Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 15, 1990 TAG: 9007170303
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: George & Rosalie Leposky
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Rosalie, born and raised there, insisted St. Louis was and still is a Southern city. George, a native Chicagoan who attended college in St. Louis, didn't believe her.
George has conceded defeat.
Even to the casual observer, large sections of St. Louis look Southern. Before the advent of air conditioning, a Southern architectural vernacular - large homes with ample porches shading the interior, big windows, and cavernous rooms with high ceilings - helped St. Louisans endure the city's long, torrid summers. Especially in the West End and around Tower Grove Park, neighborhoods of such houses on sycamore-lined streets call to mind Atlanta's Inman Park or Midtown, while the posh suburbs of Ladue and Creve Coeur, Mo., resemble the forested hills of Atlanta's Buckhead.
"From its inception, St. Louis was aligned with the South economically, culturally and through family relationships," says Kathy Corbett, director of education for the Missouri Historical Society. "St. Louis was a Southern city because of the desire of so many of the residents to maintain their own Southern cultural graciousness and to avoid being uncouth like Chicago, which was Northern, or Kansas City, which was Western."
Exhibits in the society's History Museum depict these traditional relationships - beginning in 1763 when a New Orleans fur trader, Pierre di Lacl'ede, selected a site for a trading post he called St. Louis. The following year his assistant, Auguste Chouteau, returned with 30 men to build log huts and a fur warehouse.
The advent of the steamboat helped St. Louis merchants acquire the South's agricultural products and supply Southerners with manufactured goods. "St. Louis was the plug tobacco capital of the country," says Corbett. "Tobacco leaves were brought upriver from Kentucky and Tennessee. Belcher Sugar Refinery refined sugar cane, and local bartenders created the original Planters Punch and Southern Comfort. Excelsior Stove Works manufactured stoves in St. Louis. When you make a stove, you want to sell it downriver."
The museum tells this story with models of paddlewheel steamers, including the Zebulon M. Pike, which inaugurated the steamboat era at St. Louis in 1817. Also on display is the wheelhouse of the Golden Eagle, the last Mississippi River packet steamer with a stern wheel and wood hull. She sank in 1947.
The steamboat brought thousands of German and Irish immigrants to St. Louis through the Port of New Orleans between 1820 and 1860. A museum display depicts the role these immigrants played in snatching St. Louis from the Confederacy. In May 1861, soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, a heavily German volunteer force helped federal troops arrest the state militia, which had Southern leanings and was preparing to raid the local federal arsenal.
You'll also find the St. Louis area's Southern heritage in its historic house-museums. Two were built by Virginians, another by a family with Louisiana Creole ties.
About 20 miles west of downtown St. Louis, just below the crest of a hill overlooking the Missouri River, stands an elegant home in the Virginia plantation style. It's Thornhill, the estate of Frederick Bates, Missouri's second governor. He was born in Goochland County, Va., and his wife, Nancy Opie Ball (a distant relative of George Washington's mother, Mary Ball Washington) was from Lancaster County, Va.
Bates came to St. Louis in 1807 as land commissioner to resolve land claims in the Louisiana Purchase territories. He built Thornhill in 1818-19, was elected governor in 1824, and died of pleurisy at age 48 in 1825.
Now part of St. Louis County's 98-acre Faust Park, Thornhill is undergoing restoration. You can tour it noon-5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, admission $2 adults, children free. The third Sunday of each month is "craft day" on the grounds. For details, contact Thornhill Historic Site, 15185 Olive Blvd., St. Louis 63117, phone 314-532-7298.
The first owner of Hanley House in suburban Clayton, about 10 miles from downtown St. Louis, was Martin Franklin Hanley of Greenbrier County, Va. (now West Virginia). A new 301-room Ritz Carlton Hotel stands on part of Hanley's 100-acre hay and vegetable farm. He farmed and worked as a blacksmith, grocer, tavern keeper and justice of the peace, and built his eight-room rose-pink home in the Greek Revival style in 1855. Members of the Hanley family donated most of the home's furnishings. It's open 1-5 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, admission $1 adults, 50 cents children. For information contact the city of Clayton, 10 N. Bemiston Ave., Clayton Mo. 63105, no phone.
DeMenil Mansion, in the old Carondelet neighborhood in South St. Louis, reflects Louisiana's French influence on St. Louis. The first owner, Henri Chatillon, guided historian Francis Parkman Jr. on the Oregon Trail. In 1848 Chatillon built a modest French Colonial farmhouse, to which Dr. Nicholas N. DeMenil added front parlors and a Greek Revival facade in 1863. DeMenil was a Creole and one of the St. Louis area's first druggists; his wife was a member of the Chouteau family.
"Many St. Louisans believed that Dr. DeMenil was a Southern sympathizer, so to protect his family he put bars on his home's downstairs widows," says Barbara Hirshfield, administrator of the foundation that owns the house. "This location was ideal for the DeMenils and others to hide men and ammunition in the caves under the house, and to send messages to Southern troops on the Mississippi with flashing lights."
DeMenil Mansion contains china, crystal and furniture from the DeMenil and Chouteau families. It's open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, admission $2.50 adults, 50 cents children. For information, contact DeMenil Mansion, 3352 DeMenil Place, St. Louis 63118, phone 314-771-5828. The mansion's carriage house, built in 1870, is a restaurant serving lunch 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
About 1.5 miles north of DeMenil Mansion, a farmers' market has flourished since 1779 in the Soulard neighborhood. The present Soulard Market building houses a half-dozen permanent shops in an Italianate structure built in 1929, and 275 covered stalls. Vendors of fresh fruits and vegetables, meats (including live poultry), dairy products, baked goods, spices and pet supplies operate daily. The busiest time, when most of the stalls are occupied, is early Saturday morning. Soulard Market is in the 1600 block of South Broadway, between Carroll Street and Lafayette Avenue.
Between Soulard Market and DeMenil Mansion stands the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. For a free tour of the brewery, a 142-acre German Romanesque structure built in 1892, contact Anheuser-Busch, 1127 Pestalozzi St., St. Louis 63118, phone 314-577-2626.
Before the Civil War, officers who would later become leaders of the Union and Confederate forces served at Jefferson Barracks, a 1,700-acre Army base 15 miles south of the Gateway Arch on the bluffs above the Mississippi River. Jefferson Davis was there as a young lieutenant just out of West Point, and Robert E. Lee came to solve shoaling problems along the St. Louis riverfront. Also in residence (but not at the same time as Davis and Lee) were Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.
Today you can explore 425 acres of the base that have become a county park. Displays in a powder magazine built in 1857 trace the history of Jefferson Barracks, and an ordnance building dating from 1851 has changing art and photography exhibits. Also remaining are a house built for civilian laborers in 1851, and a stable built around 1870 that was used as a tank garage during World War I. For information contact Jefferson Barracks Museum, 533 Grant Road, St. Louis 63125, 314-544-5174.
To inquire about accommodations, attractions and restaurants in the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County, contact the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, 10 S. Broadway, Suite 300, St. Louis 63102, phone 1-800-247-9791 or 314-421-1023.
by CNB