St. Louis has no city ordinance restricting residential lawn ornaments, statuary, or religious displays on private property. Property maintenance code under SLRC Title 25 applies only to dilapidated or junk-like accumulations. Local Historic Districts may require Preservation Board review for permanent visible installations. Political signs receive First Amendment protections. HOAs are private under Missouri law.
St. Louis does not have a city ordinance specifically restricting residential lawn ornaments, statuary, religious displays, or yard decorations on private property. Items may remain year-round. Decorations cannot block sidewalks or encroach into the public right-of-way under SLRC Title 17, and cannot obstruct corner-visibility triangles under SLRC Title 26 sight-distance rules. The property-maintenance provisions of SLRC Title 25 (Building Code) may be cited if decorations become so dilapidated, broken, or numerous as to create a blighted condition. In any Local Historic District designated under SLRC Title 24 (Lafayette Square, Soulard, Compton Heights, Central West End, Tower Grove East, Hyde Park, Shaw, Benton Park, and others), permanent visible installations — sculpture, fountains, built-in shrines, large permanent fixtures visible from the public right-of-way — require a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Preservation Board through the Cultural Resources Office. Temporary seasonal decorations do not. Political signs on residential property receive First Amendment protection; SLRC Title 26 (Zoning) sign provisions permit non-commercial signs in residential zones subject to content-neutral size limits. Federal law (Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005) preempts HOA bans on reasonable flag displays. Missouri law preserves general HOA authority over yard ornaments.
Rare. Code-enforcement citations are possible under SLRC Title 25 for ornaments that have deteriorated into blight conditions, or under SLRC Title 17 for right-of-way obstruction. Local Historic District violations involving permanent fixtures are enforced by the Preservation Board with orders to remove or restore. HOA fines are civil.
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