Some of the oldest sidewalks in St. Louis aren’t concrete, they’re granitoid. Let’s take a walk and explore our native surface material.
The classic Irish blessing starts, “May the road rise up to meet you…” That can work oddly in Lafayette Square. Our sidewalks are a combination of mismatched concrete, brick, granitoid and asphalt. These are broken up by many tree roots. Looking up to admire roofline cornices can cause a stumble or fall. After moving here we quickly learned to step, not shuffle on our walks around the Square.
St. Louis can throw some quirks at you, and one of them lies right under your feet in Lafayette Square. Walk down the north side of Kennett Place, for example, and observe the distinctive reddish tint in the sidewalk. This is a thing of some historical interest, called granitoid. Here’s a quick guide to interpretation:
Here is concrete: and here is granitoid:
As you approach Kennett Place from Mississippi Avenue, here’s a transition from one to the other:
The buildings on the main campus of Washington University began construction in 1900. Here you’ll see a nice marriage of Missouri granite and Indiana limestone.
The primary quarry for the distinctive pink granite is on the backside of Elephant Rocks State Park, in St. Francois County, 85 miles south of St. Louis
Limestone is somewhere between 318 to 359 million years old, but the granite here comes from deep in the Precambrian past. This is nearer the time of the earth’s formation. Igneous rock was originally set down by the cooling of magma. In the Ozark dome, this dates it to 3 to 4 billion years ago. The granite’s red hue is caused by pink feldspar and iron oxides in the stone.
A little more recently…in the 19th Century
Ninety miles south of St. Louis lies the town of Ironton, the seat of Iron County, Missouri. Along with St. Francois and Madison Counties, the area is rich in granite. Five miles north of Ironton was a post office for an unincorporated place called Graniteville. In 1869, the Schneider Granite Company began commercial quarrying of red granite. It would soon provide granite piers for the new Eads Bridge. By the 1880s granite blocks for paving the streets of St. Louis were selling for 80 to 90 dollars per thousand. A block maker, even after paying a driller to expose the granite, could earn 5 to 7 dollars a day. This lucrative (at that time) work drew hundreds of men to the small region. Millions of red granite blocks were hewn from St. Francois County. They were transported by Lafayette Square resident Stephen Barlow’s Iron Mountain railroad to St. Louis.
Red granite developed a wide appeal. As dressed stone, it featured in the Anheuser Busch brewery and the new (since 1898) St. Louis City Hall. It was used in Marshall Field’s flagship store and the Rookery building in Chicago, Cincinnati’s City Hall, and the Whitney National Bank building in New Orleans. Red granite was also a popular choice for monuments, as the quartz and feldspar content of the Ironton granite polished beautifully. According to the Missouri DNR, 52% of the granite area’s production still goes to concrete and road work. By contrast, 74% of its commercial value comes from monument granite.
The city recently repaved Mississippi Avenue from Park to Chouteau Avenue in Lafayette Square. The neighborhood organization had a difficult time deciding whether to revert to the underlying granite blocks, or repair the existing asphalt overlay. One choice is historical, durable, and rumbly, the other smooth, soft and eventually crumbly. A middle path was chosen, with asphalt down a center driving lane, keeping the granite block shoulders. It’s not certain that anyone was completely satisfied.
The end of the road for granitoid blocks
Granite blocks were most in demand from the 1880s through the 1890s. That demand had tapered to a crawl by 1940. As early as 1904, many of our major roadways were made of concrete or asphalt. The quarries began supplying ground granite, as granitoid, for sidewalks. It was a smoother and easier alternative to brick, and folks viewed it as an aesthetic upgrade. Advertising of the day touted the strength that granite gave to the product. As a result, the Ironton area transitioned to producing crushed granite. This was added to Portland cement to make granitoid. Large Gates crushers were installed to pulverize the otherwise indestructible granite. Here’s a video of how effective those crushers, patented in 1874 were:
Messrs. S. P. McKelvey, Frank Sullivan and R. G. Mayhew are connected with the Granitoid Company. The granite composition stone laid down by this firm is a mixture of crushed granite with cement. It presents all the desirable features of the solid stone. Granitoid is made as required at the scene of operations, and is unrivaled for sidewalks, drives, curbs, gutters, basement floors, brewery and malt house floors, steps, copings, etc. It is absolutely impervious to the weather, and as durable as the stone itself.
From Pen And Sunlight Sketches Of St Louis (1892):
In 1917, the City Plan Commission of St. Louis wrote that asphalt or wooden block streets should be used in residential neighborhoods. They were less durable but quieter than brick or stone pavement. Granite blocks were relegated to heavily trafficked industrial areas in the city, where the noise was less objectionable. The plan specified granitoid sidewalks for the central district of the city, from 3rd Street to the city limits, on Market, Laclede and Lindell Blvd. It stated that;
“Nothing is so detrimental to the street appearance than an assortment of flagstones and concrete slabs of various size and mixture. Further, “Universal adoption of granitoid sidewalk is recommended, since it is now practically as cheap as any other sidewalk”.
The trend to granitoid was clear and popular. For instance, in 1890 1.5 million cubic feet of granitoid paving was laid in St. Louis. A four mile conduit from Chain of Rocks to the St. Louis water works was lined with granitoid. The Cupples warehouse basements contained about 2.5 acres of granitoid. In 1915, 9.8 miles of sidewalk was laid in the City of St Louis. Of this, 9.0 miles were made from granitoid.
The South Side sidewalks go pink
The American Granitoid Flagging Company was located at 1829 Park Avenue in Lafayette Square. This would put it directly opposite today’s Fountain Plaza. It was owned by P.M. Bruner, who trademarked Granitoid. He produced it from the quarry spalls around Graniteville, in Iron County, MO. Bruner moved down the street to 1815 Park Avenue in 1906. Five years later, he ran a second site at 2416 Lemp Street. At that time, the Gould Directory listed 34 Granitoid manufacturers in St. Louis.
In 1906, nine separate bills before the St. Louis House of Delegates proposed granitoid sidewalks for various streets. These included Stansbury, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Broadway, Lee, 11th, 14th, and Vandeventer. There were 16 such bills from Mayor Kiel, specifically for granitoid, in 1920.
American Granitoid was active only at at the Lemp facility by 1933. Granitoid use waned with the Great Depression, although the floors of the 1938 Soldiers Memorial downtown are original granitoid. Renamed the P.M. Bruner Granitoid Company, it remained in business until 1951.
Bringing it home to Lafayette Square
Stroll around, and enjoy a little granitoid along the way. Have a glance at the light posts in the Lafayette Square business district on Park Avenue. Yep, they’re made of granitoid. They used to be downtown, possibly near the old Bel Air Hotel.
This early 1960s technicolor beauty at 4th and Washington boasted 17 floors of snug but modern rooms. It was also the home of Trader Vic’s, a Polynesian themed restaurant chain of national repute. The whole thing hearkens back to a time of Mai-Tais and backyard luaus. Anyway, if you look closely, you’ll notice the light post in the foreground.
These disappeared when the Bel Air bit the dust in 1985. Another group of posts resulted from the destruction of Vandeventer Place. Park Avenue had the distinctly unhistoric looking “cobra head” light posts that we see everywhere today. The neighborhood organization determined that these, with others ditched near the river would provide a more era-appropriate look. Fortunately, this coincided with a street widening and new sidewalks for Park Avenue. Dave Visintainer and a small group of residents went to work with Alderperson Marit Clark. They managed to secure, transport and erect the historic light posts where they are today.
Our granitoid light posts are both historically and electrically illuminating. We fasten all kinds of semi-useful placards on them
The granite blocks of Iron County today mostly keep yard mulch out of the brick, and vice versa. They’re everywhere you care to look. If you walk along the riverfront, thousands of them lie sturdily underfoot.
Amid all the destruction involved with creating the Arch grounds, workers often squirreled home several a day, and they continue to fill many of our urban landscaping needs.
One last item to ponder: In Lafayette Square, the imminent threat of demolition by the proposed North South Connector galvanized a movement for protected National Historic District status. This was largely due to a Victorian park and dozens of 19th century mansions. I ran across an instance where the mere presence of granitoid streets led to Grand Forks, North Dakota receiving a National Register of Historic Places designation. Funny how things work.
Thanks to research sources, including:
MO DNR at https://dnr.mo.gov/geology/geosrv/geores/indmin/granite.htm,
Jerry Vineyard of MO DNR for the photo of Elephant Rocks State Park.
Stone Quarries And Beyond https://quarriesandbeyond.org/states/mo/mo-quarrying_indust_mo_1904_3.html Compiled by Peggy Perazzo.
A Beautiful Dialog Between Materials; Washington University Magazine; https://magazine.wustl.edu/2011/august/Pages/MissouriGranite.aspx ; August 2011; Tony Fitzpatrick
Notes On The Building Stones, Clays and Sands Of Iron, St Francois, and Madison Counties; G.E. Ladd; Geological Survey Of Missouri Bulletin 1 April, 1890
Problems Of St Louis: City Plan Commission; Harland Bartholomew; 1917; Nixon-Jones Printing Co.
Commercial And Architectural St Louis; D.G. Jones 1891; DuMont Jones And Co. A great (then) contemporary review of the PM Bruner Company and history of Granitoid in St Louis.
Vanishing St Louis blog (2009) and Paul Hohmann for photo of Bel Air Hotel.
Motels In The City Of St Louis: Preservation Research; Michael Allen; May 31, 2011
David Visintainer, in conversation during May of 2019.
Image of men paving a street – Compton at Meramec – 1907; Charles Clement Holt, via Missouri History Museum
For more on the great civic works of Mayor Henry Kiel, take a look at my earlier essay https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1917-the-life-and-times-of-mayor-henry-kiel/
