Dog Friendly City Guide: St. Louis, Missouri

Between April and December 1904 more than 20 million people came to the World's Fair in Forest Park, and it took seven years to put the park back together afterwards. Today it covers 1,300 acres, holds 45,000 trees and 30 miles of paths and trails, and draws 15.5 million visits a year. A dog on a lead is welcome throughout.

St. Louis is the city on the Mississippi with the Gateway Arch at its river's edge, and for a dog it is a city of parks: Forest Park in the west, Tower Grove and Lafayette Park on the south side, an 11-mile paved trail past Grant's Farm, and the Arch grounds downtown, with taprooms and patios in between.

Arriving From Abroad

What a visiting dog needs to enter the United States is set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it turns on where the dog has spent the past six months. Where those months were spent only in countries on the CDC's rabies-free and low-risk list, all you file is the CDC Dog Import Form, free of charge and fine to complete on the morning you fly. Your dog needs to be half a year old or more, chipped with a microchip any universal scanner will pick up, and in good health on arrival, and every airport, seaport and land crossing will take it. From a high-risk country there are more steps.

The city itself asks little of a visitor. Under the City of St. Louis registration rules, you must be able to show that your dog's rabies vaccination covers the length of your stay, and a city registration certificate is needed only if the dog stays longer than 30 days. For the journey itself, read our piece on taking your dog abroad.

Where to Stay

The Chase Hotel opened on Kingshighway in 1922, an Italian Renaissance building that its owner, Chase Ullman, called the "largest and costliest residential hotel in any city approaching St. Louis in size". In 1929 the 27-storey Art Deco Park Plaza rose next door, and the two are now The Royal Sonesta Chase Park Plaza in the Central West End. Elvis stayed in 1958 and asked for the freight lift to be kept for him alone; the Rolling Stones came in 1966. When the Khorassan Room ballroom was built in 1957, Gerber baby food cans were pressed into its wet concrete ceiling to make the holes that give it its acoustics.

The hotel still has a five-screen cinema off the main lobby, a seasonal Mediterranean-style pool, and three places to eat: the Chase Club, a gastropub with live music at weekends that looks over the pool and terrace; The Preston; and The Tenderloin Room, a steakhouse that has been serving the city since the 1960s.

The welcome starts at check-in, with treats and an arrival letter of the hotel's local recommendations addressed to the dog, and a bed and bowls are laid on in the room. Toys and poo bags are to hand, dog food is on sale if you run short, the staff will point you to a good walk, and the dog can come down with you to the lounge. Most of the 338 rooms take dogs, up to two to a room and of any size, for $80 a stay, and the Roch Dog review gives the Chase a Roch Rank of B.

Downtown, Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis stands on the Mississippi at 999 North 2nd Street. Its rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows framing the Gateway Arch, or look out over the river to the Stan Musial Bridge, and there is a spa, an outdoor pool on the Sky Terrace and Ramsay's Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay. Dogs stay free in most of its 200 rooms, with a bed and bowls waiting and dog food on sale. Our Four Seasons review has the details.

Out west on the Delmar Loop, The Moonrise Hotel keeps display cases of lunar toys and rare space memorabilia in its lobby, and its Rooftop Garden Bar looks out over the Loop to the Arch. Dogs of any size are welcome, with a bed, bowls and a space set aside for them, and your dog may join you in the lounge or settle in the room while you go up for a drink. The staff can suggest a walk and know where the nearest emergency vet is. It charges $50 a visit; the Moonrise review has the rest.

Eat and Drink

St. Louis drinks in beer gardens, and Urban Chestnut runs two of the best with a dog in mind. Its Midtown Biergarten opened in January 2011 in an old 1920s garage in Grand Center, and the dog sits out in the biergarten while you work through a Schnickelfritz Bavarian Weissbier or a Zwickel. The Grove Bierhall on Manchester Avenue took over a 1920s paper company building in 2014, seats more than 400, sends out pizza from Fordo's Killer Pizza, and keeps its terrace and patio open to dogs.

4 Hands Brewing was founded in LaSalle Park in 2011 and has grown into the largest craft brewery in the St. Louis area. Its tasting room on South 8th Street is a pint away from the ballpark, and a well-behaved dog on a lead is welcome in the outdoor spaces. Further south, Perennial Artisan Ales on Michigan Avenue has a patio where dogs are not just allowed but encouraged, with sandwiches from Big Mouth on the side.

Out in Maplewood, Side Project Cellar is a small, cosy room kept for people, so take your glass out to the bricked, European-style patio that wraps round the back and side of the building, where a dog on a lead is welcome.

For dinner, The Golden Hoosier on South Kingshighway serves burgers among vintage taxidermy and a Prohibition-era Art Deco bar, and keeps a heated patio where dogs are welcome. Downtown, Broadway Oyster Bar sits in a building from the mid 1840s, one of the oldest still in daily use in the city, and brings out Gulf and Blue Point oysters and Louisiana crawfish; a well-behaved dog joins you on the south patio.

Walks and Parks

Start in Forest Park. It was dedicated in 1876, and its 6-mile Dual Recreational Path shares its way between "heels" and "wheels", walkers on one side and bikes on the other. Along the way, the Saint Louis Art Museum is the only building from the fair still standing in its part of the park.

Tower Grove Park on the south side was founded by Henry Shaw, the philanthropist who also gave the city the Missouri Botanical Garden. It runs 1.45 miles from end to end, 289 acres in all, the second-largest park in St. Louis, and it is one of only seven National Historic Landmark parks in the country, in the company of Central Park and the Boston Public Garden. It is open from 6am to 10pm every day.

East of it, Lafayette Park calls itself the oldest developed urban park west of the Mississippi. Thirty acres were set aside as a public square in 1836, a fence went up in 1869 to keep grazing livestock off the flowers, and the park now sits at the centre of the historic Lafayette Square neighbourhood, where its own conservancy lists walking the dog among the things people come to do.

Grant's Trail is the long walk: 11.47 miles of paved path, mostly flat and sunny, between the River des Peres Greenway and Kirkwood, with direct access to Grant's Farm and the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. The trailhead at Holmes and Leffingwell is near Big Bend Boulevard and Highway 44.

And then there is the Arch. The grounds of Gateway Arch National Park run along the riverfront downtown, and the National Park Service welcomes pets in all of its outdoor areas, so a dog can walk beneath the steel curve and along the Mississippi. Heading north next? Our Chicago guide takes over from here.

Good to Know

At the Chase Park Plaza dogs stay out of the bar and the restaurants, which room service takes care of, and they cannot be left alone in the room. The Four Seasons takes dogs up to 40 pounds, keeps them out of its bar, restaurant and lounge, and does not let them stay in the room alone. The Moonrise takes dogs in certain rooms only, so ask for one of those, and dogs stay out of its bar and restaurant.

The lead is the law in the city. St. Louis ordinance keeps every dog on a lead in streets, parks and public places, on a lead no more than six feet long held by someone who can control the dog, with the only exception inside a city dog exercise park. Tower Grove Park holds to it and asks you to clean up after your dog. On the greenways Great Rivers Greenway asks for a fixed lead of six feet or less, and at the Arch only service animals may go inside the buildings.