Forward, Into The Past
The corner of Lafayette and Missouri Avenues shares the multi-address feature of the Sheble-Bixby house at Mississippi and Lafayette. It contains 2166 Lafayette Avenue, and 1700 and 1706 Missouri Avenue. While a single mansion, it was once the residential estate of local physician Dr Joseph Spiegelhalter and his six children. It was later the Missouri Hotel.
This is the continuation of an essay entitled “1923: Swekosky’s Early Years” https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1923-trouble-in-paradise-swekoskys-early-years/ In brief review, an amorous young dentist from Preston Place in Lafayette Square got himself in deep water with the ladies. We last left him in 1923; bankrupt, alone, and difficult to track.
Forward seventeen years to September 1940. There appears a profile of Swekosky, who somehow renamed himself, from William E. to William G. He is happily remarried, living on Jules Street in McKinley Heights. The article from the Post-Dispatch is titled, “History Of Old Homes Is Hobby Of St. Louisan.” It credits him with twenty years in the study of old homes. This stemmed from his earlier employment in the title department of a Clayton bank.
Swekosky’s father dissuaded him from a career as title examiner, and put him through dental school at St. Louis University. On the side, William began reading books on stock investing, and “majored in Insull stocks”.
Samuel Insull was like the Kenneth Lay (Enron Corp) of his day. He was president of Commonwealth Edison in 1907, having built a utilities empire across 39 states. The company’s stock sold well on his vigorous and hyperbolic promotion. He even made the cover of Time Magazine, which wrote admiring essays in 1926 and 1929. When the market crashed in 1929, he surrendered his companies to creditors and fled the country. Extradited, Insull faced trial three times for fraud and embezzlement. He became a symbol of the corporate corruption that led to the Great Depression. An outcry for reform led to creation of both Tennessee Valley Authority and Rural Electrification Administration.
During the 1920s, Swekosky learned to time purchases and sales of Insull stocks in various enterprises. Built on air, a company like Peoples Gas Light and Coke, hovering around bankruptcy, would be bought by Insull for $20.00/share, and less than a decade later, be valued at $400.00/share, largely on the strength of Insull’s Midas touch. Swekosky thus acquired the freedom he needed to “spend my spare time on my houses.”
Swekosky was a contemporary of John Albury Bryan in Landmarks Association, with both referred to as “walking histories of St. Louis”. The distinction between them was that Bryan’s professional interest was in architecture, whereas Swekosky preferred digging into the people and stories associated with significant buildings.
The Post-Dispatch received a large number of letters from Swekosky, handwritten in green ink, informing them of the pending demolition of some St. Louis landmark. He kept a filing system only he could navigate, and took hundreds of photographs documenting the properties. Taking a reporter for a drive, he would effortlessly spiel about individual homes and businesses, giving a full account of occupancy over the years.
Swekosky spent nearly every weekend at the Missouri Historical Society and City Recorder’s Office. There he pored over documents and directories, footnoting the backs of his pictures with further findings.
He housed his collection in an office on South 12th Street. From an unassuming home on Jules Street in McKinley Heights, it was easy for Swekosky to focus his energies on cataloging the surrounding South Side and Lafayette Square.
An Everyday Magazine article, “Old Mansions Are His Hobby,” featured Swekosky in 1942. The article gives examples of his rambling train of thought in discussing an old house photo:
“Here’s Dr. Franz J. Arzt’s home, built on the northeast corner of 12th and Lami in 1877. Marble front, interior trim of mahogany and walnut, tiled entrance hall with six giant mirrors, three-story tower, mansard room with wrought iron trim, large imported art glass window in the east wall”.
Warming to the task, Swekosky shifted gears into the stuff he loved – the occupants and their backgrounds:
“Dr. Arzt kept parrots and grew orange and lemon trees in a glass house and had the first goldfish in St. Louis. Mrs. Caroline O’Fallon was another goldfish fancier. She lived on Pine near Leffingwell and spent her leisure time on the roof during warm weather. She had a large copper-lined fish pool on the roof.” His typed notes from the house add even more: “Dr. Arzt built a cave under and around the glass house with real stalactytes and stalagmites. Lami Street was a popular coasting place in winter, as it was very steep. The sight of Dr. Arzt’s oranges and lemons growing in the winter was a pleasant sight.”
It’s interesting to dig into his comments and a great way to learn new things about old St. Louis places. There’s a beautiful home at 1126 Sidney Street today, that Swekosky discusses in 1942:
“First house in St. Louis to be decorated with stone lions. Home of brewery baron Max Feurbacher, whose opera garden was patterned from one in Heidelberg. Occupied by the family for 47 years, that’s unusual.”
Note: I’ve never seen a photo of William G. Swekosky smiling, which seems unusual, or might not inspire much confidence in his dental skills. Perhaps it was from covering up the fact that he was really the reincarnation of notorious William E. Swekosky…
There are dozens of newspaper articles from the 1930s up to 1964, that repeat what Swekosky offered, nearly verbatim. His files were encyclopedic, peopled with folks as interesting as their houses. Here’s an article from 1955, concerning the razing of a housing tract developed by Lafayette Square co-founder Sir Charles Gibson. This tidy summary contains a lot of interesting side channels. History is full of rabbit holes, and Swekosky seemed born to explore them, developing a map as he went.
A good number of Swekosky’s authoritative and often exhaustive house notes are available through the excellent search tool on the Missouri Historical Society website. Give it a spin at
https://mohistory.org/collections?text=Swekosky&images=0
His seemingly constant stream of information often appeared on the backs of Swekosky’s photos of local buildings. Here is front and back of the Dietrich Waldecker house, now home to McLaughlin Funeral Home on the corner of Lafayette and Missouri Avenues in Lafayette Square. He often used the distinctive green ink in his photo musings.
This is not to suggest that Swekosky was never wrong. He issued opinions easily, and over time, it is sometimes difficult to sort out what is real and what might be conjecture. Infuriated over the destruction of once exclusive Vandeventer Place for development of the Cochran VA Hospital, he took to the paper in protest, maybe going a little too far in his speculating. This, from the St Louis Star and Times in 1948:
St. Louisans know how that one turned out.
During a City Hall housecleaning around 1950, the City of St. Louis decided to offload hundreds of photos, mostly shot for the Streets Department by Charles Clement Holt. These rare and comprehensive images from the first three decades of the 1900s sold at auction. They comprised three 13 foot high stacks of negatives, most of them on glass.
Swekosky swept up this poorly curated collection. In the early 1960s, he lent it to friend and amateur photographer Dick Lemen of Moline, Illinois. Lemen cleaned, printed and enlarged the images, producing over 1300 superb photos. Some were sold to magazines and newspapers. He bought the collection outright from Swekosky. An interesting fellow in his own right, Lemen worked as a river deckhand, warehouseman, historian and technical advisor during the filming of “The Adventures Of Mark Twain.“
In the 1980’s, Dick Lemen donated the collection to the St. Louis Mercantile Library. It forms the backbone of the remaining photographic record of St. Louis in the early 20th Century.
In 1962, a Globe-Democrat feature,“ Old Houses Are Like Old Wine,” profiled Swekosky and his long amateur career. By then, William G. referred to himself as “the pallbearer of old houses.” At a breathless pace, he could still bury the reporter in detail. “Why was the skeleton in the back yard? Oh, an undertaker used to live there years ago. The bones were probably those of a drunk or deadbeat who’d ordered a funeral and never paid for it.”And, “A millionaire lived so ragged that the poor people felt sorry for him and let him share their food. When he finally starved to death, his heirs found $1,500,000 in a safe deposit box.” “Another family with a fine house on Waverly Place centered its menus around soup bones. They saved enough money to marry off their daughter to a European nobleman who bled the family fortune.”
Swekosky, a man of some means who lived in a small South Side bungalow, was asked to consider the hundreds of structures he admired and pick one for himself. He hesitated; “looking like a bewildered sultan trying to make a choice from an extra-large harem. “Well, what I’d really like to do is buy a lot of those beautiful houses and live five years in each one.”
Unfortunately, he suffered a heart attack while getting out of his car on Jules Street two years later. Swekosky was taken to City Hospital and died there on New Years Eve, 1963. This site lies about 500 feet from where he was born. His funeral was at St. John Nepomuk and burial at Calvary Cemetery. He was 69 years old.
Judging by the pair of obituaries, and subsequent Swekosky revivals, William G. successfully outlived any recollection of William E., as seen in the earlier essay. No mention was made of his prior adventures in dating and marriage. It’s an open question whether his reinvention was deliberate, or just an unconscious process of growing older and maturing. Whatever, he really did become a guiding light for St. Louis preservationists and historians. Not bad for a dentist from Bohemian Hill (now an off ramp for I-55.)
Swekosky’s sister donated his voluminous collection of photographs and manuscript histories to the Sisters of Notre Dame College in Lemay. The Sisters worked for years to archive and match his writings to corresponding photos. They also published their findings in a weekly column that ran in the Globe- Democrat. In 2001, the Sisters donated Swekosky’s collection to the Missouri History Museum.
Writing for the Post-Dispatch in 1976, Florence Shinkle called Swekosky “a dentist by profession, a photographer by choice, and a romantic by nature. He worked in a cramped office, slept in a brick bungalow, but lived grandly, exuberantly in the past”. A still later tribute in 2001 credited him thusly: “When the demolition of a valuable piece of property was imminent, he notified the newspapers, providing them with pictures and documentation. His factual alarms were often peppered with delicious bits of gossip.”
A long life is ensured for buildings within a registered historic district. Lafayette Square was fortunate that young bohemians in the 1970s fought long technical battles for that designation. As a result, others moved there, free to marvel at how it managed to be saved. The shift in thought and policy toward preservation comes from realizing that not all progress in St. Louis has been for the better. This awakening traces back to folks like Bryan, Lemen, and Swekosky.
Finally, for a nice sampling of Swekosky photos of old St. Louis, please have a look at:
https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=swekosky&view_all=1
Thanks To Research Sources, Including:
A brief biography of Samuel Insull appears at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Insull
and more information on his holdings is here:
https://scripophily.net/inutininc2.html for stock certificate and description of company
Urban STL blog for detail on razing of the old St. Louis Palladium for the Cochran VA Medical Center.
A great local urban blog: stlouiscitytalk.com
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Globe-Democrat, and Star-Times
St. Louis Historical Society Library And Research Center
William (E, or is it G?) Swekosky (1894-1963) was a character in the one-of-a-kind sense.
Florence Shickle of the Post Dispatch wrote of him in 1976: “He was a dentist by profession, a photographer by choice, and a romantic by nature.”
He worked in a cramped office on South Jefferson Avenue (right where Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken stands today). The home he kept was a bungalow on Jules Street in the Benton Park neighborhood.
But Swekosky “lived grandly, exuberantly in the past”. During a 40 year period, he amassed a loosely organized collection of over 4000 photographic negatives. These were sometimes unattributed, and sometimes extensively annotated. However, the photos speak for themselves, in their depictions of everyday life in St. Louis of the early 20th century. Outside of Depression-era WPA project film and photos from the papers, Swekosky’s collection is critical, not just to understanding what St. Louis looked like, but also how it felt in those days. There may be no better collection; and if his commentary was factually dubious at times, it was always colorful and intriguing.
He had a habit, too, of finding buildings about to be demolished, and writing to the newspapers about their heritage and history. He always made a note of when the structure would be razed, and attached photos. Although he associated with Landmarks Association and Missouri Historical Society, he seldom argued publicly for preservation, but rather acted as an obituary writer, pointing out the builders, owners and stories associated with each building.
There is much to say about this fellow, so lost in his hobby that he scarcely had time for his occupation. Let’s start at the beginning – how an incurable romantic; a man who referred to himself as the “pallbearer for old mansions” got his start.
Young William Swekosky was raised in the family home on Preston Place in the Bohemian Hill neighborhood near Lafayette Square. As a boy, he roamed the neighborhood, enchanted by the mansions with their imposing facades, fountains and statues in neatly kept yards. His father was a grocer who prospered enough to have retired at age 40.
William began his career working as a title researcher for a Clayton bank. Here he developed an interest in local buildings and architecture. William’s career choice dismayed his father. There were few opportunities for making one’s fortune from clerical work. He convinced the young man that the chances of one day occupying his own mansion in the Square were better if he became a professional. With that, he put up the funds to send William to St. Louis University Dental School, from where he graduated in 1916.
It’s necessary here to digress into an odd occurrence in the story, one that doesn’t feature in what is easily learned about Swekosky.
At a New Year’s Eve party in 1915, William first met Anna Hodgins. He was immediately smitten, and because William’s father wanted him to marry a Bohemian, they kept their relationship clandestine. William and Anna finally eloped in 1917, while continuing to live separately and maintaining a secret marriage. They were finally outed when William refused to let another gentleman dance with Anna, protesting loudly that she was his wife.
From later court testimony we learn that William, a somewhat unlikely Lothario, took up with another woman named Louise. In mid-1919, when he refused to break off that relationship, Anna filed for, and obtained a divorce.
Two days later, William tried to convince Anna that they should be together, and they began dating. He seems to have promised to remarry her, and this went on for some time.
According to Anna, they planned a wedding for the Hotel Statler, but he failed to show up, calling her later to explain that he had been too ill to travel. She testified that he set a second date, but she overheard him on the phone, planning a rendezvous with yet another woman for the same day.
Frustrated and angry, Anna decided then to confront William in his dental office. She showed up with a gun and fired a shot at him. William hightailed it out of there. According to police reports, Anna then claimed to have swallowed approximately two ounces of chloroform in a suicide attempt. Police took her to City Hospital, where the attending physician found no trace of poisoning. Anna attributed this miracle to having drank a cup of coffee before the medical examination.
On December 18, 1921, Anna was booked on assault with intent to kill. The Soulard Station jail released her after the posting of a $500.00 bond.
Swekosky apparently dropped the charges in a cooler moment. Then the old adage that Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned proved its point. Anna filed a breach of promise suit for $25,000. She told the Post Dispatch “There is no dictating to the heart; I love him still, and always will”.
For his part, William claimed that he only dated her again to keep her from appearing at his office and making a scene. He hadn’t intended to remarry, and never told her he would. He added that she had tried to kill him. His attorney introduced a 1920 letter from Anna, agreeing to a $2,000.00 lump sum alimony, which released William from all future claims.
Until the mid-1930’s there were laws in most states for breach of promise suits applying to broken engagements. Virginity was serious business, and there could be severe financial consequences for making off with another’s virtue under the promise of a permanent bond. These cases sought relief in what was termed “heart balm”, and they became topical in local gossip as to who was being victimized. The courts tended to sympathize with the jilted party, almost exclusively the woman in a relationship. Therefore, it was fairly easy for Anna to come away with a judgement against Swekosky for $6,500.00.
In August 1923, William E. Swekosky of 1730 Preston Place filed for bankruptcy. The unpaid judgment against him left him with assets of $789.00 and liabilities of $7,641.00. At this point Anna disappears from the press entirely, and William also goes unmentioned for a short while. He will reappear in an entirely different context soon. Stay tuned for that post.
St Louis Post Dispatch articles from 1921, 1922, 1923
St Louis Star and Times from 1923
Detroit Free Press from 1923
For an enlightening look at the subject of heart balm, I recommend this article by Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-heart-balm-racket-convinced-america-women-were-no-good-180968144/
There’s an old expression that history is written by the victors. But what if there’s no particular struggle to inspire the writer? We’re lucky when famous people from interesting times write down their thoughts and experiences; luckier still when the writer was literate and conscious of the times. Herodotus was one, and Boswell, and of course, Churchill. We are then left a time capsule to open and interpret. St Louis had such good luck in 1880, when Mayor John Fletcher Darby wrote his memoirs.
Continue reading “1836: Mayor Darby Gets A Park”In the list of St Louis City ordinances from 1861, there is a provision for the handling of dead animal carcasses, and a prohibition on raising hogs within the city limits. There is even an ordinance banning the flying of kites. But there was no mention of the movement of cattle through city streets. On September 10th 1874, the St Louis Dispatch gave notice of a public meeting meant to organize protest to a proposed ordinance allowing the driving of cattle down public streets during daylight hours. As you can see, the signatories to this notice include many of the leading Lafayette Square residents (and community leaders) of the day, including former mayors Thomas and Britton.
Continue reading “1874: A Cattle Call From Lafayette Square”
Aviation history leads through Leonardo Da Vinci, to the Montgolfier and Wright Brothers. But for real celebrity, in flew Charles A. Lindbergh!
Soon after a craft beer festival in Lafayette Park, a neighbor whose dog was mixing with mine commented on a strong smell, like that of someone having barfed nearby.
That odor actually IS the smell of someone barfing nearby. It’s butyric acid, and it’s formed by the rotting fruit of the female ginkgo tree. I say female because there are two sexes to this tree. Not that this would help you select one to plant, as they are also known to change sex from male to female on short notice.
Continue reading “2019: Ode To Ginkgo, Or Eau De Ginkgo”Casting a look back a hundred years in St Louis history, it requires little effort to find a subject with deep roots in Lafayette Square, whose tale is well worth retelling. Here’s the story of the 32nd mayor of St Louis, Henry W. Kiel.
Continue reading “1917: The Life and Times of Mayor Henry Kiel”A reference to ‘speaking tubes’ appeared during a look at the 1892 real estate listings around Lafayette Square. Being from split level suburbia, I’d never heard of them.
Continue reading “1892: Can You Hear Me Now?”We live in a neighborhood steeped in its own history. The times change fast, but it’s comforting to consider the constants around us, and Lafayette Park holds a big bouquet of them.
Continue reading “2020: Lafayette Park Ferns – Of Fiddleheads and Rabbit Holes”
