1902: The Cracker Castle

St. Louis was the third largest wheat market in the U.S. back in the mid-19th century. It was only natural that when the Civil War broke out, St. Louis bakers scrambled for the rich government contracts to provide hardtack. The largest cracker factory in the world, Joseph Garneau’s New Steam Cracker Bakery was at 17th and Morgan Streets. Another, owned by Dozier, Weyl and Company turned out 1,500 barrels of crackers daily, and rang up sales of $500,000 in 1878. Fortunes were created, like the one for bakery owner Jonathan O. Pierce, of Kendall and Pierce Company, later Pierce, Dimmick and Company. 

Cost and competition were almost irrelevant as success factors for these early provisioners. The armies of each side would buy whatever could be delivered. The war years created a lot of expansion and generated a lot of cash, so the Pierce factory thrived. 

James Neal Primm wrote that wealthy St. Louisans of the 1840s responded to industrial inconvenience, disease and poverty by relocating to the outskirts of the city. Some influential families moved just south of Chouteau’s Pond, to Chouteau Avenue. John C. Fremont owned a “veritable palace” there. Newspaper publisher Carl Schurz, Planter’s House owner Benjamin Stickler and others made the area attractive to wealthy buyers. 

Jonathan Pierce wanted to belong to the refined society in this area. In 1863 he hired ‘controversial and conspicuous’ architect Charles B. Clarke to build his house. Clarke responded with one of the oddest residences in St. Louis’s long history.

Clarke studied architecture in New York before coming to St. Louis in 1859. He’s not so conspicuous today, as none of the 33 churches, schools,  courthouses or residences he designed still exist.  

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The vision he created for Pierce was a supersized Italian villa,“with two contrasting asymmetrically placed towers lifted above arched cornices.” It was five stories at its highest point, with “complex brickwork, mansards on towers, large decorative brackets and wood trim, and elaborate windows of various size and shape.” Its highly decorated balcony overlooked a porch with carved wooden arches. Lafayette Square resident and architect John Albury Bryan wondered how any architect could have designed a building so ugly.”  He did concede that the structure was a symptom of its time; the Victorian era featured stylistic excess. It’s what we have, in more moderated form, in the French Second Empire mansions of the Square. 

Jonathan and Cornelia Pierce bought an undeveloped lot on the West side of St. Ange on Chouteau Avenue in May 1863, for $13,500. The mansion rose quickly, as the city directory of 1864 has the Pierces listed as residing there. Their five story palace was completed at a cost of $115,000. The hand carved mahogany front door alone cost $2,500.

As noted, fat government contracts for low cost bakery products rained money on those in the cracker trade in St. Louis. This was no evidence that Jonathan Pierce had any great business acumen. When the war ended, so did the demand for barrels of hardtack. When his contracts expired, Pierce most likely wished he hadn’t spent so extravagantly on the house. By early 1867, he took out a $25,000 mortgage on the Castle. He was unable to find a buyer willing to help him break even, and later that year Pierce sold the house to attorney Fidelio C. Sharp for $50,000. 

Pierce’s financial affairs were caught in a vortex. He sold Pierce, Dimmick and Company to Johannes Dunham in 1868, and moved to Boston. The Post-Dispatch of June 8,1875 reported that he had filed for bankruptcy, listing debts of $50,000.

That same year, a group of artists and draftsmen under the direction of mapmaker Camile Dry set about sketching the entire city in detail for the Pictorial St Louis map. Careful inspection yields curious details, one of which is Fidelio Sharp’s distinctive house on Chouteau Avenue. 

F.C. Sharp and his wife Pinkie were delighted to reside in the Cracker Castle. The Globe-Democrat in 1878 enthused, “It’s located on two of our finest streets; “its delightful grounds and surroundings make it a most desirable residence.” The Chouteau Avenue area was then “a center of financial and societal strength,” and home to many city movers. 

After the Civil War, the area housed Judge J. G. Woerner, a noted probate judge and author of St Louis first national literary success, a treatise on American law. William Skrainka, owner of quarries and a construction company, lived at the corner of Dillon Street and Park Avenue. Charles Stockstrom, inventor of the Quick Meal (later Magic Chef) stove resided at 1326 LaSalle. Theodore Papin, of the J. L. Papin real estate business, and relative of the Cerre, Chouteau and Gratiot familes, lived at the corner of Dillon and Hickory Streets. Charles Rebstock, a major benefactor of Washington University lived at 1124 St. Ange Avenue.

Joseph Schnaider was at 1430 St Ange, in an “awkward and pretentious home with Paladian windows.” His beer garden employed striking musicians from the old Olympic Theater and started the St Louis Grand Orchestra, from which the St Louis Symphony was derived. James Eads sought a foothold in the area, and succeeded after the war when he got clear title to a lot on the corner of Grattan Street and Park Avenue. 

Fidelio Sharp died at his dream house in 1878 after living there for a decade. The Cracker Castle was sold to a wealthy Pittsburgh attorney as part of the division of Sharp’s estate. His heirs realized just $21,000 from the sale. It was sold again shortly afterward at auction, by order of the probate court. Just before the auctioneer began the bidding, a “poor crazy lady” appeared and forbade the sale, loudly claiming to be an heiress of the nobleman who once owned and lived in the castle. She was there to assert her rights. Her protest was properly noted, and she stormed off. 

The opening bid was $5,000. It quickly went to $8,000, $10,000 and 10,500. Attorney Charles Pearce entered the bidding at $10,750. It went to $10,800,  Pearce responded at $10,850. The contest continued at $10,900, $11,000, and then local grocer David Nicholson jumped in with a bid of $11,150. Pearce and Nicholson alternated $50.00 raises, until Pearce called out $13,950, and Nicholson folded. Pearce was pleased, and told the Post-Dispatch he was prepared to pay up to $15,000 for the property. “In view of the fact the purchaser was a bachelor, it was intimated that he also had a bird to place in his splendid cage.” Pearce was a man of means, and very popular in society.

The Cracker Castle enjoyed its brief run as an extreme bachelor pad, and hosted dances and parties fit for the society pages. It resembled a giant birthday cake when lit at night, and could be seen from almost any high spot in town. A newspaper reporter at one evening’s event casually nosed around. He became hopelessly lost and had to yell for help. This was understandable, as the interior featured 14 large rooms, two apartments and a baffling array of niches, dark corners and narrow winding stairways.

The Post Dispatch ran an article on available bachelors, called “Catches,” in 1881. It described Charles Pearce as about 40 years old,“striking, with black side whiskers and mustache, and living in solitude. He is in the legal business and worth over $100,000. He is fond of society and the very youngest set at that.” 

A year later, another writer for the same paper wrote that if the Castle was permitted to stand, it would “soon be classed as one of the valued relics of the city’s earlier days.” It was a house that polarized opinion, even among experts. In 1878, the Globe-Democrat claimed “a vast number admired it greatly when constructed,“regarding it as one of the most beautiful and imposing (residences) in the city.” Now, in 1889, it wistfully noted that when the “bluebirds next sing, St. Louis will have lost one of its most startling architectural attractions.” It would miss the “pile of towers, minarets, bay windows, gables, balustrades, mansards, pediments, and everything else striking and startling, known as Cracker Castle.”

Pearce spent two years half-heartedly seeking a buyer. He was determined that if he couldn’t find a greater fool to purchase the structure, he would demolish it and rebuild as a quarter block of stores with apartments above, or a family hotel. He revived talk of clearing “the old architectural monstrosity, so that a modern and useful building might be erected in its place.” He discussed forming a consortium to build a $100,000 hotel, provided that adjacent neighbors would contribute $25,000 to the enterprise. (That wasn’t going to happen.)

Major Pearce was still ensconced in the Castle in 1895, renting the house’s two apartments. As the house fell further from the style of the times, the Post-Dispatch called the Castle “an aberration of a pronounced character, copied from no known or guessed-at style, with not a single redeeming aspect from the standpoint of the beautiful, the artistic or the useful….too complete in its hideousness to be described.”

Former St. Louis mayor James Britton lived in one of the Castle’s apartments, and his daughter was married in a service held there. Carl Rathmann was the principal of nearby Gratiot School and lived in the other apartment. He was robbed by a cat burglar as he slept in the early hours of May 26,1896. His trunk was too heavy to abscond with, and all the furniture was nailed down. Frustrated, the burglar grabbed Rathmann’s trousers and attempted to flee. Roused, the principal yelled for the police. The burglar fumbled with the trousers and failed to notice the principal’s wallet falling to the floor. Rathmann lost nothing but his trousers in the experience. Something far more significant occurred at approximately 3pm the next day. 

The great tornado of 1896 was to South St. Louis what the 1904 Worlds Fair was to the rest of the city; the event that formed the basis for much of what followed. It marauded right through the Lafayette Park and Soulard areas, flattening everything in its path. The Castle stood too high to avoid notice, and took a heavy hit. Its 90 foot western tower was toppled, crashing through the grand oak-paneled dining room below. Many of its dozens of windows were lost.

Charles Pearce moved to an apartment above a grocery on the other side of Chouteau Avenue. He closed the house back in, but failed to rebuild the tower. On the evening of December 14, 1897, neighbors called the Soulard Street Police Station, reporting “someone with burglarious intent.” A squad responded, and noticed a breached cellar door. Led by a neighbor, they made their way through the deserted boarded-up house, and ascended a set of tower stairs. An intruder came bounding down the stairs, but tripped and rolled right into the officers’ arms. They discovered that he wore a helmet and policeman’s star. He introduced himself as a member of the metro police department, and then his three accomplices, all officers or night watchmen, were taken to the station. They explained that they were attempting to catch pigeons. All were suspended, pending investigation. The fabulous Cracker Castle was now the province of pigeons and prowlers. 

The old place did not improve with age, and descriptions of the property recalled Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” On Friday, April 26, 1902, a strong windstorm sheared off the remaining tower of the house and scattered bricks and plaster around a wide area. The Castle had been uninhabited for a full six years, and the damage piled up as the house wore down.  

Now a hazard to passers-by, the Cracker Castle was deemed a hazard to passers-by, and scheduled for demolition by the city. On that occasion a newspaper man quoted from a popular poem of the day, called “The Deserted Village”

No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
But all the bloomy blush of life is fled. 

It was too late to save what he called,“the proudest residence in St. Louis,”

Thoroughly reduced in stature, it was sold to the Southern Wrecking Company for $500, provided they remove the debris and clear the lot. The writer recalled the “thousands of pigeons who made a rendezvous from the place.” There were rumors of treasure buried in the walls, and a ghost that guarded it.  Old abandoned mansions seem to naturally attract stories like that.  

The neighborhood in general was sinking alongside its mansions. By the turn of the 20th century, many of the grand old homes had been converted to boarding and rooming houses. The glory days were gone, and Chouteau Avenue served as a truck route at the dawn of trucking. A rueful news item referred to Dolman Street,“around the corner with other swell homes, now (1908) grimy and pathetic in their dilapidation.”

In mid-summer 1922, the St. Louis Star and TImes took a look 25 years back. It noted that Jonathan Pierce had built “one of the landmark oddities of St. Louis.” Chouteau Avenue was called “one of the great east-west arteries from the river to Kingshighway,” as well as a principal residential street. It was 80 feet wide when laid out, and designed to serve as the chief street for westerly business traffic. Development “took a contrary whim and refused to go south of the great Mill Creek Valley” (where Chouteau Avenue runs) so the area developed against plan, as upscale residential. The paper blamed this for the vehicular congestion that existed downtown in 1922. It cited as imperative,“millions of dollars (that) must be expended to widen Market Street” to accommodate commercial traffic. 

The lot where the old Cracker Castle stood was sold in January 1940 to a real estate developer. No price was given. By then the site was occupied under a long term lease by a filling station owned by the Lubrite Refining Company . 

The Star and Times waxed optimistic, and anticipated a transformation of the neighborhood from “one of dilapidated elegance to a bright expanse of modern apartments.” There was, until then, no real experience in St. Louis with expanses of modern rent-controlled apartments. With the planned clearing of Mill Creek Valley, new housing would be created, and the area including and south of Chouteau Avenue at 14th Street was targeted. 

The Daniel Boone Parkway, also known as State Highway 40 was dedicated in September of 1940. The highway connected downtown to the suburban west, and was the death knell for the Mill Creek Valley as a residential area. The Star and Times featured houses in the Chouteau neighborhood to be torn down by the Housing Authority for a new low-cost housing project. Demolition was slated to begin within a week. 

In October 1940, a small crowd gathered on Dillon Street to observe a parade of schoolchildren, followed by a brief ceremony. A new development would be built for whites, along with a ‘separate but equal’ development to the North for blacks, on a $7 million loan/grant from a federal housing authority. Each complex was expected to provide housing for 680 families. Fifty-two buildings of two to three stories and six to ten units would be built on the 24 acre South Side plot. Compliance with tradition would be hinted at by using St. Louis’s distinctive red brick for exterior construction. The paper chirped that each unit would contain its own kitchen and bathroom. In 1940 this may not have constituted real progress in most places, but many of the Mill Creek Valley boarding houses to the immediate north had kitchens and bathrooms shared by all the residents. 

The new units were rent controlled at $11,70 to $14,40 per month, and made available only to those with an income of less than $1,100 per year. The buildings would be set at angles to maximize sunlight, and grass plots and playgrounds would be provided.

Some passing notice was paid to the houses about to fall; the “late Victorian mansions, and backyard stables and carriage houses, both spacious and elegant, compelling even in disrepair.”  

The Globe-Democrat decried the condition of the Chouteau Corridor in 1940, calling it the second “ghost town” in the city. The first was the Mississippi River waterfront, which was cleared for an undefined grand monument in the uncertain future. This second ghost town, between Chouteau and Park Avenues, and 14th and Grattan Streets, was scheduled to be demolished in the first ever slum clearance by the St. Louis Housing Authority. Nearly all the houses in the area were cleared of tenants, and Authority posters were on almost every door. The streets were empty except for the occasional slinking cat.

The paper recalled a time “in the horse and buggy days,” when readers’ grandparents were in their prime, and the social life here was high-toned and lively. From 12th Street to 18th Street around Chouteau “was the center of a spacious, a gracious, a leisurely and gentle life.” The writer cited as an example, the Cracker Castle, “One of the most atrocious architectural confections ever built, not only in St. Louis, but anywhere.” 

The ground beneath this area was originally part of the St. Louis Common. It provided grazing land for pasturing cattle between St Louis and Carondelet. Mill Creek formed the dividing line between town and commons when the city was clustered around the riverfront. St. Louis developed to the West, and people began to build on the South side of Chouteau’s Pond. Patrick Dillon scooped up 86 acres of this land in 1843 as an investment, and after the Civil War, this area took off. 

When J.O. Pierce built his “Cracker Castle” in 1868, it created a fashionable landmark, and attracted further residential development, as homes in the district became desirable. 

Many other noteworthy early residents dwelt here. Mayor James Barry of 1340 Chouteau had the unenviable task of dealing with the 1849 cholera outbreak and a fire that burned everything but the cathedral and Rock House to the ground. Elihu Shepard, early St. Louis educator and memoirist lived at the corner of Dillon and Hickory Streets. William D’Quence, founder of both Franklin bank and insurance company, built on ground at Hickory and St .Ange in 1851. head of the Franklin Savings Institution and Franklin Insurance Company. Judge Roderick Rombauer also lived in that house. William Rumbold, who designed the dome of the Old Courthouse lived in a rented house in the neighborhood, and Henry Singleton, the courthouse contractor, lived nearby. 

It was a long downward trip from there to 1940. The new City Plan development called for two complexes. The one designed for white renters is shown above. The black residents project, designated the DeSoto-Carr, was for a similar sized area bounded by Carr Square, Carr School, 18th Street and Blair Avenue. It was created in 1940, then destroyed and rebuilt in the 1950s and again in the 60s.

Clinton Peabody Terrace to the South fared somewhat better over time. It opened in July 1942. The Darst and Webbe high rises (created in 1954) were demolished for a more inviting section now called the Peabody Darst Webbe, recently dubbed the La Saison neighborhood. 

In August 1941, the final unit was completed for the new Clinton Peabody Terrace housing project. It occupied the site of the former Cracker Castle at the corner of St Ange and Chouteau. The St. Louis Housing Authority had deposited $16,770 in court, to cover what a condemnation commission decided to be fair price for the filling station there. That was 15% of its value 78 years earlier. 

Today, the old Praxair site at Chouteau and Missouri Avenues is yielding its tough concrete surface to jackhammers and backhoes. it appears that we might be on the cusp of some major revitalization of Chouteau Avenue. Time will tell; St. Louis often falls short of its big visions. That’s the way the cracker crumbles. St. Louisans in the Lafayette Square area have always preferred stay-at-home redevelopment to westward expansion.

Thanks to Research Sources including:

An excellent discussion of Cracker Castle architect Charles B. Clarke was written by eminent St Louis historian Esley Hamilton for the Missouri Valley Chapter of Society of Architectural Historians; Vol. XI, #2, Summer, 2005. Charles B. Clarke: A St. Louis Original. This summary of his architectural career provides both interpretations and drawings. www.stlouisarchitecture.org/pdf/2005%20Summer.pdf

Notes of William J Swekosky about Cracker Castle; January 19, 1956 from Missouri Historical Society.

Society of Architectural Historians MO Valley Chapter Vol VI #3 Fall 2000 Dona Monroe

Daily Missouri Republican of Mar 2 1868

St. Louis Post-Dispatch of Apr 6, 1878, June 7, 1879, March 5, 1881, April 28, 1888, May 12, 1889, October 28, 1891, December 8, 1895, March 13, 1897, June 30 1902, January 28,1940

St. Louis Globe-Democrat of January 8, 1875, September 20, 1878, December 17, 1889, May 26,1896, December 15, 1897, January 5, 1908, September 29, 1940, August 27, 1941

St. Louis Star and Times of July 7, 1922, September 27 and 28, 1940

St. Louis Republic of April 27, 1902

https://dustyoldthing.com/cracker-castle-legend/ for initial cost and description

Throwback Thursday: 7 Lost Buildings of St. Louis

Cracker Castle map photo from Pictorial St Louis by Richard Compton and Camile Dry; 1875, ℅ Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4164sm.gpm00001/?st=gallery

Mound City on the Mississippi; https://dynamic.stlouis-mo.gov/history.

Lion of the Valley. St Louis, Missouri, 1764-1980; Third Edition; 1998; James Neal Primm; Missouri Historical Society Press. Perhaps the single most indispensable historical overview of the history of St Louis through 1980. 

An incredible consciousness expander, regarding the causes and effects of demographic change in St Louis is The Broken Heart of America; Walter Johnson; 2020; Basic Books division of Hatchette. It’s treatment of the development of black displacement and mass urban housing is essential to gaining a sense of how St. Louis lays out today and why.