular morning talk show, where the two would poke fun at each other.

The setting of Fanetti Park is nearly perfect as an urban pocket park. It is on the property of the former St. Boniface Catholic Parish.

As the Catholic Arch Diocese continues to abandon the city of St. Louis due to lower #'s of Catholics and hence dollars, they chose to close St. Boniface which had been in existence since 1861. It sold the former church to

Rothschild Allen LLC for slightly more than $1 million (source). The church is now the Ivory Theatre, a ~200 seat theatre that host music, plays, etc.

They recently sold their former school to a Charter School called the Carondelet Leadership Academy:

The Carondelet Leadership Academy Charter School was established in 2010 and is a Tuition-Free independent public school serving grades K-7, expanding to include 8th grade in the fall of 2013. We are managed by American Quality Schools, and sponsored by the University of Missouri.

Carondelet Leadership Academy is a neighborhood school serving primarily zip codes 63111, 63116, 63118. CLA is designed for students who want a small school with a close-knit community of students, teachers and families, and an academically challenging, hands-on learning environment.