William Greenleaf Eliot Home Site

William Greenleaf Eliot became one of nineteenth-century St. Louis's most influential religious and civic figures. A Unitarian minister, he helped found Washington University and organized humanitarian efforts during epidemics and the Civil War.

During St. Louis's brief experiment regulating prostitution under the Social Evil ordinance, Eliot joined women reformers in opposing the system. Critics argued that the law placed the burden of registration and medical inspection on women while leaving their male customers largely untouched.

Eliot's former home site connects the city's elite reform movement to the vice districts and institutions it sought to change.