The old Greyhound Bus station at 1450 N. 13th Street (the building with the colorful murals by Cbabi Bayoc) may not be standing much longer.

Earlier this week, I learned that the City of St. Louis has issued an emergency demolition order for the building. The building has a fascinating and important history behind it, so I thought I’d pull together a quick article while it still stands (unlike so many of my subjects that I only get around to exploring after they burn down or get demolished by their owners), in hopes that another outcome for it might be possible.

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Like so many of the other properties in North City owned by Paul McKee Jr. of NorthSide Regeneration, this building has stood empty for years. As a consequence, it has become a hangout for some of our city’s unhoused population and has been damaged by multiple fires, including one that turned deadly.

Those years of neglect have obscured just how remarkable this building really is. It is one of the city’s finest examples of neighborhood bank architecture and played an important role in the history of Old North St. Louis. It also housed one of St. Louis’s oldest homegrown banks, which continues to operate today. If the wrecking ball comes, the city won’t simply lose another abandoned building. It will lose a tangible piece of its history.

From Neighborhood Bank to Global Company

The story of this building actually begins a few blocks away.

On May 15, 1906, Cass Avenue Bank opened in a rented storefront at 1462 Cass Avenue. Founder Jacob Hellrung and the bank’s first president, George Bothe Sr., could not have anticipated that what they began that day would become a billion-dollar global corporation a century later. By the end of its first day, deposits totaled $51,100, and within a month, those who had provided the bank’s initial capital had already recovered their investment.

As the bank prospered, it soon outgrew its rented quarters. In 1915, Cass Avenue Bank moved into a new headquarters at 1501 Cass Avenue, an unusual building designed by the St. Louis architectural firm Wedemeyer & Stiegemeyer. Its distinctive curved corner entrance made it one of the more recognizable commercial buildings on Cass Avenue. Five years later, the bank joined the Federal Reserve System, another milestone in its early growth. This building served as the bank’s headquarters for 12 years, after which the bank leased it to the U.S. Postal Service. It still stands today as one of the few surviving reminders of the once-bustling commercial district that lined Cass Avenue.

Under bank president Harry Rehme, Cass Bank moved into its new home at 1450 N. 13th Street in 1927, where it would remain for decades. In 1929, the bank became Cass Bank & Trust Company and survived the Great Depression, even as thousands of other banks across the country failed.

During the 1950s, Cass developed an innovative “Freight Payment Plan,” a service that streamlined the processing and payment of freight invoices for trucking companies. That innovation eventually transformed the company beyond traditional banking. In 1984, the payment-processing business became Cass Information Systems. Today, Cass Information Systems remains headquartered in the St. Louis region, is publicly traded on Nasdaq, and disburses more than $94 billion annually on behalf of clients worldwide. Cass Commercial Bank, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Cass Information Systems, continues to serve businesses throughout the St. Louis area and maintains a branch down the block from its historic headquarters.

The Cass Bank and Trust Building

When Cass Bank & Trust Company commissioned its new headquarters at 1450 N. 13th Street, it wasn’t simply building a larger bank. It was making a statement.

Completed in 1927, the new headquarters was designed by the Bank Building and Equipment Company, a nationally recognized St. Louis firm that specialized in bank architecture. Rather than the ornate Beaux-Arts style popular a generation earlier, the architects chose the more restrained Neo-Classical Revival style. According to the nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, the building’s broad limestone façade, monumental colonnade of eight massive columns, and carefully balanced symmetry were intended to convey the qualities every bank wanted its customers to associate with it: strength, stability, permanence, and security.

The building’s grandeur continued inside. Customers entered a soaring two-story banking hall finished with polished stone walls and floors, massive Corinthian columns, and an elaborately decorated coffered ceiling highlighted with rich colors of blue, red, gold, and green. Decorative eagles, griffins, and other classical motifs reinforced the message that this was an institution built to inspire confidence.

The building also reflected a changing moment in American architecture. While rooted in classical design, its clean lines and restrained ornament hinted at the modern styles that would soon dominate commercial architecture. It stands as one of St. Louis’ finest examples of this transitional period and one of the best Neo-Classical bank buildings designed by the Bank Building and Equipment Company, which completed more than 1,000 bank buildings across the country before World War II.

Although its role has changed over time, it still stands as a reminder of an era when neighborhood banks invested in architecture that projected confidence and civic pride.

A Bank for the Kerry Patch and Beyond

When Cass Avenue Bank opened its doors for the first time, the surrounding neighborhood looked very different from what it does today. The bank stood near the eastern edge of the historic Kerry Patch, the Irish immigrant neighborhood that grew during the mid-19th century on land once owned by the Mullanphy family. Generations of Irish families made their homes here, building businesses, churches, and a close-knit community.

By the time the new bank was completed, the Kerry Patch had already begun to transform. Many of the Irish families who had long called the neighborhood home had moved away following the expiration of the long-term Mullanphy leases, giving way first to new immigrant communities and later to Black residents displaced by the demolition of Mill Creek Valley and the effects of redlining. The construction of the interstate highways erased much of the neighborhood east of the bank, while the construction and later demolition of the nearby Pruitt-Igoe housing complex to the west further reshaped the area. Through all these changes, Cass Bank remained at the corner of Cass and 13th for decades, serving both the evolving neighborhood and its growing commercial district (and even today, there is a drive-thru branch on the same block).

Today, it’s difficult to imagine this stretch of Cass Avenue as one of the city’s busiest neighborhood business districts. Vacant lots now surround the former bank, but for decades it stood as a reminder of the hope people once had in this neighborhood’s future.

Leaving the Building to Greyhound

By 1990, after 84 years downtown, Cass Bank relocated its headquarters to St. Louis County, bringing an end to one chapter in the building’s history. But the building wasn’t done serving the city. Just two years later, Greyhound Lines relocated its St. Louis terminal to 1450 N. 13th Street after the expansion of Cervantes Convention Center displaced the company’s longtime downtown station on North Broadway.

The former bank building proved to be a surprisingly practical home for the bus company. Greyhound adapted the main hall into a passenger waiting area and ticket counter, while former office space and drive-through areas were converted for baggage handling and other operations. When the terminal opened in May 1992, Greyhound handled between 800 and 1,000 passengers each day. The new station was considerably smaller than its predecessor, but company officials said it operated more efficiently and was easier to secure. With only two public entrances instead of 14, it was easier to keep out scammers and loiterers, both of which had been persistent problems at the previous terminal.

Originally envisioned as a temporary solution under a two-year lease from the City’s Land Reutilization Authority, the station remained in the former bank for nearly two decades. During that time, generations of St. Louisans came to know the building not as a neighborhood bank, but simply as the Greyhound station — a role that ultimately became as much a part of its identity as the institution for which it had been built.

Waiting for a New Purpose

Greyhound’s occupancy of the building ended in August 2008 when the company relocated its bus terminal to the new Gateway Transportation Center. Once again, the building stood vacant, waiting for someone to imagine its next life.

In 2010, Melinda Winchester of Lafser & Associates prepared the building's nomination for listing on the National Register of Historic Places on behalf of NorthSide Regeneration LLC, even though the property was still owned by the City's Land Reutilization Authority. The nomination notes that at that time, NorthSide Regeneration had the building under contract. The nomination was later approved, and NorthSide took ownership.

Over the years, several redevelopment proposals generated excitement but never materialized. In 2014, developers unveiled plans for Veterans Landing, a $5+ million project that would have transformed the building into a resource center for veterans and active-duty service members. The proposal envisioned a restaurant, coffee bar, ice cream parlor, business incubator, and community gathering space. The project depended on securing money to purchase the building from NorthSide Regeneration and complete the redevelopment, but that financing never materialized.

Another proposal surfaced in late 2018 and early 2019 as redevelopment around the future National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency campus at the other end of Cass gained momentum. The concept would have restored the historic bank building as part of a larger mixed-use development that included a hotel, retail space, and additional commercial buildings. Like Veterans Landing before it, the concept never progressed beyond the planning stage.

As the years passed, the vacant building continued to deteriorate. Windows were broken and boarded up, and the structure became a refuge for unhoused residents. Yet even in decline, the building remained one of the neighborhood’s most recognizable landmarks.

In 2020, St. Louis artist Cbabi Bayoc, working with Urban Strategies and Benjamin Lowder of Cherokee Street Gallery, helped give the abandoned structure a new identity.

Myisa Whitlock of Urban Strategies told St. Louis Public Radio that community members had approached them about improving the building. “They wanted to see beautification,” she said. “They wanted to see these abandoned buildings secured so young kids won’t wander in these unsafe spaces.”

Together, Bayoc and Lowder created a series of eleven vibrant murals celebrating Black life and resilience on boards that would cover the large windows. Bayoc said he wanted the artwork to both stand out and reflect the people who lived in the surrounding community. As he told St. Louis Public Radio,

“Really because of where it was and all that’s been going on, I knew that I wanted all of it to be Black folks. But even in that, I wanted everybody to be able to see something different and I wanted the work to be different. I wanted it to be different than anything anybody’s ever seen.”

Bayoc said he also hoped the art would inspire those who saw it, including the people taking shelter there. He also wanted to ensure that mounting the artwork would be done with respect for the people living in and around the abandoned building.

“It was already a challenging and complicated install, but then the considerations around that, it was really people’s homes, and a group of people’s homes, who were pretty in a fragile state and position.”

Unfortunately, despite proposals to redevelop the building and later efforts to beautify it, it has now stood vacant longer than it ever served as a bus terminal. Even though it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it has never received the investment needed to restore and reuse it. Today, its uncertain future demonstrates a broader pattern among properties owned by Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration, in which redevelopment plans too often never materialize.

And That Brings Us to Today

By the spring of 2026, the building had become the focus of growing public safety concerns. The vacant structure had long served as a refuge for unhoused individuals, and earlier this year a fire inside the building claimed one life. Violence in the surrounding area over the previous year has further heightened calls for action. Against that backdrop, the City of St. Louis condemned the building and issued an emergency demolition order.

Its owner, Paul McKee Jr., whose name has become synonymous with stalled redevelopment and abandoned properties across much of north St. Louis, responded by applying for a demolition permit. As he told the Post-Dispatch in June,

“Man, I can’t get it down fast enough.”

He blamed the building’s condition on the people who had taken shelter inside, saying, “The homeless have just destroyed it.”

It is easy to blame the people who occupied the building during its final years. It is much harder to explain why one of St. Louis’s most significant historic landmarks was allowed to sit vacant long enough for that to become possible. The people who sought shelter inside undoubtedly contributed to the building’s decline, but they did not create the conditions that allowed it to happen.

If the demolition proceeds, it will not be because this building suddenly became unsalvageable in 2026. It will be because nearly two decades passed under an owner who was unable to redevelop it while also failing to properly maintain it as it waited for a new life.

The timing is also difficult to ignore. Earlier this year, the City of St. Louis began pursuing eminent domain proceedings against several long-vacant NorthSide Regeneration properties, reflecting growing frustration with years of stalled redevelopment. Against that backdrop, the proposed demolition of one of the area’s most significant historic buildings feels less like an isolated decision and more like another chapter in a much larger story.

Having said all that, I’m encouraged that not everyone believes demolition is the answer. Neighborhood advocate Doug Eller told Fox 2 that the solution was to provide services for unhoused residents rather than demolish historic buildings, while Barbara Manzanara questioned why more dangerous structures elsewhere in the neighborhood had not been prioritized. The question on the table: Why this building, and why now?

Fourteenth Ward Alderman Rasheen Aldridge also expressed surprise at the emergency demolition order, suggesting that removing the building might simply move the activity elsewhere rather than solve the underlying problems.

A Landmark Worth Saving?

The building’s decline did not happen overnight. It followed years of vacancy, failed redevelopment plans, and deferred investment. Whatever happens next, its fate should prompt a broader conversation about how St. Louis cares for its historic landmarks before they reach a crisis point.

The former Cass Bank has already served St. Louis twice. It helped build one of the city’s oldest financial institutions, then welcomed generations of travelers as the Greyhound station. More than a century after Cass Avenue Bank first opened its doors, the building still stands, waiting for someone to imagine a third chapter.

If demolition proceeds, St. Louis won’t simply lose another vacant building. It will lose a landmark that has witnessed more than a century of the city’s history and replace it with something history can never remember: another empty lot.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to support more research like it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Unseen St. Louis. Your subscription helps support my efforts to uncover lesser-known stories about the history of St. Louis while keeping all of Unseen STL’s articles free for everyone to read. Thanks for helping preserve and share the history that makes our city unique.

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Sources

Michael R. Allen, Cass Bank, Castle Ballroom Nominated to National Register, Preservation Research Office, October 29, 2010 (Wayback Machine link)

Kim Bell and Josh Renaud, Violence has spiked on 8 blocks north of downtown St. Louis. Are homeless camps to blame? St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 23, 2026.

Jesse Bogan, Veterans ‘landing’ planned for old Cass Bank building near downtown, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 11, 2014.

Cass Avenue Bank, Built St. Louis, December 2005.

About and Since 1906. Cass Commercial Bank.

Cass Bank and Trust Company, National Register of Historic Places documentation, NPGallery Digital Asset Management System.

Chad Davis, St. Louis Artist Cbabi Bayoc Uses Murals To Beautify Abandoned North St. Louis Building, St. Louis Public Radio, October 5, 2020.

Chris Hayes, Neighbors question emergency demolition order, Fox .2, June 30, 2026

Kelly Moffitt, $5 million veterans center envisioned for former Cass Bank, St. Louis Business Journal, Nov 11, 2014.

Murals of St. Louis, Instagram post, September 26, 2020.

Abandoned St. Louis Old Cass Avenue Bank (Interior photos), Skaterbate, February 9, 2023.

Chris Stritzel, Hotel, Retail Space and Potential Cass Bank Restoration Planned at Tucker & Cass, CityScene STL, February 1, 2019.

“Transportation hub up and running - Greyhound buses begin trips out of new center Tuesday,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 20, 2008.

Melinda Winchester, 1450 13th St. Application, National Register of Historic Places, July 21, 2010 (Wayback Machine link).

Join us on Thursday, July 16, at Leviathan Books, 3211 S. Grand Blvd., for the next Unseen STL History Talk with Robin A. Hattori. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., the talk begins at 7 p.m., and cover is $5.

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The Talk

Japanese Americans have had a surprising impact in St. Louis, despite being a very small percentage of the population. This presentation will provide details about the legacy of Japanese people in St. Louis that can be traced from the 1904 World’s Fair, to the aftermath of Japanese American mass incarceration during WWII, to current-day physical relics and cultural programs that have endured over time.

This aspect of St. Louis history provides a local lens through which to examine racialized policies and practices that affected Japanese and Asian immigration, settlement, and assimilation.

The story of the Japanese and Japanese Americans in our region, which includes hard-won reparations for wartime losses, is particularly relevant to policies that the U.S. government is currently pursuing. Much of the same rationale has been used to restrict immigration and perpetuate troubling stereotypes. Yet the story of Japanese Americans can be viewed as one of resilience that may guide others in the ongoing fight to preserve civil rights and flourish as a diverse, democratic society.

The Speaker

Robin A. Hattori is passionate about elevating Asian American perspectives and voices in the Midwest. As the daughter of Japanese American parents who were incarcerated during WWII, Robin has a strong sense of social justice. She has presented on this topic locally and nationally at schools, companies and organizations. She has also played a leadership role in the digitization of Japanese American oral histories from the 1990’s, the “InVISIBLE” Asian American art exhibit, the “AAPI Voices” Oral History Project, the “Asian Americans in STL: Stories of Resilience Across Generations” Storytelling Initiative, and a discussion series exploring Asian American identity.

Robin serves on the boards of the Japan America Society Women’s Association and the St. Louis chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. As a trustee of the Missouri Historical Society, she has provided consultation on historical exhibits and also serves as chair of the MHS Education and Visitor Experience Committee. Robin works at Washington University’s Program in Occupational Therapy as a research lab manager and lives in University City with her husband Mike Kimzey.

Join Us on July 16th!

We hope you’ll join us to explore a remarkable story of resilience, community, and belonging. This fascinating look at the history of Japanese Americans in St. Louis reveals a legacy that extends far beyond what most people realize, offering fresh insight into both our city's past and the enduring values that continue to shape it today.

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Unseen St. Louis is truly a labor of love, and paid subscriptions make a real difference. They help offset the costs of running the project and allow me to research and write new stories, organize monthly history talks, and bring together a growing community of people passionate about St. Louis history. Your support is sincerely appreciated and helps ensure this work can continue.

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Rechtenwald, who has worked on LGBTQ history in St. Louis since joining the Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis project in 2016, emphasized the challenges of researching communities that often left few records of their own. Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis is an ongoing digital history project that documents the people, places, and stories that shaped LGBTQ life throughout the region.

Much of the surviving evidence in her talk comes from police reports, court documents, and newspaper coverage written by outsiders. Rather than focusing solely on legal history, the presentation sought to recover the lives of people who navigated a society that often struggled to understand gender nonconformity and self-expression. As Rechtenwald noted, these stories are fundamentally about who is allowed to be themselves in public.

Through a series of case studies spanning more than a century, the talk highlighted individuals who challenged social expectations in different ways. Among them were Florence Smith, an African American St. Louisan repeatedly arrested under the ordinance during the 1870s; Willie Winters, who spent much of their life living and working as a man despite being assigned female at birth; and Joseph Tedder, who moved between different names, occupations, and presentations throughout life. In each case, the surviving records reveal less about rigid categories and more about people attempting to build lives, relationships, and identities despite scrutiny from police, courts, and the press.

Miranda also traced how the ordinance's enforcement evolved over time. While early arrests often centered on individual cases, by the mid-twentieth century, the law had become a tool frequently used to harass people viewed as outside accepted social norms, particularly members of the LGBTQ community. Rechtenwald discussed growing resistance to the ordinance, including activism following the 1969 Halloween arrests near the Onyx Room and the eventual legal challenge that led to the law being declared unconstitutional in the mid-1980s. The result was a thoughtful and often moving examination of how seemingly obscure laws can shape everyday lives, and how recovering these stories helps create a fuller understanding of St. Louis history.

You can download Miranda’s slides below:

Dressed To Defy 2026

4.46MB ∙ PDF file

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Coming Up

IIn July, we will hear from Robin Hattori about Japanese Americans who came to St. Louis after being released from incarceration camps in Arkansas following World War II. For August, we will welcome Drew Quon, who will explore the history of the Hydraulic Press Brick Company and the Black laborers who worked there. And in September, SeeSTL tour guides will take us on a virtual trip through their favorite locations in the city.

Our talks take place on the third Thursday of each month, so mark your calendars and come out if you can.

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Support Unseen St. Louis

Unseen St. Louis is a fully independent project, and producing the research, writing, and events that I share each month requires a significant investment of time and resources.

If you find value in this work, please subscribe to stay up to date on everything I’m doing. And if you’re able, upgrading to a paid subscription directly supports the future of Unseen St. Louis and helps ensure that these stories, events, and community conversations can continue.

I truly appreciate your support.

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Join us on Thursday, June 18, at Leviathan Bookstore, 3211 S. Grand Blvd., for our next Unseen STL History Talk, Dressed to Defy: St. Louis and the History of Anti-Drag Laws. In recognition of Pride Month, local historian and archivist Miranda Rectenwald will explore a little-known chapter of St. Louis history and the people whose lives were affected by it. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., the talk begins at 7 p.m., and the cover is $5. (Note: our cover charge helps support equipment and other expenses to bring you these talks. No one who wants to attend will be turned away for lack of funds.)

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The talk

In 1843, St. Louis passed a law prohibiting people from wearing the clothing of the opposite sex. The ordinance remained on the books until 1986 (yes, just 40 years ago!) and was used for generations as a tool to harass and punish people who were queer, transgender, or gender nonconforming.

Drawing on newspaper accounts, legal records, and other surviving historical evidence, Miranda will explore how the law was enforced, how it was challenged, and its impact on the lives of ordinary St. Louisans. Along the way, we’ll explore the landmark case D.C. & M.S. v. City of St. Louis, which ultimately led to the ordinance’s downfall, and consider why this history still matters today.

The speaker

Miranda Rectenwald is curator of local history collections in the Julian Edison Department of Special Collections at Washington University Libraries. A lifelong resident of the St. Louis region, she earned a BA in History from Webster University and an MA in History and Museum Studies from the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

While at UMSL, she worked on the Old North St. Louis community history project, which led to the publication of From Village to Neighborhood: A History of Old North St. Louis with Dr. Andrew Hurley. Since 2016, she has also helped direct the Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis Project, a digital humanities initiative dedicated to documenting and preserving places associated with queer history throughout the St. Louis region. Follow them on Instagram to learn more about queer history initiatives and events in STL.

Through her work as an archivist, historian, and public scholar, Miranda has helped bring visibility to stories that have too often gone undocumented, unarchived, or overlooked.

Join us on June 18!

This month’s talk offers a rare look at a chapter of St. Louis history that has too often been overlooked. Join us at Leviathan Bookstore as we explore the people, laws, and court battles that shaped LGBTQ+ life in our city for generations.

And don’t let your friends miss out — we’d love for you to share this post with everyone who might want to attend!

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Historian Ben Gall explored how St. Louis attempted to regulate sex work during the 1800s through the “Social Evil Ordinance” of 1870, which established designated districts, mandatory medical inspections, and even a “Social Evil Hospital” near what is now Sublette Park. Rather than simply treating the topic as scandalous history, Ben examined what these laws reveal about power, gender, morality, and urban life in a rapidly growing St. Louis.

His talk traced the history of vice regulation in St. Louis back to the city’s earliest Spanish colonial days, including restrictions on alcohol, gambling, and “immoral” behavior among soldiers in the 1760s. Ben also discussed St. Louis’ 1843 anti-cross-dressing ordinance, one of the earliest such laws in the United States, which remained on the books until the 1980s.

Using census records, court cases, newspaper archives, and historic maps, Ben showed how concentrated many brothels became in Downtown St. Louis, around what is now the Arch grounds and Ballpark Village. He highlighted figures such as Eliza Haycraft, an illiterate woman who rose from poverty to become one of the wealthiest women in St. Louis through property ownership and brothel management, leaving behind an estate worth tens of millions today. He also discussed Babe Connors, a formerly enslaved Black madam whose Clark Avenue establishment became one of the city’s most influential houses and may even have helped inspire the famous song “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay.”

While these women faced surveillance, stigma, invasive medical inspections, and legal penalties, many also built financial independence and influence in a city that otherwise offered women limited opportunities for power.

Thank you to everyone who joined us at Leviathan Bookstore for another packed evening of St. Louis history, and thank you to Ben Gall for an incredibly thoughtful presentation.

You can listen to Ben’s presentation by playing the audio at the top of this post, and you can review his slides below:

Bawdy Houses, Social Evils, And Fallen Women A Survey Of Vice In St

9.47MB ∙ PDF file

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If you enjoyed this presentation, please share this post with a friend!

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Coming Up

Next month, Unseen STL History Talks welcomes Washington University Libraries curator Miranda Rectenwald for a look at St. Louis’ anti-cross-dressing law, which remained on the books from 1843 to 1986 and was used for generations to police and punish queer and transgender people in public.

In July, we will hear from Robin Hattori to learn some of the stories and contributions of Japanese Americans who came to St. Louis after being released from an internment camp in Arkansas following World War II. And in August, Drew Quon will share his research on the Hydraulic Press Brick Company and the Black laborers who worked there.

Our talks take place on the third Thursday of each month, so mark your calendars and come out if you can.

Support Unseen St. Louis

Unseen St. Louis is a fully independent project, and keeping it going takes a real investment of time, research, and resources.

If you find value in this work, please subscribe to keep up-to-date on everything that I’m doing. And upgrading to a paid subscription helps support my writing and the events that bring people together. I appreciate your support!

Subscribe now

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Long before T. S. Eliot became one of the most influential poets of the 20th century, his family was tied to one of the industries that literally shaped St. Louis.

His father, Henry Ware Eliot, was president of the Hydraulic Press Brick Company, the St. Louis firm that transformed brickmaking by replacing hand-pressed brick with stronger, denser, machine-made brick produced on an industrial scale.

From the Eads Bridge to the Anheuser-Busch Brew House, from cobblestone streets now hidden beneath layers of asphalt to buildings across the country, hydraulic brick became a cornerstone of modern St. Louis. By the late nineteenth century, the company was producing hundreds of millions of bricks a year and had become the largest pressed-brick manufacturer in the world.

This is the story of Hydraulic Press Brick: how a new machine changed the way St. Louis built itself, how the Eliot family helped turn brick into one of the city’s defining industries, and how that same family produced a poet who would spend much of his life trying to leave St. Louis behind.

Before Hydraulic: A city of hand-pressed brick

The story begins in Cheltenham, once a small resort area along Manchester Road, straddling the line between The Hill and Dogtown.

Cheltenham sits on deep seams of coal and clay formed by a syncline, a bowl-shaped folding of underground rock layers. Near the surface were clays suited for firebrick, sewer pipe, tile, and terra cotta. Deeper down was the dense red clay that would become the signature brick of St. Louis.

By the 1840s, these deposits had drawn the city’s first brick manufacturers. The Laclede Fire Brick Company was operating by 1844, and over the next several decades, the area became an industrial center of kilns, smokestacks, and clay mines, as well as nearby smelting and steel companies.

By the end of the nineteenth century, more than fifty clay manufacturing companies operated in St. Louis, creating the densest concentration of this industry in the country.

At first, every brick was made by hand. Workers pushed wet clay into wooden forms as hard as they could, sliced off the excess with wire, turned the bricks out by hand, and fired them in kilns. You can still find these bricks in the houses of older neighborhoods like Soulard and Old North, and when you look closely, you notice their irregularity. These bricks contain marks from workers’ fingers, along with small cracks or gaps, uneven edges, and occasionally the marks of animals that walked across drying bricks.

Many brick lovers romanticize these older bricks because of their handmade qualities. But the reality was that making them was slow, exhausting work, and difficult to scale as St. Louis grew.

The 1849 fire made the demand for brick even greater. People grew wary of wooden construction, while stone was harder to quarry and transport. Brick became the practical choice for rebuilding the city, and an invention that made brickmaking faster and more consistent arrived at exactly the right moment.

How hydraulic brick changed modern construction

In 1856, Ohio engineer and inventor Ethan Rogers patented what he called “a new and improved machine for molding and pressing brick by hydraulic pressure.” Rogers was the foreman of the Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Company in Cleveland, which was managed by Elisha T. Sterling. Looking to expand the company’s manufacturing beyond ironwork, Rogers turned his attention to brickmaking and developed a machine that would change the industry.

Instead of workers forcing clay into wooden molds by hand, Rogers’s machine used steam-powered hydraulic pressure to compress clay into bricks. The result was revolutionary: a stronger, denser product that could be made with far greater precision and at industrial speed.

The first hydraulic brick machine was put into service in Cleveland in 1856. Three years later, that original machine was sold to a manufacturer in Nashville and eventually melted down for ordnance during the Civil War, but by then the idea had already proven itself.

It wasn’t long before the technology reached St. Louis through Elisha’s nephew, Edward Canfield Sterling. After an unsuccessful attempt at running a lumber business, Edward returned to Cleveland and secured a financial interest in Rogers’s hydraulic dry brick press. He acquired a new 33-ton cast-iron machine and moved it to Memphis in 1860, where it produced 8 million bricks in just eleven months.

When the Civil War disrupted operations in Memphis, Sterling looked west. In 1865, he brought another of Rogers’s massive hydraulic presses to St. Louis, leasing a brickyard near Chouteau and Mississippi streets in what is now Lafayette Square. He began producing machine-pressed brick just as the war ended and the city entered a period of rapid rebuilding and expansion.

In 1868, the Hydraulic Press Brick Company was formally incorporated.

At first, many local builders dismissed machine-made brick as inferior to handmade brick. They claimed the drier clay required by the press would fail, and some refused to use it for exterior walls, insisting it belonged only in hidden partitions. There was also fear that the new machine would put people out of work. In fact, in Philadelphia, rioters smashed the city’s first steam-powered brick machine and threw the pieces into the river.

Sterling responded with proof. Government tests showed Hydraulic bricks could withstand roughly 157 tons of crushing pressure, compared to only 65 tons for common handmade bricks. James Buchanan Eads and his engineers tested the bricks for the Eads Bridge and found them superior. Contractors who initially resisted soon found themselves demanding more than Hydraulic could supply, and prices reflected that demand. While hand-pressed bricks generally sold for $15 per 1000, Hydraulic charged $21 per 1000.

That strength came with a tradeoff: the new bricks were considerably heavier. As a result, hod carriers — the laborers who hauled bricks and mortar up ladders on construction sites — demanded higher wages to carry them. To keep sales moving, Sterling personally paid the difference.

Hydraulic’s craftsmanship also showed in the variety of bricks it produced. Face bricks were smooth, durable bricks used for exterior walls. Ornamental bricks were molded into intricate decorative designs (as seen in the advertisement above). Enameled or glazed bricks were coated in colorful vitreous glaze finishes for both strength and shine. These bricks could be found in some of the city’s most recognizable buildings, including Powell Hall, the Chase Hotel, the Missouri Athletic Club, and St. Louis University High School.

As St. Louis expanded, so did Hydraulic. By 1890, the company operated six major yards in the city, including locations at Grand and Chouteau, Cheltenham, the corner of Gravois and Chippewa, the crossing of Kingshighway and the Frisco Railroad, and the Wabash Railroad crossing at Manchester Road. At its peak, it operated eleven yards in the St. Louis area. At the junction of Manchester Avenue and Kingshighway stood the company’s machine shop and Yard No. 2. By 1904, its offices had moved to the 12th floor of the Missouri Trust Building at 705 Olive Street.

Even today, the company’s footprint survives in the name of Hydraulic Avenue, which runs north-south from Bingham to Gravois through Dutchtown and Gravois Park.

The company also expanded far beyond Missouri through subsidiaries in major cities, effectively exporting St. Louis brickmaking across the country. With eleven additional plants located outside the city, places like Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, Cleveland, and beyond used red bricks made from Cheltenham clay. Even the Chrysler Building would eventually use Hydraulic brick.

By the 1890s, Hydraulic was known as the largest brick company in the world, with eleven brickyards producing more than 200 million bricks annually. When Edward Sterling retired in 1905, he consolidated those operations and handed leadership of that industrial empire to a new president: Henry Ware Eliot.

Though Hydraulic remained a major force well into the 20th century, its fortunes began to decline after the Great Depression in 1929. The company stopped making bricks entirely in 1972, shifting instead to aggregate and other construction materials. It survived in that form into the 2000s before being absorbed by an Indianapolis-based company in 2010. By then, the company that had once dominated St. Louis brickmaking had largely passed into history, but the influence of the people who ran it — and the laborers who made it possible — remained part of the city’s story.

The workers behind the city’s brick empire

Before Hydraulic brick could shape the skyline of St. Louis, its raw materials had to be dug from the ground. Miners worked underground at sites across the city, laboring in near darkness, blasting clay loose with dynamite, breaking it apart by hand, and loading it into mule-drawn carts to haul it to the surface. It was dirty, dangerous, punishing labor, and often poorly paid.

Much of that work fell to immigrant laborers as well as Black workers, the majority of whom were formerly enslaved people or their children. Irish and Italian laborers were often found in the mines, kilns, and as hod carriers hauling brick and mortar on construction sites, while German immigrants were more often represented in the skilled trade of bricklaying.

After the Civil War, and especially as Reconstruction ended, many formerly enslaved Black families moved north along the Mississippi River in search of work and safety. They were fleeing Ku Klux Klan violence, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, and the lack of opportunities outside agricultural labor. Many arrived in the rapidly growing city of St. Louis, where expanding industries offered difficult but steady work, particularly in the clay mines and brickyards.

Henry Ware Eliot wrote bluntly about the realities of that workforce. He described the scars many Black laborers still carried from enslavement — welts from overseers’ whips and wounds from bloodhounds used to hunt freedom seekers.

Yet he also viewed the company’s segregated labor structure as a practical advantage. Black workers were largely excluded from white trade unions, which limited collective action and helped management keep wages lower and suppress strikes.

He recalled sitting on the office steps with founder Edward Sterling, both armed with loaded revolvers, after being warned that a group of white brickmakers planned to come to the yard and drive the Black workers off the premises. The racial divisions within the labor force were not incidental; they were part of how companies like Hydraulic maintained control.

That tension became especially clear during the brickmakers’ strike of May 1, 1895, when more than 1,000 workers walked out across brickyards throughout the city. The strike began at the Superior Press Brick Company at Arsenal and Kingshighway and quickly spread. Striking workers marched to Hydraulic at Kingshighway and Manchester, picking up additional workers from other companies along the way.

The Post-Dispatch reported that, because of high demand, workers at Hydraulic were laboring day and night, giving them a strong incentive to join the strike. In total, sixteen companies were affected, and brick manufacturing across the city was shut down.

Ultimately, the labor action led to wage increases for many of the workers — except at Hydraulic, where, despite 300 workers joining the strike, racial divisions helped the company maintain tighter control over labor and avoid the same pay increases seen elsewhere.

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The Eliots: From bricks to literature

By the early 20th century, the Hydraulic Press Brick Company had become one of the largest industrial businesses in St. Louis, and company leadership had passed to the Eliot family.

Today, the best-known name in that family is Thomas Stearns (T. S.) Eliot. Long before he became one of the defining literary voices of the twentieth century, his grandfather and father were already prominent figures in St. Louis, helping shape the city through education, civic leadership, and the Hydraulic Press Brick Company.

T. S. Eliot’s grandfather, William Greenleaf Eliot, arrived in St. Louis in 1834 as a Unitarian minister and quickly became one of the city’s most important civic figures. In 1853, he founded Eliot Seminary, which would later become Washington University in St. Louis, and in 1859, he founded Mary Institute (now MICDS). Though often described as an abolitionist, Eliot opposed slavery but supported gradual emancipation and colonization rather than immediate abolition, and he supported efforts to keep Missouri in the Union during the Civil War. He was also involved in founding what would become the Saint Louis Art Museum.

William’s son, Henry Ware Eliot, took a different path from his father. Rather than following William into the ministry and civic leadership, he entered business. In 1874, T. S. Eliot’s father joined Hydraulic Press Brick as secretary and treasurer, eventually becoming president in 1905 and later chairman of the board. For decades, he managed payroll, debts, clay acquisitions, expansion into other states, and the day-to-day operations of what had become one of the largest brick manufacturers in the country.

Into this world, Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 at 2635 Locust Street. He spent the first sixteen years of his life in St. Louis. He attended Smith Academy, Washington University’s former boys’ preparatory school, and later lived with his family at 4446 Westminster Place, a brick house his father built using materials from the company.

T. S. Eliot would spend much of his adult life trying to leave St. Louis behind. He moved east for college, studying at Harvard University, then settled in England. He became a British citizen in 1927 and eventually became one of the defining literary voices of modernism. He’s famous for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land, and won the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature. Today, he is considered one of the most celebrated poets of the 20th century.

But although he left St. Louis behind, it never fully left his writing. He reportedly took the name “Prufrock” from the St. Louis furniture company Prufrock-Litton, and the yellow fog in his poetry echoed industrial smoke drifting across the Mississippi River. Years later, he admitted how deeply the city had shaped him, writing, “It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done.”

And in T. S. Eliot’s poem Choruses from the Rock, he offered a quiet callback to his family’s industry:

Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks
Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
There is work together
A Church for all
And a job for each
Every man to his work.

Despite being born here, T. S. Eliot is barely visible in St. Louis today, making it easy to forget he lived here at all. His birthplace is gone, replaced by a parking lot. The T. S. Eliot House still stands on Westminster Place as a designated City Landmark, but as a private residence, it passes largely unnoticed. The only real public memorial to him is a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Most people know Eliot as a British poet, and few realize he was born and raised in St. Louis, much less that his father helped build the city through the Hydraulic Press Brick Company.

The connection between the poet and the bricks that built St. Louis has largely been forgotten, but both are part of the same St. Louis story — and both deserve to be remembered.

For more about St. Louis bricks, check out the recap posts (with audio!) from two past Unseen STL History Talks:

Thanks for reading! Be sure to subscribe to Unseen St. Louis for more deep dives into St. Louis history, along with announcements for upcoming history talks, including one later this summer on Hydraulic Press Brick and its Black workforce.

If you liked this article, be sure to share it with your friends. And if you value this kind of independent research and writing, consider upgrading to a paid subscription, which makes it possible to keep doing this work — and is deeply appreciated.

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Sources:

Aaron Belz Perspective – Do We Care? Do We Dare?, St Louis Magazine, April 10, 2007.

BRICK YARDS ARE NOW IDLE.: ONE THOUSAND MEN QUIT WORK EARLY THIS MORNING, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 1, 1895.

Webster Bull, T.S. Eliot “Choruses from the Rock” (A Few Words for Wednesday), Patheos, January 24, 2017.

Frances Dickey, “Hydraulic: The Company and Its Archive,” Time Present: The Newsletter of the International T. S. Eliot Society

I Am The Place That Made Enough Bricks Annually To Encircle The Equator, Missouri Historical Society.

Mike Jones, 1872: Like A Ton Of Bricks (Part 2), Lafayette Square Archives, July 2, 2023.

Chris Kallmyer interview with Michael Allen, Chris Kallmyer Studio (Archive.org link)

Hydraulic-Press Brick Company, “The Clayworking Plants of St. Louis” in the journal Brick, Special Issue on St. Louis, May 1904, p. 235-239.

Chris Naffziger, The Clay Industry in South St. Louis, St. Louis Patina, March 29, 2021.

Drew Quon, Lecture on formerly enslaved Black workers at Hydraulic Brick, National Building Arts Center, February 14, 2026.

Stefene Russell, Bric(k)olage, St. Louis Magazine, August 20, 2010.

Al Stamborski, “Chicagoans may buy 1868 company here,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb, 8, 2000.

Mimi Stiritz, Hydraulic Brick Company: The Early Years, National Building Arts Center, 2004.

Adam Teich, Aidan Smyth, Cecilia Wright, Detric Henderson, and Nkemjika Emenike, WashU’s founder was not an abolitionist: Who was William Greenleaf Eliot? Student Life: The independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis, Nov. 16, 2021.

T.S. Eliot House - City Landmark #59, City of St Louis.

Unseen St. Louis, “Unseen STL History Talks - All About Bricks” (featuring Mitch Goist), Oct. 27, 2023.

Paul Wagman, “History And Color, But No Bricks Or Profit,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 4, 1985.

William Greenleaf Eliot, Wikipedia.

Glynn Young, Finding Eliot in St. Louis, tweetspeak, September 1, 2015.

On Thursday, May 21st, Unseen STL History Talks welcomes Ben Gall, who will examine some of the history of sex work and vice laws in St. Louis from the mid-19th century through the early 20th century.

The talk takes place at Leviathan Bookstore, 3211 S. Grand, with doors opening at 6:30 pm and the program beginning at 7 pm. A $5 cover helps support the series.

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The Talk

In the late 1800s, St. Louis was used as a case study for how cities handled what were referred to as “social evils,” with special emphasis on sex work and prostitution. One of the most notable parts of this experiment was the city’s system for inspecting and regulating sex workers.

In this talk, Ben Gall will explore the experiences of the people who engaged in sex work and vice during this era, how local government attempted to legislate morality, the motivations behind those laws, and the geography of vice in St. Louis itself.

Rather than reducing the story to scandal, this talk examines how policy, public health, class, and gender shaped the lives of real people navigating a city determined to control them.

The Speaker

Ben Gall is a public historian, heritage leader, and St. Louis history nerd. Born and raised in the St. Louis metro, Ben has provel cheese in his veins and toasted ravioli in his heart. He grew up in West County and moved to Dogtown with his wife and cat in 2021.

His historical career has taken him across the United States, with experience at the Missouri Civil War Museum, the Missouri History Museum, the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia. Ben now works as a historian for local government and as a neighborhood guide in Dogtown and on the Hill for See STL tours.

Ben’s passion is researching St. Louis history, how people have lived here, and how neighborhoods have changed over time. He holds a BA and MA in public history from the University of Missouri–St. Louis, and is currently working toward his Ed.D. in Heritage Leadership there as well.

Hope to see you on May 21st!

This is a topic that sits at the intersection of urban history, public policy, and the everyday lives of people who are often left out of the historical record. We hope you’ll join us for what should be a fascinating and thoughtful conversation.

Support Unseen St. Louis

If you value this kind of programming, consider subscribing to Unseen St. Louis. Subscribers receive original history articles, event announcements, recaps, and audio recordings after the talks. Your support helps cover the real costs behind this work and keeps these conversations going.

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Hope to see you on May 21st— and be sure to share this with your friends.

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Andrew Theising, author of Made in USA: East St. Louis (available at Leviathan Bookstore), traced the city’s rise as an industrial powerhouse and how that foundation shaped everything that followed. In its early years, East St. Louis actively courted industry with low taxes and minimal regulation, becoming a place where railroads, stockyards, and factories could operate with few constraints. That approach fueled rapid growth, but it also meant the city was never designed to provide the kinds of services residents would later need.

From there, Andrew walked us through the forces that reshaped the city: the explosive industrial era, the 1917 race massacre/pogrom, and then finally mid-century deindustrialization and the population loss that followed.

Debra Moore carried that story forward into the present, grounding it in lived experience in East St. Louis and the realities the city faces today. She spoke about the lasting effects of disinvestment, the loss of population and tax base, and the structural challenges that make recovery difficult. The city faces everything from aging, insufficient infrastructure that can’t support new industry, to persistent issues with governance and decision-making.

At the same time, she highlighted something often overlooked: people and organizations continue to invest in East St. Louis, from housing initiatives to community-based efforts quietly but consistently working to stabilize neighborhoods. The city may be experiencing problems with its governance and infrastructure, but it is still a place where thousands of people live and work

Together, they made it clear that East St. Louis is far more complex and fascinating than people give it credit for, and it’s not the post-apocalyptic nightmare that some people, even in St. Louis, make it out to be.

We closed with a thoughtful discussion about what comes next. The conversation touched on everything from infrastructure and environmental challenges to regional responsibility and economic development. What would it take to attract investment? How do you rebuild a tax base? And perhaps most importantly, how do you create systems that support residents rather than work against them?

East St. Louis is often dismissed, especially from the west side of the river — but it shouldn’t be. It’s a place with deep history, real challenges, and people who continue to work towards its future. Understanding that full picture — the good and the bad — is the first step toward having a more honest conversation about where it goes from here.

Listen to the conversation by clicking on the main image, and download Andy’s slides below:

Unseen Made In Usa Slides Updated

3.56MB ∙ PDF file

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If you enjoyed this presentation or learned something new about our neighbors to the east, please share this post with a friend!

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Coming Up

Next up in May, we’ll shift gears and dive into the world of vice in St. Louis history with historian Ben Gall. In June, we will celebrate St. Louis queer history with Miranda Rechtenwald, and in July, we will learn some of the stories and contributions of Japanese Americans who came to St. Louis after being released from an internment camp in Arkansas following World War II.

Our talks take place on the third Thursday of each month, so mark your calendars and come out if you can.

Support Unseen St. Louis

Unseen St. Louis is a fully independent project, and keeping it going takes a real investment of time, research, and resources.

If you find value in this work, please subscribe to keep up-to-date on everything that I’m doing. And upgrading to a paid subscription helps support my writing and the events that bring people together. I appreciate your support!

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On Thursday, April 16th, Unseen STL History Talks welcomes historian Andrew Theising for a deep dive into the story of East St. Louis. The talk takes place at Leviathan Bookstore, 3211 S. Grand, with doors opening at 6:30 pm and the program beginning at 7 pm. A $5 cover helps support the series.

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The Talk

Andrew Theising brings more than 30 years of research on East St. Louis to this talk, along with a striking collection of historic photographs. He will discuss how the city rose, how it functioned at its peak, and what led to its unraveling.

He will walk the audience through the city’s transformation into a major industrial center, highlighting the role of railroads, the National Stock Yards, and the manufacturing base that made East St. Louis an economic powerhouse. He will also explore the realities behind that growth and how inequality and tension shaped everyday life in the city.

He will also address the 1917 race riots, the shifting economics of industry, and why corporations decided to relocate. Through images and analysis, Theising will connect those moments to the longer arc of disinvestment and abandonment, offering a clearer picture of how and why the city changed over the past century.

The Speaker

Andrew Theising is a professor emeritus of Political Science from SIUE who has spent more than 30 years studying East St. Louis and the greater St. Louis region. His work focuses on the intersection of history, governance, and urban development, and he has authored several books on these subjects. He currently serves as treasurer of both the East St. Louis Historical Society and the Florissant Valley Historical Society.

People attending his talk will be able to purchase copies of Made in U.S.A. — East St. Louis: The 20th Anniversary Revised Edition at Leviathan Bookstore, and he will be available to sign them afterward.

Hope to see you on April 16th!

The story of East St. Louis is one of ambition, labor, conflict, and resilience, and it raises important questions about how cities grow, who benefits, and what happens when those systems break down. On April 16th, join us for a chance to better understand a place that has long been central to the region’s identity.

Support Unseen St. Louis

If you value this kind of programming, consider subscribing to Unseen St. Louis. Subscribers receive original history articles, event announcements, recaps, and audio recordings after the talks. Your support helps cover the real costs behind this work and keeps these conversations going.

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Hope to see you on April 16th — and be sure to share this with someone who should be in the room.

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Last Thursday, Kyle Olson brought that world into focus with a wide-ranging and thought-provoking talk on Greater Cahokia, the Mississippian period, and the deep Indigenous history of this region. Beginning with a land acknowledgment and a reminder that this landscape has been home to many nations long before St. Louis was founded, Olson set the stage for a story that stretches back more than a thousand years.

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A visit to Greater Cahokia

One of the central ideas of the evening was that Cahokia was far more than the large mound across the river in Illinois. It was a large indigenous city that was part of a much larger network of communities around St. Louis and throughout much of the eastern US. What we call Cahokia was the center of it, but it was connected to dozens of other sites, both nearby and far beyond the region.

Around 1050 CE, something shifted in ways that researchers still can’t fully explain. Within a relatively short span of time, people came together to create Cahokia as a planned city rather than a settlement that grew gradually over generations. They laid out the city with intention, organizing mounds, plazas, and central features in ways that reflected a shared structure and worldview.

Olson described Cahokia as a place that drew people in from across the region. Evidence suggests people traveled there, gathering in large numbers for events, ceremonies, and shared activities. Tens of thousands of people lived in and moved through this landscape centuries before European settlement. The plazas at Cahokia were active spaces where people gathered for ceremonies, feasts, and public events. One of the most recognizable spectacles was the game of chunkey, played with a rolling stone disc and thrown spears or poles, sometimes involving upwards of a thousand participants and spectators.

Olson discussed “black drink,” a caffeinated beverage made from yaupon holly that was consumed before important events. It was used for purification, inducing vomiting as a way to cleanse the body and prepare for participation in communal or spiritual activities.

The influence of Cahokia can be traced across a wide geographic area, where similar mound-and-plaza layouts, artistic styles, and symbolic imagery appear at sites throughout the eastern United States. Even after Cahokia declined in the 14th century, likely due to a combination of environmental pressures and social change, those patterns continued in other communities.

Perhaps most compelling for me was Olson’s final point, drawing on the work of David Graeber and David Wengrow: that some of the political ideas we associate with the Enlightenment may have been shaped in part by Indigenous societies that emerged after the rise and fall of Cahokia. Even the culture of early modern European coffeehouses, with their mix of caffeine, tobacco, and political discussion, echoes practices already present here, where communal gatherings were structured around ritual drinks like black drink and shared dialogue.

It is remarkable to consider that Cahokia’s legacy may extend far beyond the Midwest, reaching into the intellectual foundations of the modern world.

You can click on the image at the top of this post to listen to the presentation, and you can download the slides below:

Olson Presentation 2026

8.9MB ∙ PDF file

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Coming Up

We’ve got a great lineup this spring. In April, Andrew Theising will be joining us (a change from what was previously announced) to take a closer look at the complex and often troubled history of East St. Louis. Then in May, we’ll shift gears and dive into the world of vice in St. Louis history with historian Ben Gall.

Our talks take place on the third Thursday of each month, so mark your calendars and come out if you can.

Support Unseen St. Louis

Unseen St. Louis is independent work. As my own expenses have increased, continuing to devote the necessary time to research, writing, and organizing events depends more than ever on paid support.

Upgrading to a paid subscription helps make this work sustainable. It allows me to keep prioritizing deep research, careful storytelling, and community programming without having to scale back.

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On Thursday, March 19th, Unseen STL History Talks is excited to welcome Kyle Olson to our monthly series at Leviathan Bookstore, 3211 S. Grand. The talk begins at 7 pm, doors open at 6:30 pm, and there is a $5 cover charge.

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The Talk

Kyle’s topic concerns indigenous history in St. Louis. He will primarily focus on “Greater Cahokia” and explain some of the major areas of research on the site, both past and present. His emphasis will be not only on some of the spectacular features of the site (e.g., Monk’s Mound, the plazas, Woodhenge, Mound 72, etc.) but also on the debates around the nature and timing of significant cultural developments at the site and its long-term impact on the history of the broader region.

He will also share some of the latest research about the various extensions of Cahokia in the American Bottom and beyond (e.g., the St. Louis mound group, the East St. Louis mound group, the Richland complex). He believes people should know about this topic not only because Cahokia is our region’s UNESCO World Heritage site but also because these mounds are sacred land for a number of Native nations.

With the passage of an update to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 2023 and the upcoming reopening of the Interpretive Center at the state park in Collinsville, the way the site is being stewarded and presented to the public is changing in positive ways. He hopes to help raise more public awareness of this globally significant place right in our backyard.

The Speaker

Kyle Olson is an archaeologist and historian who teaches the archaeology of the St. Louis region at Washington University in St. Louis. His field school — where he first learned to excavate—was at Cahokia’s Mound 66 (“Rattlesnake Mound”) with Dr. Tim Pauketat, one of the leading Cahokia scholars. He has stayed closely engaged with the scholarship ever since.

You can follow Kyle at:

• Website: http://olsonkg.com

• Instagram: @archaeodandy

• Instagram: @st_louminaries_show

• Twitter: @olsonkyleg

Come out — and dig in!

If you care about St. Louis history, this is essential context. The mounds are not a footnote to the city’s story — they are part of the deep history that shaped everything that came after.

Join us on March 19th, settle in at Leviathan, and spend an evening thinking bigger about this place we call home.

And if you value this kind of programming, be sure to subscribe to Unseen St. Louis.

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Subscribers receive original history articles, event announcements, and recaps, along with audio recordings, after the talks. Your support keeps these conversations going.

Hope to see you on March 19th — and be sure to share this post with your friends!

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Near the end of the novel, Berry identifies the killer as Francis Tumblety. Naturally, I looked him up. As it turns out, Tumblety was real and is considered one of the primary suspects in the Ripper case. What stopped me cold was discovering that he once lived in St. Louis and even chose this city as the place where he would die.

Astute readers may remember that Maggie Stiefvater’s novel The Listeners led me to the story of Robert Prager, a German immigrant who was lynched during WWI and buried just down the street from me.

Once again, I had unexpectedly stumbled onto a weird and lesser-known moment in St. Louis history. So I followed it, dipping my toes into the world of Ripper scholarship and true crime.

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A basic history of Jack the Ripper

To see how Tumblety became entangled in this story, we first need to look back to Whitechapel in 1888.

In the late summer and autumn of 1888, a series of brutal murders in Whitechapel, in London’s East End, captured international attention. Between August and November of that year, at least five women — Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly — were killed in attacks that involved throat-cutting and severe abdominal mutilation. These five are commonly referred to as the “canonical five.” Police files from the period and many modern researchers list a few additional Whitechapel victims whose cases may or may not be connected.

The killer of at least those five women became known as “Jack the Ripper” after a letter dated September 25, 1888, was sent to the Central News Agency and signed with that name. A follow-up postcard soon referred to the “double event” of September 30 and again used the name. Scholars still debate whether these communications were actually written by the murderer or were a hoax, but the name itself proved enduring. Intense newspaper coverage, public fear, and speculation about the murderer’s possible medical knowledge helped transform the crimes into a global sensation. Despite a large-scale police investigation, no one was ever conclusively identified or convicted.

More than a century later, the case remains unsolved. Over 100 individuals — ranging from local laborers to doctors, artists, aristocrats, and foreign visitors — have been proposed as suspects by professional historians and amateur researchers alike. Modern forensic techniques, including attempts at DNA analysis, have not produced definitive findings. As a result, the identity of Jack the Ripper remains one of the most enduring mysteries in criminal history.

Dr. Francis Tumblety: “Indian Herb Doctor”

Irish-born Francis Tumblety (c. 1833–1903) grew up in Rochester, New York, after his family immigrated to the United States. Despite having no formal medical training, in the 1850s he proclaimed himself an “Indian Herb” doctor, selling patent medicines and promoting herbal remedies. However, many contemporaries labeled him as a quack.

Tumblety was nothing if not a showman. He paraded down main streets on horseback in a plumed helmet, with an assistant dressed as a Native American trailing behind him to hand out advertisements. He denounced mainstream physicians using theatrical language and promised that his herbal remedies could cure everything from minor blemishes to life-threatening diseases.

Most importantly to his story, he understood how to keep himself in the public eye. As he wrote in 1889, “Although no great admirer of Barnum, I nevertheless regard him as a great authority in the matter of successfully conducting a business, and he himself considers advertising as the great element of his success.”

This traveling snake-oil salesman traveled widely across the United States and Canada, building a lucrative practice while repeatedly attracting legal trouble for moral offenses, fraud, and more serious crimes. In Montreal in 1857, he was arrested after an undercover police operation, accused of attempting to induce a miscarriage by selling pills and a liquid to a woman who was not actually pregnant. Charged under new legislation prohibiting the sale of “poison or noxious things,” he briefly faced jail before the case collapsed. A few years later, after one of his patients died in New Brunswick, he quietly returned to the United States.

Tumblety arrives in St. Louis

The self-proclaimed “Great Indian Herb Doctor” arrived in St. Louis in 1863, setting up shop on Third Street near Pine. At the entrance to his rooms stood wooden tubs filled with soil and evergreen plants — living advertisements for the supposed healing power of roots and herbs. He later moved to rooms on Olive Street between Third and Fourth, over McAlpin’s tailor shop, where he received “the afflicted.” By 1865, he was associated with the firm Blackburn & Co., operating out of 52 North Third Street and widely advertising Indian herb cures.

Shortly after his time in St. Louis, he published a short promotional book outlining his medical philosophy and filling its pages with testimonials from grateful patients. He claimed cures for everything from pimples to consumption and even cancer.

As noted before, Tumblety understood that medicine alone would not make him famous — he was all about spectacle. One newspaper recalled that when he first opened on Olive Street,

he hired a newsboy to perambulate the streets, with his face painted red like an Indian boy, and his head adorned with long feathers. This boy would stand at the foot of the stairs, and deal out to passers programmes and “dodgers.” [Dodgers were flyers or handbills.]

Contemporary reports described how each afternoon at 4 p.m., Tumblety rode out on horseback accompanied by a valet and followed by a greyhound. With jet-black curling hair, a heavy mustache, patent leather boots, and a navy coat and vest trimmed with closely-set gold buttons, he cut a striking figure.

Unfortunately for Tumblety, during the Civil War, in a city under tight military control, that theatricality eventually crossed a line. The Provost Guard — the Union Army’s military police — arrested him for wearing the uniform and insignia of an army surgeon, honors he had not earned.

Tumblety, characteristically, flipped the narrative, and blamed his arrest on envy. In his telling, jealous competitors and “might-is-right” authorities persecuted him for nothing more than personal flair.

As he wrote:

I have been charged with eccentricity in dress, but I presumed, as this is a free country, that so long as a person does not outrage decency or propriety, he has a perfect right to suit his own taste in the color and fashion of his garment…

For Tumblety, even arrest became part of the performance.

Under suspicion after Lincoln’s assassination

Tumblety had a knack for making a name for himself. He also had a knack for getting arrested.

In early 1861, before settling in St. Louis, Tumblety rode on horseback behind Abraham Lincoln as the newly-elected president paraded through New York, an audacious move that seems designed to draw attention — and perhaps favor — from the incoming administration.

Around this same period, he was struggling with health issues (it appears he wasn’t able to cure himself with his Indian herb remedies!) and claimed to be considering a trip to London. In a book published in 1889, Tumblety claimed that he had received the following letter of introduction from none other than Lincoln himself:

WASHINGTON, June 12, 1863.

Dear Sir — The bearer of this, Francis Tumblety, M. D., an esteemed friend of mine, is about to visit London for the first time, and will consequently be a stranger in your metropolis. Any attention which you may extend to him will be greatly appreciated by

Your friend and humble servant,

LINCOLN.

Whether he knew Lincoln personally or not is unclear, but he certainly admired the president.

Then came April 1865 and Lincoln’s assassination. Tumblety traveled to Springfield, Illinois, to attend a ceremony honoring the fallen president. But after returning to St. Louis, on May 9, 1865 — less than a month after the assassination — he was arrested on orders of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, accused of complicity in the conspiracy, and transported to Washington for detention. Authorities believed he had associated with David Herold, who had been captured with John Wilkes Booth. Some contemporary sources suggest that Tumblety either employed Herold or that the two men were partners.

Tumblety later claimed that, beyond the assassination accusation, he was also mistaken for Dr. Blackburn of yellow-fever-plot notoriety because he had done business under that name in St. Louis. At the time, a Dr. L. P. Blackburn was under suspicion for an alleged scheme to spread yellow fever in Northern cities by distributing contaminated clothing and blankets during the war, and the shared name only deepened the confusion.

Tumblety described being taken to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington and held for weeks “without the formality of an examination,” calling it “a persecution worthy the dark epoch of the middle ages.” Despite rumors linking him to David Herold — and even to Booth himself — Tumblety denied any association, and no evidence ever tied him directly to the plot. By May 30, he was released without charge.

During his imprisonment, Tumblety reportedly suffered an attack of typhoid fever, lost his hair, and emerged physically diminished. After his release, he went to New York and then returned to St. Louis.

Time to go to London

In the wake of his Lincoln-related arrest — during which federal authorities ransacked his home and office and, according to Tumblety, seized a considerable sum of money that was never returned — he carried his act across the Atlantic.

By the late 1860s he was in London, and over the next nearly two decades he moved restlessly between America and Europe, cultivating his persona while never lingering long in one place. By 1888, he was once again in England.

That autumn, as the Whitechapel murders terrorized the city, Tumblety was temporarily residing in a boarding house near the East End. On November 7, 1888, he was arrested, not for murder, but on charges of “gross indecency” and indecent assault involving four men between July and early November. (Under Victorian law, sexual relations between men were criminal offenses punishable by prison terms with hard labor; homosexuality would remain illegal in England for nearly another century.)

He was released on bail of £300, with a hearing set for November 20 at the Old Bailey and the trial postponed to December 10. While he awaited trial, Scotland Yard’s interest in him appears to have deepened. He was reportedly questioned on suspicion related to the Whitechapel murders on November 12. Things didn’t look good for him — he was an eccentric quack doctor with a history of scandals, who lived near the crime scenes, and was already under arrest for moral offenses.

On November 20, Tumblety fled England under the alias “Frank Townsend.” He crossed to France and, on November 24, boarded the steamship La Bretagne for New York. His departure was abrupt and raised more questions, as Mary Jane Kelly’s death — the last of the ‘canonical’ murders definitely attributable to Jack the Ripper — occurred on November 9.

American newspapers quickly linked his London arrest to the Ripper case. The New York Times reported the connection, and the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester quoted an acquaintance who remarked, “Knowing him as I do I should not be the least surprised if he turned out to be Jack the Ripper.” British papers, however, did not publicly connect his name to the murders at the time, and New York police later stated there was no proof of his complicity and that the offense for which he was under bond in London was not extraditable.

After returning to the United States, Tumblety published a second book in 1889, the year following the Whitechapel murders. In it, he revisited many of the same reflections on science and medicine that had appeared in his earlier 1866 volume and devoted considerable space to recounting his travels. Notably, he did not directly address the growing speculation linking him to Jack the Ripper. Instead, he filled the book with letters from friends attesting to his good character and alluded — without naming specifics — to what he described as malicious press attacks.

As he wrote:

Now let me say a word about the attacks which certain American newspapers recently made upon me, attacks that were as unfounded as the onslaught made on the great Irish leader [Parnell]. While I was not in a position to defend myself, these papers continued their foul slanders, but my friends will readily see, from the foregoing pages and from the testimonials that follow, how utterly base and wholly groundless these aspersions were.

Could Tumblety have been Jack the Ripper?

Was the flamboyant “Indian Herb Doctor” who once walked the streets of St. Louis also the most infamous unidentified killer in Victorian London? The evidence is largely circumstantial — but it is persistent enough that the question refuses to go away.

By 1888, Tumblety was no stranger to scandal. He had faced repeated arrests, including charges involving relationships with men at a time when homosexuality was criminalized in both Britain and the United States. He was also known to frequent female sex workers and reportedly blamed them for infecting him with syphilis. Later accounts describe him expressing hostility toward women in the sex trade; one acquaintance claimed he once said that “all street walkers should be disemboweled.”

In Whitechapel that autumn, the murders followed a chilling pattern: throats cut, bodies mutilated, reproductive organs removed. In at least two cases, uteri were taken. Even contemporary investigators speculated that the killer might possess anatomical knowledge.

That speculation intersects with one of the most controversial claims about Tumblety— that he collected preserved medical specimens in jars, including women’s uteri. The story largely traces to Colonel C. S. Dunham, whose credibility is debated, but the allegation has never entirely faded.

What is not disputed is that Scotland Yard noticed him. In November 1888, Assistant Commissioner Robert Anderson cabled American authorities about Tumblety. Within days, he fled England. If one limits the crimes to the five “canonical” murders, they ceased after his departure, even as both British and American authorities continued to monitor him.

Even his death did not end the speculation. An inventory of his belongings listed diamond rings, a gold watch, and two inexpensive imitation rings. Annie Chapman, one of the canonical victims, was reportedly missing cheap rings when her body was found. No link has been proven, but some suggest this is a compelling clue.

The strongest official endorsement of suspicion comes from a 1913 letter rediscovered in 1993, in which former Detective Chief Inspector John Littlechild described Tumblety as having been “amongst the suspects” and “a very likely one.” The letter is widely regarded as authentic.

Yet all of this circumstantial evidence is not proof. No physical evidence ties him to the scenes, and eyewitness descriptions do not clearly match him. What remains is a pattern of suspicion, unresolved and still debated.

A final return to St. Louis

After returning to the United States, Tumblety went back to Rochester and moved in with an elderly female relative, using her home as both residence and office. By the time of the 1900 census, he was living in Baltimore. His health was declining, and sensing that the end was near, he made a deliberate choice: he would return to St. Louis to die.

We don’t know why he returned here. Perhaps he felt at home among the Irish Catholic immigrants. Maybe he felt safer from gossips and journalists. Or perhaps he just wanted to return to the city where he had apparently found a degree of stability and personal success.

Whatever the reason, on April 26, 1903, he checked into St. John’s Hospital under an assumed name. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article published a few days after his death, Tumblety showed up at the hospital looking like a pauper. Yet he secured a private room and told a nurse, “The only poor thing about me is my health.” As his condition worsened, he summoned a lawyer and a priest. Only then did he reveal his identity, extracting a promise of secrecy, but he refused to discuss his past (and perhaps a secret he would take to his grave?)

Although his health was failing, he still tried to get out and about. One day, he went out for a walk. When he returned to the hospital, he sat down on the steps and fell asleep, at which point he pitched forward, breaking his nose and suffering a shock from which he never recovered. On May 28, 1903, at the age of 82, Francis Tumblety died of heart disease.

The obituary described him as a wealthy and widely known traveling physician who had often visited St. Louis in earlier years. At the time of his death, his estate was valued at $138,000 — a substantial fortune for the time.

His estate remained tied up in probate for years. He had left a considerable sum to the Catholic Church, prompting disputes from heirs who sought to have the will administered in New York rather than St. Louis. In the end, although he chose St. Louis as the place of his final days, he was buried in Rochester’s Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

The question that remains

Francis Tumblety made a spectacle of himself wherever he went. He rode through cities in plumed helmets, published books crowded with testimonials, and reproduced grand letters of introduction, claiming the admiration of figures as elevated as Lincoln and even Napoleon. Whether those endorsements were genuine (or embellished) seems almost beside the point. What mattered was the impression. He understood that notoriety could be cultivated — and that it could be as profitable as any medicine he sold.

Unfortunately, notoriety also had its costs, and trouble followed him closely. Each time he was arrested or drawn into suspicion, he reemerged indignant, casting himself as the persecuted genius hemmed in by envious men.

Was he a con artist? Almost certainly. Was he a serial killer? That question lingers.

In the end, what remains is the portrait of a man drawn to attention and repeatedly orbiting history’s flashpoints. Whether by design or coincidence, Francis Tumblety managed to attach his name to moments far larger than himself. He never became a household name — but he made certain he would not be entirely forgotten.

In an era when so much content is shaped by corporate ownership and large institutions, Unseen St. Louis remains entirely independent. If you appreciate these deep dives into history and want to see this work continue, please subscribe and share these articles with your friends. And if you have the means, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

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Sources:

Julie Berry, If Looks Could Kill, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2025.

Julie Berry, The rediscovery of Francis Tumblety: Making the case for an elusive - and local - suspect in the world’s most famous unsolved murders, Livingston County News (NY), October 11, 2025.

“Dr. Tumblety: Some Recollections of the St Louis Career of This Widely Known Person,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 23, 1890.

Scott Hannaford, A Theory on Francis Tumblety, Casebook: Jack the Ripper.

Michael Hawley, Tumblety’s Rings, Ripperologist 128 October 2012.

Michael Hawley, Charles A. Dunham Part II: Tumblety’s Anatomical Collection Reconsidered, The New Independent Review, April 2012.

Michael Hawley, Dr. Francis Tumblety, Jack the Ripper Tour website.

Joe Holleman, Spotlight: Was Jack the Ripper a resident of St. Louis? St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 4, 2017.

The Indian Herb Doctor: More about HIm. Full Particulars of his arrest at St. Louis, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 10, 1865. Posted on JTR Forums (Jack the Ripper) April 26, 2014.

Richard Jones, A Brief History of the Whitechapel Murders, Jack the Ripper 1888 website.

Richard Jones, Dr. Francis Tumblety: An American Suspect, Jack the Ripper 1888 website.

Karen Longwell, Jack the Ripper suspect Francis Tumblety once lived in Hamilton, Insauga Ontario Local News, April 21, 2023.

Tony McMahon, Did One Man Really Connect Abraham Lincoln’s Death and the Identity of Jack the Ripper?, History is Now Magazine.

The Metropolitan Police, The Enduring History of Jack the Ripper, The National Archives (UK), June 11, 2006.

Ripper Letters, Casebook: Jack the Ripper.

Tumblety Again, Casebook: Jack the Ripper.

Tumblety: Fact and Fiction, Webster Museum (Webster, NY).

Francis Tumblety (1833-1903) a.k.a. J.H. Blackburn, Frank Townsend, Casebook: Jack the Ripper.

Francis Tumblety obituary, St. Louis Republic, May 29, 1903.

Francis Tumblety and Jack the Ripper, Wikipedia.

Francis Tumblety, A few passages in the life of Dr. Francis Tumblety, the Indian herb doctor… Cincinnati: Published by the author, 1866. (Archived on Archive.org.)

Dr. Francis Tumblety, A Sketch of the Love of the Gifted, Eccentric and World-Famed Physician, Brooklyn, NY. Eagle Book and Job Printing Department, 1889. (Reproduced on Casebook.org).

Peter L. Twohig, The “Celebrated Indian Herb Doctor”: Francis Tumblety in Saint John, 1860, Acadiensis 39 (2), 2010.

(Audio note: During the Q&A, the microphones cut out. Greer is still clear, but a few of the questions are muted.)

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Benton Barracks

During the Civil War, the land that now comprises Fairground Park (and some of the surrounding neighborhoods) served as Benton Barracks, one of the largest Union military training camps west of the Mississippi. At its height, it could hold tens of thousands of soldiers. Entire regiments were raised and trained there, including multiple units of United States Colored Troops.

The site included long rows of wooden barracks, a massive hospital complex capable of treating thousands of wounded soldiers, and detention facilities for Confederate prisoners. It also functioned as a refuge for self-emancipated men, women, and children who fled slavery and made their way to Union lines in St. Louis. In 1861, General John C. Frémont even issued an early emancipation order from this very ground — a bold move that predated Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and signaled the shifting meaning of the war.

One of the figures Greer highlighted during the talk was Moses Dixon, a formerly enslaved man who organized Black resistance in Missouri even before the war. Dixon helped found secret networks like the Knights of Liberty and later became a leading advocate for Black political and educational advancement. After the war, he was instrumental in efforts that led to the founding of Lincoln University, the only historically Black college established by Civil War veterans. Dixon’s leadership reminds us that the fight for access, dignity, and full citizenship did not begin in the 1940s — it was part of a much longer arc of organizing, institution-building, and resistance rooted right here in St. Louis.

After the war, the barracks were dismantled, and the land gradually transitioned into a public park. But the legacy of military service and Black civic organizing did not disappear. Veterans who trained at Benton Barracks returned to St. Louis and helped build churches, schools (including Lincoln University), political organizations, and mutual aid societies. They advocated for voting rights, equal protection under the law, and access to public institutions.

Throughout the evening, Greer emphasized that Fairground Park is not just a site of trauma, but also one of resilience and progress. It is a place where the contradictions of American democracy have played out in visible and sometimes painful ways — but also where communities have continued to push forward.

Fairground Park For All

Before beginning his talk, Greer invited Patrice Willis to speak about the Fairground Park For All (FPFA) initiative, which is currently revamping the 2006 master plan for the park. As part of that process, they are seeking public input through a new survey.

You can complete the survey here:
https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8655375/94b155664dc8

If you care about the future of Fairground Park — its design, accessibility, and role in the community — please consider taking a few minutes to provide feedback. Community voices will help shape what comes next.

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Coming Up

We have an incredible lineup this spring. Next month, we will hear from Kyle Olson, who will take us back in history to pre-European settlement times and explore the history of the mound-builders and others who lived in the St. Louis region before the city was founded. Then, in April, we will welcome Alan Kretchmar, who will discuss the history of Forest Park. And in May, we will shift gears entirely and explore the world of vice in St. Louis history with historian Ben Gall.

Our history talks are the third Thursday of each month, so be sure to make note of each of these talks so you don’t miss out!

Support Unseen St. Louis

Unseen St. Louis is independent work. As my own expenses have increased, continuing to devote the necessary time to research, writing, and organizing events depends more than ever on paid support.

Upgrading to a paid subscription helps make this work sustainable. It allows me to keep prioritizing deep research, careful storytelling, and community programming without having to scale back.

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Experiencing Twain up close hadn’t changed my opinion of it. On the drive home, I decided to look into its history to help me understand it better. And, as often happens, what began as simple curiosity became a complex story of political maneuvering and debate that surrounded Twain long before it was ever installed. What follows is a glimpse into the complicated and contentious history of a single sculpture.

Who was Richard Serra?

Before we go down the rabbit hole, it’s important to first talk about the artist at the center of this story. Richard Serra (1938–2024) was born in San Francisco and came to art through an unusual route. As a young man, he worked in steel mills to pay his way through college. The experience left a lasting imprint on how he understood both material and attention. Serra later explained that working in the mills reshaped his thinking as an artist:

“I think working in steel mills gave me a whole notion of how to use steel in a way that it hadn’t been used before…. And it made me think, as someone who wanted to be an artist, that you had to pay attention all the time to everything that was going on, because everything was potential use.”

Serra studied English literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before earning his BFA and MFA at Yale. Although he was formally trained as a painter and worked across a wide range of materials and formats — including rubber, lead, film, and video — it was steel, and eventually large-scale weathering steel, that came to define his work. It was not an abstract or symbolic medium for Serra, but something he saw as heavy, resistant, and dangerous.

Over time, Serra became known for large, site-specific sculptures that demanded physical engagement. These were not objects meant to be viewed from a distance. They required movement — walking alongside them, passing through narrow openings, adjusting one’s body to curving walls, and navigating constantly shifting perspectives. (Watch a video of Serra and some of his artwork.)

The insistence that sculpture should fundamentally alter how people experience space put Serra at the center of some of the most contentious public art debates of the late twentieth century. His work often challenged expectations and resisted easy interpretation. The most famous example, Tilted Arc (1981), installed in Manhattan’s Foley Federal Plaza, was ultimately removed in 1989 after years of hearings and legal battles, cementing Serra’s reputation as both a major sculptor and a deeply polarizing figure. Yet the logic behind that work, and others like it, can be traced back to the steel mills of his youth, where attention, material reality, and physical consequence first shaped his approach.

The relationship between Serra and the Pulitzers

Richard Serra’s association with St. Louis did not begin with a public commission, nor with any longstanding connection to the city itself. Instead, it emerged gradually through museum work and the interests of a small circle of private collectors — most notably Emily Rauh Pulitzer (1933– ) and Joseph Pulitzer Jr. (1913–1993) — whose early engagement with Serra’s work helped open the door to his much larger presence in the city.

Emily Rauh arrived in St. Louis in 1964 as a curator at the Saint Louis Art Museum. She had first met Joseph Pulitzer Jr. several years earlier while working at the Fogg Museum at Harvard, when he brought in a work he was considering purchasing. Pulitzer, the grandson of newspaper founder Joseph Pulitzer, was already collecting modern art, and their interaction at the time was brief and professional.

Meanwhile, Emily encountered Richard Serra’s work in 1968 through an exhibition at Washington University organized with the help of St. Louis collector Joe Helman. By that time, she was a curator at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Recalling that show, she later said, “These younger artists were completely unknown to me,” but Serra’s work stood out — particularly his lead prop pieces and a wooden beam with inserted candles, which lingered in her mind long after her first visit.

Within a year, Helman opened a gallery in St. Louis and organized a group exhibit that again included Serra. Emily purchased one of the works and installed it in her apartment. Around the same time, she invited Serra to give a talk at the Saint Louis Art Museum, where Joseph Pulitzer Jr. was in the audience.

The evening proved pivotal, shaping both Serra’s developing relationship with St. Louis and Emily and Joe’s own trajectory. In its aftermath, Joe commissioned Serra to create his first permanent site-specific work on Pulitzer’s rural property outside the city. After months of consideration, Serra began work on what would become Pulitzer Piece: Stepped Elevation (1970–71): three five-foot-tall steel plates embedded in the ground at points where the terrain dropped most sharply, their lengths determined by the contours of the field. Three years later, in 1973, Joe — whose first wife, Louise, had died in 1968 — married Emily, formalizing a partnership that had already begun to shape the course of their shared engagement with contemporary art.

From the start, the Pulitzers’ collecting became a shared enterprise. “We never buy anything of any consequence that we both aren’t very convinced about,” Emily once explained. Joe credited Emily with sharpening his engagement with contemporary work, saying she “opened my eyes to art immediately being produced, whereas my tendency had been to wait until the dust settles.” Together, they supported artists including Serra, often through commissions so site-specific that, as Emily later observed, they “literally are nothing but a hunk of steel or rusty light fixtures if you remove them….”

By the time Emily was appointed by the National Endowment for the Arts to serve on the panel selecting a major public artwork for downtown St. Louis, Serra was an artist whose work the Pulitzers had lived with and taken seriously for years. That shared history would form the foundation for what came next.

The Twain Sculpture itself

Sitting on a 1.14-acre patch of grass directly west of Citygarden is Richard Serra’s sculpture Twain (but often just referred to as “the Serra sculpture.”) Commissioned specifically for the square-block site, the work consists of eight massive plates of weathering COR-TEN steel — seven measuring 40 feet long and one stretching to 50 feet, a deliberate imbalance that throws the form slightly off center. Each plate is two inches thick, with its long edge set directly into the ground. From above, the walls read as a warped, jaunty triangle, its sharp end pointing toward the Gateway Arch. The ground beneath slopes gently to the southeast, but the tops of the plates align evenly, making the northwestern wall rise nearly nine feet while the easternmost panel reaches only about five and a half.

Serra paid close attention not only to the sculpture but also to the land it occupied. “The open space allows you to comprehend the frontality of the buildings,” he said. “The Civil Courts Building looks much better with open space in front of it.” Inside the sculpture, narrow gaps between the plates act as doorways, framing views of downtown buildings and the surrounding trees.

That movement is essential to the work. “To experience the piece, you must walk through it,” Serra explained. “I want it to pull people in, to engage them. It needs traffic, the passage of people.” As a result, there are no paved paths through the sculpture; Serra intentionally omitted them, expecting visitors to create their own.

Most of all, Serra was explicit that Twain was not intended as a commemorative work. He resisted the idea that the sculpture should symbolize or honor a person or event, insisting instead that it exist on its own terms. Its purpose, as he put it, “is not to garnish the space like a pin on a dress, but to provide an experience of that space which redefines it in sculptural terms.”

Bringing Twain to downtown

By the 1970s, the block east of the Civil Courts Building had already been altered and re-altered through several phases of redevelopment. It was originally occupied by small manufacturing and retail buildings. Over time, some were demolished and replaced with parking lots, and eventually, the remaining structures were also cleared. What remained was a raised berm that dominated the block.

Discussions of a major sculpture on the block began in the early 1970s through the St. Louis Arts and Fountains Foundation, which secured an initial grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and convened a joint local-national selection panel. The jury, evenly split between city and NEA appointees and including Emily Rauh Pulitzer, unanimously selected Richard Serra.

From the outset, the project was framed as an opportunity for St. Louis to engage contemporary art at a national and international scale. Serra’s approach took shape during his first visit to the block. “When I first saw the site,” he recalled, “I saw benches and derelicts here, and thought, ‘It is possible.’” What followed was a long process of planning, fundraising, and approvals before the sculpture was realized.

When his selection became public in December 1975, he described the project as one that would take months to resolve and at least a year to build, explaining that he was interested in shaping the entire block and was “thinking about something that would be there for a couple of hundred years.”

Funding for the project came together gradually and from multiple sources. Early estimates placed the cost at around $250,000, including a $20,000 artist fee, with $50,000 coming from the NEA. Later figures put the combined cost of the sculpture and landscaping at approximately $333,000, funded through a mix of NEA and Missouri Arts Council grants, money allocated through a 1962 Gateway Mall bond issue, and contributions from private donors and organizations.

This effort unfolded in a city still adjusting to the presence of the Gateway Arch, completed in 1965 and already established as one of the most prominent works of modern design in the country. For collectors and advocates of modernism — including the Pulitzers — the prospect of a major sculpture by Serra likely fit within a broader sense that St. Louis could position itself as a place willing to support ambitious, forward-looking public art. While the Arch and Serra’s work differ radically in form and intent, the recent arrival of a monumental modern landmark provided a cultural backdrop for another large-scale, uncompromising work to plausibly take root.

Early controversies

From the outset, the Serra sculpture was shaped as much by disagreement as by design. As early as January 1973, when the initial NEA grant became public, a prolonged debate broke out over what kind of public art St. Louis should be funding, and whether the Gateway Mall was the right place for it. One group argued that the money should instead be used to erect a memorial to Thomas A. Dooley, a St. Louis-born physician and medical missionary whose death in 1961 had elevated him to near-legendary status locally. Others, led by industrialist and arts patron Robert H. Orchard, pushed back, insisting that the federal grant was intended for a contemporary fine arts project without a commemorative subject. The disagreement quickly became public and contentious.

The dispute soon reached the NEA. Orchard wrote an enthusiastic letter to the agency to report that the local matching funds had been secured and noted that a controversy had developed around the project, which he described as “great.” The NEA did not agree with that assessment.

In a written rebuke, visual arts director Brian O’Doherty warned that major public projects required broad community support and cautioned against taking “an adversary position to local opinion on the level of taste.” The matter escalated to the point that Congresswoman Leonor K. Sullivan asked the NEA to explain what was happening in St. Louis. NEA chair Nancy Hanks responded that the project had been proceeding smoothly until Orchard’s public comments appeared in the press and emphasized that “no school or type of sculpture is excluded from government aid.” Ultimately, the conflict split rather than stopped the effort: a Dooley memorial received separate NEA funding under a different program, while the contemporary art commission moved forward.

Even after funding was secured and the downtown site approved in 1976 by Mayor John H. Poelker and Community Development Agency director John G. Roach, opposition persisted within the city government. The Heritage and Urban Design Commission endorsed the sculpture despite its preliminary review committee recommending against it, citing concerns about aesthetics, public safety, and how the work might fit into future Gateway Mall improvements. In 1977, tensions sharpened when the CDA’s new leadership proposed relocating the sculpture from downtown to Forest Park, arguing that the Mall site was an “esthetic [sic] and functional failure.”

At that point, Orchard and Emily Rauh Pulitzer pushed back forcefully. They argued that moving the sculpture would jeopardize the $45,000 federal grant, which had been awarded for a specific site and matched by local donors who might withdraw support if the location changed. They also emphasized that Serra’s design had been developed with the downtown block in mind. CDA officials countered that Serra had conceived the basic idea earlier and was “looking around for the right place to put it,” reinforcing the sense that both the site and the sculpture remained unsettled years into the process.

Serra himself later described the long, uncertain path of the project in blunt terms:

“I was offered the possibility of building a piece for the Mall in downtown St. Louis. It’s not like other urban malls in that it’s not flanked by offices and shops but by the two main traffic arteries, and is on axis with the Saarinen Arch. It’s just a flat space inhabited by local winos. I built a mock-up… exactly to scale, but the piece was rejected by the mayor of St. Louis who wanted a stainless steel Möbius strip designed by his Planning Commission. That was defeated by the next administration, which also opposed my sculpture. Now — 10 years later — it looks like there’s a possibility of its being built.”

That sense of instability continued into the late 1970s. In March 1978, reports briefly circulated that Mayor James Conway did not want the sculpture built. City officials and supporters quickly denied the claim. Orchard stated flatly that he would have known if “his project” had been canceled, while Conway insisted he had never rejected the sculpture and was waiting on a revised master plan for the Gateway Mall (for more on the later Gateway Mall demolitions, see Steve Sorkin’s Unseen STL History talk). The episode underscored how fragile the project remained, even after years of planning.

By 1981 — nearly a decade after the idea was first proposed — the sculpture was still encountering resistance. That July, the Heritage and Urban Design Commission endorsed the project on a 6–3 vote, despite renewed warnings that the tall steel panels could become a haven for criminals or be vulnerable to vandalism. Dissenting members repeated earlier concerns about aesthetics and safety. One commissioner even argued that “a fountain would have been better.” Later that month, the city’s Board of Public Service granted initial approval, though final authorization was delayed until the parks department finalized the plans.

Reception and legacy

After years of delays, the city finally prepared the site and installed Twain over several months in 1981 and 1982, dedicating the sculpture on May 1, 1982.

And a new controversy over whether or not a collection of rusty panels was “art” began almost immediately.

It had been anticipated years earlier. In 1977, Post-Dispatch arts editor Robert Duffy described the commission as a calculated risk, writing that Serra was “not a safe choice, but a risky one,” whose work would attract international attention while provoking harsh criticism. St. Louis, he argued, had too often “played it safe” in matters of aesthetics. Serra’s sculpture would be difficult to ignore — and that, Duffy suggested, was precisely the point.

Duffy’s assessment proved prophetic. Reactions to Twain were sharply divided from the outset. Many people, especially those unaware of the efforts to bring the sculpture to the downtown site, decried the rusty slabs of metal as an eyesore and embarrassment to the city.

But others pushed back against detractors. Emily Rauh Pulitzer emphasized the experience of the space itself. The enclosure, she said, softened traffic noise without feeling claustrophobic, and the newly planted grass and trees were meant to invite people to engage with the artwork rather than repel them. Senator Thomas Eagleton embraced the new artwork, saying, “This sculpture is the embodiment of our diverse culture… no two of us view it alike.” Serra himself insisted that Twain’s identity would emerge over time. “People will have to grow with it,” he said.

But many people in the city disagreed. By 1985, city officials openly discussed putting Twain to a public vote. Thomas Zych, then president of the Board of Aldermen, described a growing frustration among elected officials who disliked the sculpture but hesitated to say so publicly. Graffiti, maintenance concerns, and lingering discomfort with abstract art all fed the proposal. “Now,” Zych said, “some are saying that these pieces of iron are not art.”

In the middle of that debate, writer William Gass seized on Twain as a symbol of what he saw as downtown St. Louis’s broader decay, likening the sculpture to “a mean-faced dog” and suggesting it be left to rust into a memorial to abandonment. Meanwhile, Washington University art historian Lawrence D. Steefel Jr. went further, calling publicly for the sculpture’s removal as an example of “urban blight.”

Others responded by reframing the argument altogether. In a 1986 editorial pointedly titled Popularity Is Not an Index of Quality, gallery owner Elliot Smith argued that discomfort was not a failure of the work but a measure of its seriousness. Serra’s sculpture, he wrote, challenged viewers to reconsider material, site, and expectation —asking whether public art must always be agreeable to be worthwhile.

Decades later, the controversy was never fully resolved — but neither did it culminate in removal. As longtime Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan noted in 2017, Twain had been graffitied, vandalized, and even briefly transformed into a set of giant dominoes, yet no sustained effort to dismantle it ever succeeded.

The sculpture endured, irritation and all.

Whether admired, resented, defended, or ignored, Twain has never settled into the background. From the moment it was installed, it functioned less as a monument than as a provocation — raising persistent questions about public space, modern art, and what St. Louis expects from the things it chooses to build, argue over, and ultimately live with.

A reluctant reckoning

Historical research doesn’t always make me like a subject more, but it almost always helps me understand it better — and understanding often leads to appreciation. In Richard Serra’s case, I do feel more kindly toward him as an artist. As a longtime fan of the music of Philip Glass, Serra’s collaborator and friend, I recognize conceptual parallels in much of Serra’s work, especially his later pieces, and can respect what he was trying to accomplish.

Twain, though, is another matter. All of my research suggests that even Serra and the Pulitzers understood it would be a hard sell, and that Serra himself was already managing expectations before the dedication. In the decades since its installation, the sculpture has accumulated far more detractors than converts. The site bears little resemblance to what Serra envisioned: trees died, the lighting failed and was eventually removed, the ground is often muddy, and the grass is worn thin. When I visited, the block was littered with beer bottles and trash, with dog waste in the grass (despite a sign urging visitors to clean up after themselves).

A friend in New York who remembers the public fight over Serra’s Tilted Arc recently described him as a kind of badass—an artist willing to drop massive, uncompromising works into the middle of cities whose residents didn’t ask for them. Controversy followed Serra almost by design. In St. Louis, he seemed to understand that acceptance — if it came at all — would take time. Perhaps that friction was the point.

So I’ll admit it: I don’t find myself liking Twain much more than I did before. But its long, contentious history feels quietly subversive, and that has changed how I think about it. The story of how it arrived in downtown St. Louis — and the legacy it has carried for nearly 50 years — mirrors the city itself: divided by power and identity, awkward and even ugly at times, resilient in others. Like St. Louis, Twain resists being made into something palatable to all. It endures not because it is beloved, but because it is strong enough to withstand criticism and neglect. Scarred, contested, and still standing, it reflects a city that has absorbed decades of conflict and contradiction and continues on anyway, stubbornly present and unwilling to give up.

As Serra told The Art Newspaper in 2011, “I want people to understand themselves, to give them another idea of what an experience of the world can be… I am just presenting a possibility.” Whether or not Twain ever becomes beloved, it has certainly done that much.

Thanks for coming along on this dive into the history of Richard Serra’s Twain. Research like this is often surprising and rewarding, even when the subject is as challenging as this one. If you found it worthwhile, I’d love it if you shared it — and if you’re able, consider becoming a paid subscriber to help support this work.

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Sources:

“Architects’ group backs Gateway’s mall plan,” St Louis Globe-Democrat, April 30, 1982.

“Backers of Downtown Site Appealing Plan To Put Serra Sculpture In Park”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 26, 1977.

“Comparing the Mall plans,” St Louis Globe-Democrat, May 4, 1982.

Patricia Degener, “Serra’s 8-Year Wait Comes To An End,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 16, 1982.

Robert Duffy, “Mall Getting Sculpture By Richard Serra,: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 23, 1976.

Robert Duffy, “The St. Louis Serra Sculpture,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 26, 1976.

Robert Duffy, “Serra Sculpture Dead? Not True, Officials Say,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 15, 1978.

Robert Duffy, “City Panel Endorses Sculpture for Mall”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 24, 1981.

William Freivogel, Supreme Court to Her Case of Former City Architect, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 13, 1987.

“Gateway Mall art gets boost,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 25, 1981.

Dennis Hevesi, Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Is Dead at 80; Publisher Was Avid Art Collector, The New York Times, May 27, 1993.

“Influences: Richard Serra,” Art 21.

Mary King, An At-Home Art Work That’s Going to Win Friends, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 18, 1982.

Joe, Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis.

Roland Klose, “Memorial to St. Louis abandoned,” March 27, 2024.

Marcia L Koenig, “Eagleton, Serra Praise Sculpture at Dedication, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 2, 1982

Bill McClellan, “Hey, hey, ho ho, Serra’s Twain has got to go,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 25, 2017.

Douglas C. McGill, St. Louis Bid to Remove Serra Work, The New York Times, August 21, 1985.

Judith Parker, Parallel Tracks, Harvard Magazine, May 1988.

John Brod Peters, “Abstract sculpture chosen for Gateway Mall site,” St Louis Globe-Democrat, December 24, 1977.

E.F.P. Jr, [ E. F. PORTER Jr., Arts Editor ] “Richard Serra Monument For St. Louis,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 21, 1975.

Gloria S. Ross, Obituary of Robert H. Orchard: Businessman and unconventional patron of the arts, St Louis Public Radio, April 16, 2012.

Oral history interview with Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, August 9, 1985.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer, A Tribute to Richard Serra (1938–2024), The Brooklyn Rail, October 2024.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Pulitzer Center biography.

Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Wikipedia.

Emily Rauh Is Married To Joseph Pulitzer Jr., The New York Times, July 1, 1973.

“Sculpture gets initial OK,” St Louis Globe-Democrat, July 29, 1981.

Richard Serra, Writings | Interviews. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Richard Serra, Art 21.

Richard Serra, Guggenheim New York.

Richard Serra, Wikipedia.

Serra Sculpture Park, St. Louis City Talk, April 26, 2014

Serra Sculpture Park, The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Serra Sculpture Park, City of St. Louis.

Elliot Smith, editorial, “Popularity Is Not An Index of Quality,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 8, 1986.

Lawrence D. Steefel Jr., Letter to the editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 15, 1985.

Twain Sculpture: Overview for Twain Sculpture in Serra Sculpture Park, City of St. Louis.

Amanda Woytus, A conversation with Emily Rauh Pulitzer, St. Louis Magazine, October 20, 2023.

Talya Zax, Jewish artist who created ‘The Serra Sculpture’ in downtown St. Louis, dies at 85, Jewish Light, March 27, 2024.

We’re honored to welcome Marvin-Alonzo Greer of 4theVille for an evening that reframes Fairgrounds Park as a key site in St. Louis’s ongoing struggle for civil rights.

This month’s talk takes place on Thursday, February 19th, at 7 PM (doors open at 6:30 PM) at Leviathan Bookstore, 3211 S. Grand. There is a $5 cover.

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The talk

St. Louis is known for its fantastic parks. But in this program, you’ll discover the history of one of its most important — and most overlooked — sites: Fairgrounds Park. While its significance is often forgotten today, during the Civil War, the park served as a massive military base known as Benton Barracks.

This talk traces how Fairgrounds Park became a key site in the early fight for civil rights in St. Louis. From the Emancipation Proclamation to streetcar desegregation, the park and the people who gathered there played a critical role in advancing liberation and justice in the city. It’s a story that connects national movements to very local ground, and challenges how we think about where history happens.

The speaker

Marvin-Alonzo Greer serves as the Director of Cultural Heritage for 4 the Ville, a Cultural Heritage Development Organization dedicated to championing the legacy of The Ville neighborhood in St. Louis, MO. His prior work included serving as the Director of Historic Interpretation & Community Engagement for the Department of Parks and Planning in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where his flagship project was the Sankofa Mobile Museum. Sankofa brings local history to schools and communities by blending augmented and virtual reality with social justice teachings to meet students where they are.

In 2024, Marvin-Alonzo and the Sankofa Mobile Museum received the Excellence in Cultural History Award from the National Association of County Park and Recreation Officials. He graduated from Morehouse College, where he studied History and African American Studies, and has held leadership roles at historical institutions, including the Atlanta History Center, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Missouri Historical Society’s Soldiers Memorial Military Museum in St. Louis.

Marvin-Alonzo also works to improve museum pedagogy as the Managing Partner for Social Impact Strategies, consulting with museums and historic sites on training, historical interpretation, and visitor engagement strategies. In this role, he is regularly asked to lend his expertise as a historical consultant for film projects.

His community activism and partnerships have earned him the Emancipation Proclamation Award for Preserving African American History and Culture from the City of Atlanta. In his free time, Marvin-Alonzo uses his social media platform MAG the Historian to teach history and has partnered with PBS, Ancestry.com, and Google for Creators on various campaigns. He was profiled in People Magazine as one of the “Black Activists, Artists, Historians and Changemakers You Should Follow on Social Media,” and has been recognized by the City of Atlanta for preserving Black history and culture.

You can follow his work at 4theville.org and on Instagram at @magthehistorian and @4thevillestl.

Come out on February 19th!

Unseen STL History Talks are about more than dates and buildings — they’re about understanding how the past still shapes the city we live in today. This talk offers a chance to rethink a familiar place, learn a story that deserves wider recognition, and be part of a thoughtful, engaged community that cares about St. Louis and its history.

Join us on February 19th for an evening of learning, conversation, and connection.

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Thomas and Goold traced their paths into journalism, from childhood newspaper obsessions to long careers covering teams that define St. Louis. Some of the conversation centered on covering the St. Louis Blues, including the emotional whiplash of years of near-misses followed by the improbable 2019 Stanley Cup run. Thomas described stepping into the hockey beat late in his career and suddenly finding himself responsible for capturing one of the city’s most meaningful championship moments.

Goold brought a complementary perspective from decades covering the St. Louis Cardinals, a franchise defined by sustained success and sky-high expectations. Together, they unpacked how championships shape a city’s identity, how writers prepare for moments that may never come, and why you can never assume you’ll get another chance to tell a story “better next time.”

They also pulled back the curtain on the mechanics of sportswriting: brutal deadlines, filing stories from locker rooms and runways, the stress of being the lone independent reporter on the road, and the quiet responsibility of writing what often becomes the first draft of history. The discussion widened to the future of journalism, touching on shrinking newsrooms, changing attention spans, sports betting, and what may be lost when reporters are no longer consistently “in the room.”

The evening was a reminder that history — focused on sports or otherwise — isn’t just about what happened but the people who document the moments for posterity. Thank you to Jim Thomas and Derrick Goold for an honest, funny, and thoughtful conversation, and to everyone who came out to be part of it.

Read more about it!

Jim Thomas wrote Making the Play, which revisits Mike Jones’s game-saving tackle in Super Bowl XXXIV, and The Franchise: St. Louis Blues, a sweeping history of the team. Derrick Goold is the author of 100 Things Cardinals Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.

Books by both authors are available at Leviathan Bookstore.

Support Unseen St. Louis

Unseen St. Louis exists to highlight lesser-known stories, places, and people of our great city’s past. Through monthly events at Leviathan Bookstore and ongoing research and writing, I work to uncover the overlooked layers that shaped St. Louis. If you value this kind of work and want to help sustain it, consider upgrading to a paid subscription — your support directly fuels future talks, research, and community projects.

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As it turns out, that building was part of a WWII ammunition plant that employed over 35,000 people and produced the lion’s share of ammunition used in the US war effort. Known by various names, including the St Louis Ordnance Plant (SLOP), the St. Louis Small Arms Plant, the St. Louis Army Ammunition Plant (SLAAP), the St. Louis Armory, and Chevy Shell (after General Motors, which operated part of the facility), the site was one of St. Louis’s most important mid-20th-century industrial operations and employers, and one of the earliest large-scale examples of diversity in the modern American workplace.

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How the plant ended up in St. Louis

On the eve of World War II, the United States faced a problem it could no longer ignore: it did not have the industrial capacity to supply its own army with ammunition. The country lacked a modern system for producing military small arms at scale. Throughout the 1930s, the government relied almost entirely on the aging Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia, a single plant with limited output and outdated equipment.

Solving that problem required speed, space, and labor. The federal government needed to build new ammunition plants quickly, and one of the most consequential decisions it made was to place one of them not in open countryside, but inside the city limits of St. Louis, at 4800 Goodfellow Boulevard.

To address this gap, federal planners in 1938 and 1939 moved to expand ammunition capacity by authorizing six government-owned, contractor-operated small arms ammunition plants between 1940 and 1942. The St. Louis facility was part of the first wave of that expansion.

The Ordnance Department initially selected East Alton, IL, home to the Western Cartridge Company, as the site for the new plant. However, the government later determined that the location could not support the required production scale or labor force. Officials shifted the entire operation to north St. Louis, choosing land owned by General Electric that offered rail and water access, electrical infrastructure, nearby space for powder storage and a tracer firing range, and a substantially larger labor pool. President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the revised plan on October 21, 1940, at an estimated cost of $29 million.

Construction of the St. Louis Ordnance Plant began on January 1, 1941, and the site expanded rapidly as wartime demands grew. The project absorbed David Hickey Park, which the city had only recently dedicated in honor of the first St. Louisan killed in World War I, along with several nearby residential properties. When officials expanded the plant later in the year to increase manufacturing capacity, the effort displaced at least twenty-five additional families.

When crews completed the main building program in the winter of 1942, the complex encompassed approximately 300 buildings spread across 276 to 291 acres, including bunkers and specialized production shops. And because it operated alongside other industrial facilities and residential neighborhoods, it was an anomaly for a major ammunition complex. As Engineering News-Record observed in 1942, most ammunition plants occupied wide-open rural tracts of 15,000 to 25,000 acres, while the St. Louis plant sat “jammed into a comparatively small plot almost entirely within the corporate limits of a mid-western city.”

From cartridges to artillery

When the facility first opened, it operated under the name St. Louis Ordnance Plant. The US government owned the site, while the United States Cartridge Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Western Cartridge Company of East Alton, handled day-to-day operations during the plant’s early days.

During World War II, the plant grew into the world’s largest producer of .30-caliber and .50-caliber ammunition for rifles and machine guns. At its peak in the summer of 1943, the plant ran continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, producing 250 million cartridges per month. On July 29, 1943, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the facility had already produced more than two billion rifle and machine gun cartridges — more than any other ammunition plant in the country. By the end of the war, total production reached 6.7 billion cartridges.

As the war evolved, so did the plant’s mission. In the summer of 1944, the Army converted part of the complex to support artillery production, making the St. Louis Ordnance Plant one of only two small arms ammunition facilities to undergo such a transition. The site began producing steel armor-piercing bullet cores and, later that year, 105 mm howitzer shell bodies. With that shift, operational responsibility for the new projectile facilities moved to General Motors, through its Chevrolet Division, giving rise to the nickname “Chevy Shell” that many St. Louisans would remember long after the war ended.

The iconic foundry roof

Over time, the foundry building’s unusual roof inspired a kind of folklore. As the plant's most recognizable feature, it drew speculation: some thought the roof opened and closed, others believed it served as a safety measure against explosions, and still others imagined it was designed to accommodate blimps.

The truth was much more mundane. Contemporary accounts and Army documentation describe the open roof as a ventilation feature designed to exhaust heat from up to ten high-temperature forges. The foundry’s distinctive roofline rose in a series of curved, open sections, often described as claw- or clamshell-shaped, which created a continuous upward draft. As heat and fumes built up on the forge floor, they naturally rose and escaped through these openings, drawing cooler air in from below and allowing production to continue without relying solely on mechanical ventilation.

Similar roofs were common in early 20th-century forge shops and steel plants, where natural convection was the most reliable way to manage extreme heat before modern HVAC systems. What set the St. Louis plant apart was the scale and visibility of the design. Looming over I-70, the roof became a familiar landmark to generations of St. Louisans, even as the building’s purpose faded from public memory.

A large and diverse wartime workforce

At its height, the St. Louis Ordnance Plant employed as many as 35,000 workers at a time. The scale of the operation shaped daily life. Twenty-two cafeterias served meals to workers on-site, and dedicated “Cartridge Plant” bus routes helped thousands of employees travel to and from the plant.

With many men serving overseas, women made up as much as half of the workforce at the St. Louis Ordnance Plant. Among them was conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, who during college worked at the plant as an ammunition tester (she was interviewed in the video above).

The plant eventually offered jobs to the city’s Black population, but only after pressure from the NAACP and civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, who threatened a 100,000-person March on Washington. In June 1941, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, barring defense contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Although this was the first presidential action against employment discrimination by government contractors, he acted mainly to appease workers and prevent strikes or mass protests, so it wasn’t rigorously enforced.

That lack of teeth made it easy for the St. Louis Ordnance Plant to sidestep its intent, continuing to confine African Americans largely to janitorial and support roles while refusing to place Black workers in production jobs.

The situation escalated a year later, when the plant laid off 148 Black workers after they completed a landscaping project in June 1942. The workers’ response came quickly. On June 20, roughly 300 Black protesters marched and picketed outside the plant, demanding access to better-paying production positions. Management eventually agreed, assigning Black workers to a segregated production line, but keeping Black and white workers separated. The compromise reduced immediate tensions but did little to resolve the deeper conflict. As we will see, friction between workers, management, and the federal government persisted throughout the war.

Organizing under segregation

Ernest St. John Simms, known as Ernie, confronted racial tensions directly. At age 19, Simms went to Washington University seeking work and found a position as a laboratory technician in the surgery department. After four years, he moved to Homer G. Phillips Hospital, then the city’s only public hospital for African Americans, where he worked as a serologist. In 1942, Simms and his girlfriend, Ginnie, left the hospital in search of higher-paying wartime work and took jobs making bullets at the St. Louis small arms plant.

And racism within the plant shaped every part of their experience. “We were segregated,” Ginnie later recalled in an interview with WashU’s Outlook Magazine. “The blacks had their own building and they had to walk almost a mile to catch the bus. The work conditions were bad, and policies were overbearing.”

At one point, Black workers at the plant went on strike, and Ernie Simms emerged as their spokesman. Under his leadership, Black workers secured meaningful concessions, gained greater control over workplace conditions, and improved their day-to-day treatment on the job. When the strike ended, management promoted Simms to foreman. He remained at the plant until 1945, when he and Ginnie, now married, left for Chicago in search of new opportunities. (Simms later returned to Washington University as a medical researcher and contributed to research that earned a Nobel Prize.)

The struggle for integration

The St. Louis Ordnance Plant remained segregated well after President Roosevelt issued his Executive Order in 1941. Although he had strengthened the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) in 1943 and Black workers held roughly 8% of defense industry jobs nationwide by 1945, segregation persisted at the St. Louis plant until December 1944, when the federal government finally ordered full integration.

Resistance to integration came largely from within the existing workforce, particularly among white women employees. In 1943, the Post-Dispatch reported that women made up 41% of the plant’s workforce, while Black workers accounted for about 7.5% and were confined to operating a single shell-production building.

That resistance surfaced openly on May 11, 1943, when about thirty white women walked off the job rather than work with Black floor men. This work stoppage shut down one of the plant’s main manufacturing units and disrupted production for several hundred workers. Company representatives claimed the dispute arose after management promoted the women’s former white helpers to higher-paying positions and replaced them with Black “move-men,” described as “the only available labor of this class, which is colored.”

Tensions remained high. In August 1944, William Sentner, speaking for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, told the FEPC that segregation harmed production, weakened the war effort, and allowed employers to undermine unions and wages. He also accused the United States Cartridge Company of violating plantwide seniority rules by laying off Black workers on a unitwide basis. In response, company officials defended the segregated system. Ray H. Sullivan, assistant general manager, said the company consulted Black organizations, claimed segregation improved efficiency, and argued it reduced long-term layoffs of Black workers.

After a series of hearings, the FEPC ordered full integration in December 1944. White workers, including members of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Local 825, objected, but the federal government enforced the order, forcing the plant to finally integrate its workforce — a victory that would prove short-lived.

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With victory, wartime jobs disappear

As Allied forces secured victory in Europe in 1945, wartime production in St. Louis began to collapse just as quickly as it had risen. On June 27, 1945, managers announced that the St. Louis Ordnance Plant would end production on September 1, with layoffs beginning the following week. At that point, the plant still employed 16,000 workers and produced 140 million cartridges a month.

The announcement sent shockwaves through the city. Over the previous four months, layoffs at local war plants (see my article on uranium processing at Mallinckrodt Chemical) had already put at least 40,000 St. Louis–area workers out of work. Federal officials predicted that the burden would fall hardest on those who had gained access to defense jobs last. Theodore E. Brown, examiner for the Fair Employment Practices Committee’s St. Louis office, warned that 85% of African Americans hired during the war would lose their jobs by September. Labor leaders also expected that 80% of women laid off at the plant would continue seeking work out of necessity.

Union leaders fought to keep the plant open even as it became clear that American bases already held more ammunition than they could use. They dismissed assurances that laid-off workers would easily find other jobs. “Workers can’t eat talk,” warned Robert Logsdon of the United Electrical Workers. Despite demonstrations and lobbying by labor leaders, city officials, and workers themselves, efforts to restart the plant for civilian or military production failed. Production ended on August 31, 1945, and the federal government soon sold much of the plant’s specialized machinery as scrap.

Reactivation during Korean and Vietnam wars

After World War II, the government placed the plant on standby and used parts of the complex to store military records. The facility later reopened during the Korean War, when the projectile area resumed production in May 1951 under General Motors’ supervision. Despite outdated equipment and labor shortages, the plant manufactured more than 19 million 105-mm projectiles, accounting for roughly 40% of national production during the conflict. Operations ended in May 1954, and the plant returned to standby status.

In the mid-1960s, officials sold off all but the projectile manufacturing area as surplus property, reducing the installation to roughly 21 acres and about a dozen buildings. Then the government reactivated the projectile area in September 1966 to support the Vietnam War. Over the next three years, the plant produced approximately 24 million 105-mm projectiles. The facility saw no major technological upgrades during this period, and by December 1969, officials shut down production for good. Worn machinery and the high cost of modernization brought the long industrial life of the St. Louis Army Ammunition Plant to a permanent close.

After the machines fell silent

For decades after production ended, the site cycled through partial reuse and gradual abandonment. By the mid-1970s, some buildings stood empty while others housed federal offices, and at its postwar peak, about 2,000 employees from agencies including the General Services Administration, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Agriculture worked out of former production buildings. The Army renovated several structures for records and administrative use in 1984, but by 1989, it determined the site no longer served a military mission and removed the remaining industrial equipment. As control shifted between Army commands, occupancy dwindled. By the mid-1990s, most buildings sat vacant, and in 1998, the Army formally closed the facility, ending its presence on the site.

Efforts to reuse the property stalled under the weight of environmental contamination. Investigations identified explosive residues, heavy metals, and PCBs in multiple buildings, triggering cleanup requirements that complicated redevelopment. Fort Leonard Wood retained roughly 22 acres with heavily contaminated soils and structures, while private owners acquired much of the remaining land.

The site also lost its most visually distinctive structure. Crews dismantled the foundry building with its iconic claw-shaped roof in 2006–07, an event documented by Toby Weiss on Belt.

Since then, redevelopment efforts have struggled to gain traction. Proposals in 2004 and 2012, including a $30 million retail plan by developer G.J. Grewe, failed to move forward.

In October 2023, the St. Louis Development Corporation issued a request for proposals for 16.45 acres, seeking a “retail-anchored, multiple-use development” as environmental remediation and demolition continued. In January 2024, Clayco founder Bob Clark submitted a proposal to move Concrete Strategies' headquarters and manufacturing operations to the site, and said city officials told him his bid was the only response at the time. SLDC rejected the proposal, citing limited community engagement and an insufficient retail component, and Clark ultimately relocated the company to Hazelwood in St. Louis County. As of early 2025, the RFP remains open with no approved redevelopment plan in place.

Today, the former St. Louis Ordnance Plant exists mostly as cleared land, fragmented ownership, and unresolved plans. Once a site defined by urgency, scale, and national purpose, its machinery and most recognizable building are gone, and its future remains undecided.

Thanks for reading! If you had family members who worked at the site, or other memories of the plant, please leave a comment and share the article with others.

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And if you find value in the work I’m doing with Unseen St. Louis, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps sustain my work.

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Sources:

1949: Ernest St. John Simms, Black researcher, joins WUSM staff, Desegregation History, Washington University Medical Campus.

Karen Burns, Ernie Simms, Against the Odds, Outlook Magazine, Fall 1985.

Facebook thread, St. Louis’ Pictures of the Past

Sabrina Gorse, The Winding Down of World War II and the St. Louis Ordnance Plant, Missouri Historical Society blog, March 23, 2021

Jeffrey A. Hess, St. Louis Army Ammunition Plant, 4800 Goodfellow Boulevard, Saint Louis, Independent City, MO, Historic American Buildings Survey, Engineering Record, Landscapes Survey, Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, 1984.

Samir Knox, A year after rejecting Bob Clark plan, SLDC still seeking bids for north St. Louis site, St. Louis Business Journal, February 26, 2025.

Chris Naffziger, Remnants, The Old Army Munitions Plant, St. Louis Patina, Nov. 7, 2018.

Tim O’Neil, A Look Back: How 35,000 St. Louis workers kept the ammo flowing during World War II, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jun 27, 2022

Keri Pleasant, Honoring World War II Service to the Nation, US Army blog, February 27, 2020.

St. Louis Army Ammunition Plant (SLAAP)/St. Louis Ordnance Plant (SLOP), GlobalSecurity.org.

St. Louis Army Ammunition Plant, Built in St. Louis.

St. Louis Ammunition Plant, Living St. Louis, Nine PBS, June 2, 2007.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Toby Weiss, Skeleton: St. Louis Army Ammunition Plant, BELT - Built Environment in Layman’s Terms, November 25, 2006.

The Early Years, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

On Thursday, January 15, Unseen STL History Talks hosts a special night focused on sports, championships, and two of the writers who were there to call the plays as they happened. Come out to Leviathan Bookstore (3211 S. Grand) for the event, with doors opening at 6:30 p.m., and the talk beginning at 7:00 p.m. There’s a $5 cover to support the venue.

Consider this your chance to drop the puck on St. Louis sports history.

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The talks

This month’s program brings together two veteran sportswriters to explore what championships mean to St. Louis, and what it’s like to cover them in real time. Drawing from decades on the beat, the talk will examine the historic significance of the Blues’ first Stanley Cup championship and place it alongside the Cardinals’ remarkable run of 11 World Series titles, with nods to the Rams and other defining moments along the way.

The discussion will look at how a first championship lands differently than a familiar one, how sportswriters balance urgency with historical perspective, and what it means to document moments that immediately become part of a city’s shared memory. The evening will also pull back the curtain on the research, interviews, and personal experiences that go into turning championship runs into lasting history.

The speakers

Jim Thomas
Jim Thomas is a St. Louis native now living in Oakville. He retired in 2023 after 48 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, nearly all of them as a sportswriter. Over his career, he covered high school sports, University of Missouri football and men’s basketball, 27 years on the NFL beat primarily covering the St. Louis Rams, and six years covering the St. Louis Blues. He is the only full-time beat writer to have covered both the Rams’ Super Bowl championship during the 1999 season and the Blues’ Stanley Cup run 20 years later.

Thomas has received numerous national, state, and local sportswriting awards and is the author of Making the Play, about Mike Jones’ game-saving tackle in Super Bowl XXXIV, and The Franchise: St. Louis Blues, a comprehensive history of the team. He is currently working on a third book focused on former Rams head coach Mike Martz and the “Greatest Show on Turf.”

Derrick Goold
Derrick Goold has covered the St. Louis Cardinals for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 2004 and has served as the paper’s lead baseball writer since 2012. His work frequently explores the deep history of the Cardinals and St. Louis baseball, including the city’s 150-year relationship with the sport. He has received multiple APSE honors, been recognized as a top beat writer, and was featured in The Year’s Best Sports Writing in 2023.

Goold is the author of 100 Things Cardinals Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, hosts a baseball podcast with regular history-focused episodes, and has also published a graphic novel celebrating St. Louis’ 250th anniversary. He has lived in the city since 2001. Read some of his recent articles on the Post-Dispatch and follow him at @dgoold at both Twitter/X and Instagram.

Join us!

Whether you followed these championship runs from the stands, the couch, or the newspaper, this month’s Unseen STL History Talks offer a chance to revisit the moments that still echo through the city. It’s a conversation about sports, history, and St. Louis itself, told by two writers who were in the press box when it all went down.

Grab a seat, bring your favorite hot take, and join us for this special Unseen STL History Talks presentation.

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Unseen St. Louis is dedicated to uncovering the overlooked and forgotten aspects of St. Louis history. Through monthly talks at Leviathan Bookstore and regular articles, I delve into the hidden narratives that have shaped our city. If you value this work and want to support future research and events, please consider subscribing.

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As we each took a turn discussing our favorites, many of the books deal with race, displacement, and the long-term consequences of decisions made by governments, developers, and institutions. In addition, a number of the books focused on specific neighborhoods, streets, or families. Others took a wider view, placing St. Louis at the center of national history rather than on its margins.

As the organizer, I really enjoyed the conversation, with people sharing not just titles but why those books mattered to them (and I certainly added to my own personal collection at the end of the night!). Thanks to everyone who came out and to Leviathan Bookstore for hosting and making space for this kind of community exchange.

Drawing from the (imperfect) transcript of the recording, here are the books discussed. (If any of this information is incorrect, please let me know). Several of the books are available at Leviathan (as well as many others on local history). If he doesn’t have it in stock and it’s in print and available, James would be happy to order a copy for you.

• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America — Richard Rothstein

• The Gateway Arch — Tracy Campbell

• The Last Children of Mill Creek — Vivian Gibson

• Lemp: The Haunting History (3rd ed.) — Stephen Walker

• America’s First Olympics — George R. Matthews

• The Civil War in St. Louis — Louis S. Gerteis

• Streets of St. Louis — William Magnan

• Catfish and Crystal — Ernest Kirschten

• The Most Unsettled State: Missouri’s Turbulent Civil War Era — Nene Harris

• Betsy Brown — Ntozake Shange

• Profit and Punishment: How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice — Tony Messenger

• Vandeventer Place — Tom Grady & Michael Boyd

• The Surviving Private Streets: Portland and Westmoreland Place — Lawrence H. Keel

• A Tour of St. Louis / The Inside Life of a Great City — J. A. Dacus & James W. Buell

• The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States — Walter Johnson

• The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War — James Neal Primm

• Forest Park Forever — Alan Kretschmer

• Only in St. Louis — Charlie Brennan

• Mound City: The Place of the Indigenous Past and Present in St. Louis — Patricia Cleary

• St. Louis Family History Research Guide — Charles van Ravenswaay

• Family Reigns — Billy Bush

Want to purchase any of these books and support Leviathan Bookstore? James has put together a list of the available titles that you can purchase online (through Bookshop.org). You can also purchase some of them in person (or order them) at Leviathan.

Browse available titles

Support Unseen St. Louis

Unseen St. Louis exists to highlight lesser-known stories, places, and people of our great city’s past — many of which never make it into these history books. Through monthly events at Leviathan Bookstore and ongoing research and writing, I work to uncover the overlooked layers that shaped St. Louis. If you value this kind of work and want to help sustain it, consider upgrading to a paid subscription — your support directly fuels future talks, research, and community projects.

Subscribe now

And for this special community-focused night, we’re waiving the cover charge.

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What to Expect

For our end-of-the-year holiday celebration, all attendees are invited (but not required) to come prepared to talk about one or two of your favorite books about St. Louis history. These can be classics you consider essential reading, niche studies that changed how you see a neighborhood or issue, or recent titles you’d love more people to know about. We’ll also hear from several local historians about the works that shaped their thinking, plus a few authors who will talk briefly about their latest releases.

James, Leviathan’s owner, will have a curated selection of current St. Louis history books on display and available for purchase, making it a great chance to discover something new. And we’ll have snacks to enjoy while everyone swaps book recommendations.

Join the Conversation

The Unseen STL History Talk series is rooted in community and in our shared love for St. Louis and its history, bringing people together through the stories and discoveries that connect us to this place.

This month’s event is your chance to help shape the discussion and interact with other members of our great community. We hope you’ll join us, whether you want to share a book you love or simply settle in and enjoy hearing everyone else’s favorites. Whether you’re deep into local history or just getting started, you’ll walk away with new titles to explore — and maybe a new perspective on St. Louis.

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Unseen St. Louis is dedicated to uncovering the overlooked and forgotten aspects of St. Louis history. Through monthly talks at Leviathan Bookstore and regular articles, I delve into the hidden narratives that have shaped our city. If you value this work and want to support future research and events, please consider subscribing.

Subscribe now