Houses of the rich and famous (in St. Louis, a century ago) (2024)

“Before they were famous” photographs are popular with people nowadays, which made me wonder where many of St. Louis’ most famous captains of industry lived before they moved into their iconic estates. Those pre-celebrity houses are mostly gone, lost to urban renewal or just the natural expansion of downtown in the early 20th century. For example, it’s hard to believe now, but one cluster of the German-American business elite lived where the Clinton-Peabody Housing Project now stands. Likewise, some of the oldest, most prestigious families in St. Louis, including the Chouteaus, built on the land now rendered fallow by the Poplar Street Bridge approaches. Through historic photographs, we can piece together some of these lost houses’ histories.

Let’s start with the Busch family. Everyone is familiar with the mansion in the middle of Grant’s Farm, an iconic structure built by August A. Busch Sr. in 1910. But Eberhard Anheuser and his son-in-law Adolphus Busch lived in several other residences around St. Louis. As luck would have it, William Swekosky photographed Adolphus Busch’s house at 1838 Kennett Place, and it still stands, beautifully restored in the Lafayette Square neighborhood. Compton and Dry’s 1876 Pictorial St. Louis also gives us a tantalizing glimpse of what Busch’s and Anheuser’s houses looked like around their brewery and after they’d moved out to the exurbs.

I’ve written before about the giant mansion Adolphus Busch built on the brewery grounds, but I recently found new photographs of the interior and exterior that give new insight into the house. I strongly suspect that the wing to the south of the hulking edifice might be his father-in-law’s original country Italianate house. Other members of the Busch family lived close by as well. Carl Busch, a son of Adolphus, lived at 1111 Arsenal, a short walk to the brewery, in a solidly middle-class house that is now long gone, replaced by a towering building that flanks the street.

While August “Gussie” A. Busch Jr. was famous for residing at Grant’s Farm, opening it up to the general public, and hosting pet elephants, he lived elsewhere until his father, August Busch Sr., the builder of the mansion, died in 1934. As the success of the brewery mushroomed, the size of the Busch sons’ “starter homes” grew: Gussie moved into 5577 Lindell Boulevard just north of Forest Park. The house stands, and a wonderful photograph by W.C. Persons shows us how sumptuously it was furnished when Gussie lived there.

I’ve written before about the famous houses atop the bluffs of the Meramec River, owned by members of the Griesedieck and Lemp families. But they, too, had ancestors who lived in far more humble houses deep in the city and long since demolished. For example, Anton Griesedieck, who was the father of the four sons who would each begin different branches of the family brewing business, lived at 1805 Lami Street, which unfortunately was destroyed for the construction of the Ozark Expressway, modern Interstate 55. The location was logical, just east of the future Griesedieck Brothers Brewery and, later, Falstaff Plant No. 10, operated by his sons and grandsons. Joseph Griesedieck lived in the house as well, after his father died. In 1900, it was turned into an investment property, and it was later sold to a Byron Sharp. It is a respectable house, typical of an up-and-coming German American businessman living on the Near South Side of St. Louis.

Alvin Griesedieck, the second president of Falstaff, would later raise his family at the prestigious address of 19 Squires Lane, in Huntleigh.

The original founder of the Lemp dynasty, Adam, died in 1862, so he never even saw the Lemp Mansion in South St. Louis. The house was built well after his death by his friend Jacob Feickert. Adam Lemp had spent much of his career as a brewer living in an apartment above his saloon on South Second Street; he would later construct a country villa on DeMenil Place that is only known to us through fragmentary photographs. The house owned by Feickert only came into the possession of Adam’s son, William Lemp Sr., much later.

Finally, a look at the houses of Edward Mallinckrodt, who founded the eponymous chemical company whose successor corporation still operates on the North Riverfront, is a study in how architecture can illustrate an individual’s rise in society. In 1881, Mallinckrodt built a stately house on Vandeventer Place—at the time the most exclusive address in the city—as Midtown filled with mansions of the wealthy and upper middle class after the Civil War. But by the turn of that century, Vandeventer Place and the surrounding neighborhood had grown crowded and commercial, and the mansions and churches were being replaced by skyscrapers, tenements and theaters. Mallinckrodt had little to worry about: In 1914, he upgraded quite nicely to a massive new mansion on Westmoreland Place, just north of Forest Park, avoiding the smoke of the city (residents were required to burn higher quality coal on the private street), and also settling into the largest lot in the area, stretching all the way to Lindell. But I hope he never forgot his “humble” earlier roots on Vandeventer Place.