The Moorlands Addition is located in Clayton, St. Louis County, Missouri, just east of Clayton's business district, approximately six miles west of downtown St. Louis. It was originally planned as a private subdivision for single family dwellings. The Moorlands Addition was designed by Julius Pitzman, a well-known civil engineer and surveyor who designed many of the metropolitan area's most distinctive subdivisions, in 1922. Although several of the subdivision lots sold quickly, construction of housing was extremely slow and in 1924, only three houses had been constructed. Trustees and lot owners met in January 1925 and agreed that multi-family housing should be allowed in the subdivision. The new provision was not formally approved or unanimously agreed upon. A lawsuit ensued, filed by the property owners who did not wish to allow multi-family housing. The suit was complicated by the fact that two apartment buildings had already been constructed prior to 1925.

Despite the multi-family allowance, all other building restrictions remained intact, including mandates relating to design, construction, landscaping, streets, and property ownership. It was one of the county's earliest multi-family developments to cater to automobile owners, demonstrated by the district's numerous original underground parking garages. The development also included racial covenants that permitted "no person not wholly of Caucasian blood" to reside in the neighborhood "unless employed as a servant."

In 2009, the Moorlands Addition Apartment District was nominated, and later accepted, to the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination form is a valuable source of information on the design and history of the subdivision (see https://dnr.mo.gov/shpo/nps-nr/09000787.pdf).