Forward, Into The Past
Beginning with William Carr Lane, 48 elected mayors have served the city of St. Louis. The first 45 were men, and the most recent three have been women. Four of the mayors once called Lafayette Square home. They are:
Continue reading “1842-1925: Lafayette Square Mayors”A convenient feature of living in Lafayette Square is that you can easily access different interstate highways. From the Square, one can head to who-knows-where within a couple of minutes. To hit I-44 west, about 200 feet from the on-ramp to I-55 south, turn immediately at the corner of 18th Street and Lafayette Avenue. You most likely know the spot:
As covered in the recent essay, https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=5062 Norman Champ was a man with a solid and profitable business in Lafayette Square, In addition to a home in St. Louis’s north county, he managed a thriving dairy and cattle herd. As chair of the board of aldermen, Champ guided the municipal incorporation of Berkeley, Missouri, and served the new community as alderman and deputy marshal for several years.
A St. Louisan of herculean strength and nearly unlimited ambition crossed paths with the staid and methodical Champ. This essay, the second of a pair, deals with Champ’s star-crossed partner, Bill Bangert.
To call Bangert a ‘character’ would be to short change the term. Born in 1924, he was thirty-five years younger than Champ, who was in his early 70’s when they first met in 1959.
This was an interesting time to be a municipal developer in St. Louis. The Internal Revenue Service in 1954 formally conferred tax-exempt status to certain industrial development bonds. An amendment to the Missouri state constitution cleared the way for a law permitting municipalities to issue bonds for industrial development. This bore particular significance for St. Louis, as city and county were distinct entities since the 1870s, and ninety individual municipalities resulted in the county. Each now had the potential to issue bonds to finance development within its borders.
In January of 1959, Norman Champ sold 62 acres of his unincorporated property to Bill Bangert. The tract lay very near what is now the junction of Interstates 70 and 270 in northwest St. Louis County. The county council approved expansion of this to 308 acres, taking in additional land owned by Bangert. The incorporation of the Village of Champ was ok’ed and five trustees were ratified for the new municipality. Norman Champ, his son, his secretary, Bill Bangert, and Bill’s wife, Rosemary formed the five person board of trustees.
The village had no services, no businesses; only four homes and fourteen residents. Bangert built a house and lived in Champ, but Norman Champ maintained his residence in Berkeley. The scheme from the start was to develop a large sports stadium and industrial center in the new municipality. Again, it was an interesting time in St. Louis. In 1959, the Chicago Cardinals NFL franchise was looking to relocate. It wasn’t clear that the original Busch Stadium at Grand and Dodier would be enough to attract the franchise.
In stepped Bill Bangert, a man of vision, although that may be the wrong term for a man who lost most of his sight at the age of twenty-eight.
It helps to have a bit of background on the fellow who is central to this story and gets the sole credit or blame for what transpired.
Born in 1924, Bill Bangert came from a family of eleven children. Some of the boys grew up to form Bangert Brothers Road Construction. This firm prospered and built many of the highways that facilitated the spread of St. Louis County westward. Bill harbored even bigger ambitions.
When fully grown, Bangert stood 6 foot 5 and weighed 230 pounds. He was a gifted athlete, and played football and baseball at Berkeley High School, then football and track and field at Mizzou. He won the AAU discus title in both 1944 and 1945, but spent his senior year at Purdue, on, of all things, a glee club scholarship. Bangert was a talented baritone singer. In 1946, he threw the shot at the AAU finals at Madison Square Garden one day, and auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera the next.
He also fought in the St. Louis Golden Gloves, making it to the finals one year. He dreamed of boxing in the Olympics.
Many older St. Louisans will remember Bob Burnes, “the benchwarmer,” who is in the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame. Burnes was a sports writer for the Globe-Democrat during a half-century long career. At the Globe, he penned over 15,000 articles. In 1948, Burnes devoted his entire column to an upcoming Golden Gloves matchup between Bill Bangert and another young heavyweight contender from St. Louis.
One of eleven children, Bill’s family construction business, Bangert Brothers, was one of the two largest in St. Louis. It was responsible for much of the area highway construction. In 1958, he left that enterprise to seek his own fortune, one based more on his own ‘individual effort.’
Fresh from college, Bangert joined his brothers in the road construction business, and dipped a toe into the political pool. Recall that Norman Champ was a longtime member of the Berkeley board of aldermen, First elected mayor in 1950, Bill Bangert served three terms as Berkeley mayor by 1957.
Mayor Bangert’s six stormy years as mayor featuring disputes with his police department, the city engineer and finally, the board of aldermen. During his tenure, he also unsuccessfully sought to annex Hazelwood and the St. Louis municipal airport. This experience raised his consciousness to the upsides of municipal annexation, and reinforced his ‘go it alone’ political mindset.
In 1952, Bangert lost the sight in both eyes, result of a rare disease that essentially detached his retinas. One year, he finished second in an AAU meet in shot put, while technically blind. Doctors were able to restore some sight in one eye, and Bill went forward from there.
When Berkeley voters opted for a council/manager form of government in 1957, Bangert was out of a job. The following year he also left Bangert Brothers, and decided to pursue a vivid dream of real estate development.
So he and former Berkeley alderman, Norman Champ, joined forces to put the village of Champ on the map of St. Louis County. Norman owned undeveloped acreage in North County. They intended to incorporate the area as a new municipality, then build a massive stadium and shopping center there. Tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the municipality would finance construction. In 1960 Missouri amended its constitution to allow issuance of revenue bonds for leased manufacturing facilities. Rentals from businesses occupying facilities owned by the municipality would retire the bonds. Tenants could write off that rent, creating an attractive reduction in federal tax due. A clear win/win.
So if one is a dreamer, the only limit to the scale of the dream is the size of the imagination behind it. Bill Bangert had imagination in spades. This was not to be just any stadium, but a gargantuan $87 million enclosed dome, seating over 100,000 spectators. It would be multi-purpose, for exhibitions and conventions, track, basketball, hockey, football, and much more.
There would be a restaurant seating over a thousand diners at a time, suspended 380 feet in the air, served by 600 foot moving sidewalks. The accompanying mall would be 2 million square feet of retail, with a 25,000 car garage on seven levels beneath the ground. This garage would qualify for federal emergency civil defense funds, as it could convert to a fallout shelter capable of accommodating 600,000 people at a time. The details are fascinating, and there is a link to them at the bottom of this essay.
Bill had a large scale model built, and travelled extensively to promote his plan. The initial hope was to lure a new NFL team, and host the 1964 Olympics. He had several businessmen, including the presidents of Schnuck markets and the Chase hotel as boosters.
Bangert’s successes in life had always relied on his own determination, overcoming obstacles while bulling forward. The reality of St. Louis area politics contrasted with this approach, rewarding associations, accommodation and consensus. Bill was not good at this sort of thing, but had a world of faith that he was sufficient to the task of pushing against a well-entrenched status quo.
Friction was predictable from downtown St. Louis. It foresaw a challenge to its own status, and the threat of a wholesale exodus of business and sports from downtown. Established city politicians had weight with state government that far exceeded what Bangert could bring to bear. Things were looking up for him when the state legislature approved Champ village issuing $87 million in revenue bonds for the planned complex. Governor James Blair vetoed this approval in 1959, and it was the beginning of a costly thirteen year struggle for Bangert.
Awake to the challenge, city politicians quickly began to coalesce behind financing a new stadium downtown to attract the football team and to keep the baseball franchise. Bangert’s idea then morphed into the general industrial development of Champ.
In 1961, the tiny 300 acre municipality attempted to annex 3,100 adjacent unincorporated acres. The St. Louis County Council not only denied the annexation, but demanded the disincorporation of Champ itself, stating that its trustees failed to carry out earlier plans for the stadium complex. Bangert defended his project as “revised, but not abandoned.” The county ordered a grand jury investigation.
What Bill Bangert had going for him was a completely compliant board of trustees, and a village population with nearly guaranteed unanimous votes to support his actions. In late November 1961, a municipal vote was held at Champ’s only polling place – Bangert’s house. The twelve registered voters of Champ passed a $3.2 million bond issue. This was to finance the initial construction of a new plant for the R.C. Can Company, then of Overland, also in St. Louis County. Construction would begin as soon as the Missouri Supreme Court approved the state’s new industrial bond law making interest on such bonds tax-free.
Within a week, the county grand jury recommended that a court determine whether Champ was a legally established municipality, given its failure to builda stadium complex. There were questions about the legitimacy of trustee Norman Champ, who didn’t reside in the village, and was not registered to vote there. Perhaps rashly at the time, the Champ trustees had pledged to disincorporate if stadium plans fell through, and this did seem to be the case.
Critics were starting to gather, expressing themselves in the newspaper. The main complaint was that taxes avoided by industries relocating to Champ would have to be offset by taxpayers in the rest of the county. Taking it to an extreme, one declared that this would set a precedent allowing all industry in the county to operate tax-free, putting the entire burden of police, fire protection, schools and roads on individual taxpayers.
Bangert pushed ahead with the physical development of his one closed deal. A billboard went up on I-70, stating, in Arabic, that this was the “home of the R.C. Can Company.” He explained that Champ had been crucified for bringing job opportunities to the area, so it was “appropriate to use a language from the time of the original crucifixion.”
Some advocacy for Champ came from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. It noted an estimated 120,000 jobless in the St. Louis area, and the promise of Champ to “lick this problem.” It blamed both city and county for keeping its development at a standstill. The Globe pointed to Century Electric, which intended to leave the metro area unless Champ got the go-ahead. It pointed out that the 1960 constitutional amendment finally brought Missouri into line with an advantage that Kansas and many Southern states had exploited for years. “When the (municipality) owns the land and buildings, the property is tax-free, so a leasing firm gets a benefit.” The main point was that without approval to annex 3,200 acres, no development would be possible. The County Plan Commission had recommended it, but the County Council refused to agree. The Globe op-ed asked, “Isn’t that like shooting Santa Claus?”
With some fire to its fanny, the County Council three weeks later listened for over seven hours as 37 individuals (26 in favor, 11 opposed) debated the Champ request for annexation. Proponents expounded on its ideal location, with highway, river and rail access, and no conflict between industrial and residential development. There was a claim of the direct and indirect creation of 180,000 jobs – 60,000 more than the current total of the area’s unemployed. Those against the approval cited a failure of the proposed scheme to pay its fair share of tax burden. Champ was not a real municipality, in its lack of people and municipal services. Bangert owned 1,300 acres of the disputed annex, leading to charges of self-dealing.
Bangert maintained his plan for a stadium (the original reason for Champ’s incorporation) if the county approved annexation. He argued that failure to approve would doom the stadium plans. R.C. Can Company would have to occupy part of the site designated for the stadium.
This was really the only hand he could play, and it was a vital one, if St. Louis was going to compete with states allowing tax-free industrial bonds. Terms of the 1960 Missouri constitutional amendment excluded both St. Louis City and County from participating. It only authorized action by incorporated towns and cities within St. Louis County.
Three weeks later, the County Council caved, approving annexation of the 3,100 acres. Work began on the R.C. Can Company site the next morning. There remained a suit by Missouri Attorney General Eagleton with the state Supreme Court, to determine the legality of Champ as a municipality.
As the village continued to ignore an earlier 1961 County Council order to disincorporate, the state’s attorney general filed suit testing the legality of Champ’s incorporation.
Even though the village earlier authorized a $3.2 million bond, none was issued, pending the Supreme Court ruling on legality of the constitutional amendment of 1960. Private funds totaling about $2.7 million covered the cost of building and improvements for R.C. Can Company. Bangert secured this on a loan from Community Federal Savings. Bangert and wife were the owners and contractors, so on the hook for this expense. For its part, R.C signed a thirty year lease, and invested about $2.5 million in equipment and inventory.
Bangert took out a nine page supplement in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, boosting both Champ village and the concept of municipal revenue bonds. It’s easy to see that he was a true believer, eager to get past the legal noise and on with the big work ahead. A link to much of that supplement is below.
A day after this enticement to business appeared, Bangert hired access to three helicopters, making them available to interested principals for free flyover tours of the Champ area. He was sure that the big picture of the village’s position on river, highways and rail would be just the thing to spur investment.
In the summer of 1963, Norman Champ apparently decided to ease out of this story that once looked so promising on paper. He testified to selling his original 100 acres of Champ years earlier to Bill Bangert for $350,000. Although an original incorporator of the municipality and chairman of its board of trustees, he’d never resided in the village. Champ was 74 years old, a distinguished member of the community. He was most likely appalled that his family name attached to such an active controversy.
Bangert needed desperately to make something happen on the Champ site. Six other companies, including Century Electric and American Beauty Macaroni Company were weighing commitments. There was good news in that the Supreme Court upheld the 1960 amendment approving tax-free municipal industrial bond status. The village of Champ was now up to 3,800 acres. Bangert claimed to have $4 million in additional financing commitments to develop Champ, and was working New York interests for another $10 million.
Attorney General Eagleton’s objection was that Missouri law didn’t “contemplate creation of a municipality for the patently non-municipal purpose of issuing bonds to finance its own development as an industrial park.” A former state supreme court judge opined that the question “is whether the law recognizes the right of one man to promote and organize a municipality in which he, or a select few, would have exclusive control.”
Things got more contentious yet, when the county sued Bangert for delinquent real estate taxes in the amount of $12,000. This was a step toward the county foreclosing on the Champ acreage. That land would then be sold at public auction. This looked bad to Bangert’s prospective future tenants. He claimed the money was in escrow, and his attorney was researching the matter. He added that none of the land occupied by R.C Can Company was threatened. Bill was also at work building a 2 ½ mile rail spur, and a 3 ½ mile highway with an interchange connecting to I-70.
In July of 1964, a supreme court commissioner recommended that the village be deemed legally incorporated. His opinion was extremely critical at the same time. He noted that from its original purpose of building a stadium, Champ had become an industrial park development. It paid no officials nor employees, levied no taxes, provided no services. “From its inception, the village has existed for the furtherance of private interests of Bill Bangert and associates; not for any public purpose.”
Buzzards were circling. In August of 1964, another suit was filed in circuit court to satisfy a $10,000 mechanics lien against Bangert. Five other firms had already filed liens against the R.C. Can Company property, totaling $18,000. An electric contractor sued for $23,000. Community Federal held the deeds of trust on the property, totaling over $2.7 million. It must have felt like it was holding an unredeemable collateral.
Three weeks later, in an attempt to change the narrative, the county Municipal League adopted a resolution proposed by Bill Bangert to study bringing the 1972 Olympic Games to St. Louis. He said St. Louis had all the required facilities for such an endeavor, but would need track and field quarters and a 125,000 seat stadium. Details.
Bangert announced a vote within Champ to issue three revenue bonds totaling $12.5 million. The Missouri Commerce and Industrial Development Commission approved these proposals, contingent on the three projects represented being located within Champ. These included construction of a new plant for Century Electric, another for American Beauty Macaroni and a bond to pay off $4.2 million in construction costs for R.C. Can Company, built three years earlier.
Champ approved the three bond issues unanimously. In its nearly seven year history, it never had less than a unanimous vote for anything. This proved useful, as a 1963 statute made circuit court approval of an annexation unnecessary in the event of a unanimous vote in favor of it.
Bangert’s win was tempered by a squabble with his neighbor, who rebuilt a levee Bangert leveled out for truck access. The only road leading to the loading docks of R.C. Can Company was now an “impassible mountain of mud.” The neighbor already had Bill in court, seeking $100,000 for damages to his property as a result of the same road.
Poor Bill Bangert. The rest of the state, by early 1967, had moved well ahead with the idea he popularized. During the preceding year, Missouri cities approved $36 million for twenty-two projects financed by municipal industrial financing. They included the 3M plants in Springfield and Nevada and a Donaldson plant in Kirksville. Interco planned an $8.5 million warehouse in Jefferson City to replace two St. Louis operations. It was a rural area panacea. Places like Dexter, Crane, Glasgow, Joplin, Marceline, New Haven, Shelbina, Stanberry, Union, Wellsville and Chillicothe all found ways to put muni industrial bond issues to work. The protocol for this seemed neither daunting nor exotic when the basic matter concerned jobs and growth. It was a classic “pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” approach to development, and proved remarkably popular with voters.
The village of Champ took to the offense again, voting to annex 700 acres west of the Missouri River in December of 1967. It included the 300 acres previously annexed but blocked by St. Louis County court action. Bangert already owned most of this land. He had improved it with a levee, drainage canal, rail spur and utilities. He intended this new front in his efforts to be a litigation-free lure to both Century Electric and American Beauty Macaroni. The county counselor indicated that St. Louis County would most likely file suit against this second annexation attempt. Again, the county said council approval and a circuit court judgement were required. Bangert argued that these were unnecessary, due to the unanimous vote in favor of annexation by Champ voters.
Bill Bangert had $450,000 in escrow with the State Highway Commission to build the I-70 interchange; already approved by that body and the U.S. Bureau of Roads. It was, however, ensnared in the legal action brought by Bangert’s neighbor over the levee issue. Bangert argued that only a quick resolution could ensure the selection of Champ for the summer Olympic games. That looked ever more like a pipe dream.
On December 1st, the battle of the barricade resumed. Bangert brought in a bulldozer to take down the levee. He also had a court injunction in hand, authorizing him to remove the earthworks. His neighbor blocked the bulldozer with his car, and said he had filed a petition earlier that morning to stay the injunction. Bangert grudgingly backed down.
A month later, in January 1968, Bangert announced yet another election; this time regarding a $25 million bond issue to finance construction of a plant on the Missouri River to convert garbage into agricultural fertilizer. The British principals would lease the plant from the village, which would retain ownership. He foresaw no problems this time, although the Century Electric and American Beauty plants remained stymied over the access road dispute. Of course, as predicted, St. Louis County now filed suit to challenge Champ’s recent annexation of 700 acres, including the fertilizer plant.
By the end of that month, the circuit court upheld the 700 acre annexation, so the trash to treasure gambit was still on track. The two prospective companies looking to build in Champ indicated willingness to proceed if the annexation went through. Could it be that Bill Bangert’s fortunes were changing?
Less than two weeks later, the U.S. Department of Treasury announced that it planned to withdraw the federal tax exemption granted to industrial development revenue bonds. Missouri had voted for over $80 million in such bonds, and the government action would thwart millions more. Missouri’s two U.S. senators and St. Louis mayor Cervantes were livid. After rural Missouri had taken quick and effective advantage of such bonds, they were going to be unavailable to the big cities, now ready to adopt them.
Bangert said his $25 million garbage to fertilizer plant was unaffected, as it would be built as a municipal operation, serving other municipalities under a franchise agreement. But the $12.5 million bond issue Champ voters approved in 1966 would surely be affected, impacting both Century Electric and American Beauty projects. Nor could Bangert look to a future round of bond issue to refinance the R.C. Can Company plant.
Local governments had embraced industrial development bonds in forty states by this point. The tax exemption permitted the sale of bonds at lower rates than regular corporate bonds. The rents paid by tenant firms paid off the municipalities’ revenue bonds over time. Meanwhile, the municipalities owned the plants, so no property taxes were assessed. Small wonder that industry favored them, and small communities found a golden goose for employment and wage growth. In 1967, sale of such bonds totaled $1.4 billion.
Ironic then, that the Post-Dispatch headline of March 10, 1968 read, “The Village of Champ Can’t Sell Its Bonds.” Despite all the hard fought and drawn out approval processes, the municipality had yet to actually sell any actual bond. Bangert blamed the county and all its legal maneuvering, but expressed confidence that he could easily clear the remaining legal hurdles.
What he may not have known is that just then, the county was planning to appeal Champ’s 700 acre annexation to the Missouri Supreme Court. The timing, as usual, was terrible. A village vote within the month would approve a $25 million bond issue for the fertilizer plant.
In February of 1969, the Missouri Supreme Court invalidated both the 1965 and 1967 Champ annexations, calling both unreasonable. The court judged that Champ had failed to show that either annexation was necessary for governmental operation. This ruling affected 1.100 acres. If St. Louis County’s objective was to prevent municipal industrial financing, this was a clear victory.
On the other side, it was a clear disaster for Bill Bangert. He euphemistically said it “placed in limbo” his industrial development plans for Century Electric, American Beauty and the rubbish conversion plant.
The court was unsympathetic. It wrote, “the village of Champ is not bursting at its seams. It is not growing into either area. There is no residential, commercial or industrial expansion taking place within its limits, except for the start of one plant (R.C. Can Co). It has no present facilities or demonstrated future ability to provide any sort of municipal service to the areas sought to be annexed. There is no showing that the annexations are necessary or convenient to the proper existence of municipal government in the village.”
Ouch. The opinion continued that the only real tie between Champ and the two areas of annexation was that annexation constituted a way of getting plants built. This would make the financing of industrial development the main aim of annexation… “such financing cannot constitute the sole justification for annexation. There is nothing to show that bond buyers are likely to buy the revenue bonds that Champ proposes to issue.”
The court closed by coldly noting that the annexations “might not be followed by any industrial development at all, and if so, there would be no need or desirability for annexation in the first place.”
Bill Bangert’s sand castles had crumbled, and it was a rude awakening. “What could I do (now) with that land? I couldn’t sell it as industry, I couldn’t develop it. I couldn’t do anything with it.” No other industries followed R.C. Can Company to Champ. R.C. itself merged into Boise-Cascade, and the plant in Champ lasted only a couple of years longer.
Bangert filed for bankruptcy in 1971, listing outstanding debts of $3.3 million. Thirteen years in single minded pursuit of his Champ dream resulted in him losing everything, living month to month in a small rented home.
He was, however, the first man in more than a century to have carried the Dinnie stones, one 430 pounds and the other 345 pounds, across a bridge over Scotland’s River Dee. In June of 1970, he was proclaimed the Strongest Mayor In The World by the Lord Mayor of Aberdeen, and presented with a gallon of whiskey.
Bangert took to giving inspirational speeches to small groups, traveling in a small rented camper van. He kept his pride intact, despite forty-six judgments and tax liens pending against him. Reticent government and a threatened status quo ultimately outweighed this one strong individualist with a clear vision. “It’s a sad state of affairs when the whole country subsidizes mediocrity. Someone with a big idea, (without) the blessing of all the powers that be, doesn’t have a chance.”
Bill Bangert’s reach generally exceeded his grasp. He rued the hesitation of local leaders to pursue the hosting of the 1968 Pan-American Games. “Then we would have been in lined for the Olympics, host to all the Western Hemisphere, the focal point of world attention. We could have had rapid transit to Kansas City and Chicago….but it was too far ahead of them. St. Louis doesn’t think big.”
Norman Champ, Jr, whose father originally conspired with Bill Bangert, had some thoughts. He said his father hooked up with Bangert partly out of frustration with Lambert Field progressively taking Champ family land. With buyout money to reinvest, he bought the 120 acres and then sold it to Bangert for a profit. Norman’s memory was that Bangert came up with the idea to build a stadium and incorporate it into a municipality so that the Olympics would come to St. Louis. “We got involved (in the name of the village) because Champ is a more Olympic name than Bangert,”
Champ felt that Bangert always believed the stadium was a good and progressive idea for St. Louis. He deserved credit for spurring downtown forces into action for the new Busch Stadium.
It was a pity that, as Bangert said, “people keep you embroiled in court battles, and the wheels just grind to a halt.”
Jaime Escalante famously wrote; “It’s not about how many times you fall down, it’s about how many times you get back up.” Bill Bangert was never one to go off into any good night. In his mid-40s, he took up Scottish sports and competed in their games, like tossing the caber, a 120 pound wooden pole 19 feet long, and tossing the 26 pound Scottish stone. He made a 1976 run for lieutenant governor with a platform that included bringing the Olympic games to Missouri. Bangert also promoted horse racing to subsidize public schools and reduce taxes. He lost, but you’d have to give him credit. The Missouri state lottery essentially did what he proposed that horse racing could do. Domed stadiums and malls, built with tax-exempt bond issues, eventually became commonplace.
In the late 70s, Bill and his wife moved to California, where they managed an apartment complex. He competed in the Senior Olympics. They sang in church recitals. He wrote a screenplay based on his life and pitched it to Disney (unsuccessfully.)
Champ today, as mentioned at the outset of this essay, is little more than a quarry turned landfill. There are no monuments to a dreamer of failed dreams, but Bill Bangert always felt he was simply too far ahead of his time. The bottom land he dreamt about has now largely settled, with industry and warehouses and the Hollywood casino complex. Municipal bonds paid for by the leases of businesses in new facilities do resemble the common TIF (tax-increment financing) plans of today.
Former County Executive Gene McNary remembered Bill Bangert as someone who “wasn’t so far off with his ideas, but sure was pretty far ahead of his time.”
Bill and Rosemary Bangert, together through thick and thin (a sure tribute to Mrs. Bangert), returned to Missouri in 1997. She won Mrs Senior Missouri and he kept busy in senior level athletic events, continuing to win trophies well into his 70s.
He had time to dream up many more ideas for the area: a U.S. Taxpayers Party, an island at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers with a jet of water that would shoot 1,000 feet into the air. (This was even tried. The Gateway Geyser on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. It shot a water jet 100 feet into the air for nearly thirty years. It was discontinued as its expensive infrastructure failed.)
Bill Bangert always viewed Champ as the greatest accomplishment of his life. That the powers that be didn’t align with him was their problem. “They may have wiped me out, but they can’t wipe away the history of (Champ). It’s still there. I started it, and I don’t care who reaped the profits – they can’t deny that it’s there… I can lift 1,000 pounds and that’s something few men can say.”
A guy with an attitude like that can lose a hundred times and still ultimately be remembered as a winner.
Back in 1962, a poem called To The Village Of Champ encapsulated the vitality of Bangert’s dream – as well as the slight melancholy of realizing the dream is not universally shared. It was billed as written by a “prominent St. Louis industrialist,” but it’s easy to guess the source. Just a couple of stanzas:
It is unique in its own way
Where industry will have its sway
And not be hampered by such laws
That hold back progress just because
Some folks from eye to eye don’t see
That’s what the Village Champ will be.
No better place in U.S.A.
Where industry will come to stay
T’will help to build a city great
Like Old Saint Lou before too late
Our country too will prosperous be
It they will let Champ Village be.
To see highlights from the nine page supplement to a 1962 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, extolling the village of Champ and its benefits to business, click here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/o528w6mb1tnybyh5lokbu/Champ-brochure-1962.pdf?rlkey=jtkk5sez1vq473d21j7thuwjd&st=0ip7e9ji&dl=0
A primary source was the longform essay, The Champ; Laura Higgins; Riverfront Times; February 14, 2001. https://www.riverfronttimes.com/the-champ/
An excellent profile entitled Bill Bangert’s Busted Dream; written by Dickson Terry after the dust settled in Champ. It appeared in the Post-Dispatch of October 10, 1971
Some of Bill Bangert’s college day activities came from the Columbia Missourian; February 24, 1945 and St. Louis Globe-Democrat of February 6, 1948
Mayor Bill Bangert of Berkeley Resigns To Promote Harmony from Globe-Democrat; February 20, 1957
Various stories about the R.C. Can Company and Champ appear in the Post-Dispatch of October 13, 18, 22, November 30 and December 7, 1961
The 1961 Champ bond issue vote and Norman Champ’s involvement, from Post-Dispatch; November 12, 1961
The offer of helicopter overviews of Champ, from Post-Dispatch; March 7, 1962
An insightful Post-Dispatch op-ed; May 24,1962
Other articles from Post-Dispatch of July 12 and 26, August 23, and September 6, 1962
Why Shoot Santa Claus, an editorial from the Globe-Democrat of August 6, 1962
The search for New York investors from the Post-Dispatch; November 25, 1962
Bangert on dealing with blindness from a self-written essay; Globe-Democrat; June 15, 1963
Other articles from the Post-Dispatch of January 11 and 13, June 15, August 11 and 13, 1964, and January 10, September 12 and 24, October 20, and November 19 and 26, 1965; January 23, February 3 and 25, 1966; April 11 and 19, June 14, December 1 and 7, 1967; and January 24, February 7, and March 10, 1968
The April 11, 1964 article by William H. Kester, Post-Dispatch Financial Editor is a good look at the thinking around that time, regarding municipal industrial financing.
The article The Village Of Champ Can’t Sell Its Bonds was in the Post-Dispatch of March 17, 1968
The final voiding of annexations by the Missouri Supreme Court from the Post-Dispatch; Louis J. Rose; February 10, 1969
Bangert’s quote about subsidizing mediocrity from the Post Dispatch; Neal Russo; November 1, 1985
An obituary for and tribute to Bill Bangert from Michael D, Sorkin of the Post-Dispatch; July 15, 2011
While it was open to the general public, the Rhone Rum Bar at 2107 Chouteau Avenue was a funny sort of place. It sported a German river name, tropical theme, sand volleyball court and small concert stage. We went there once to hear a Beatles tribute band. The first song of their set was “I Am The Walrus.” Not exactly a toe-tapper, but it went with the venue’s general incongruity.
The building went up in 1896 to house the Champ Spring Company. This business began as a provider of buggy springs – early shock absorbers. Unlike buggy whips, springs made the transition to automobiles, and the company thrived.
Champ Spring was named for its founder, Charles E.M. Champ, who established the firm in 1882. He worked as its president right up to his death at the age of 81, in 1933. He lived from 1911 through the rest of his life on a large estate at Goodwood Farm. That was far from Lafayette Square, on Brown Road in North County, near Natural Bridge road.
Goodwood was a 300 acre farm, originally belonging to horse breeder Joseph Lucas, as in Lucas and Hunt Road. When Lucas died, Champ bought the land for $100,000, developing a large dairy herd and bulk milk production business.
Champ’s son Norman took over operation of the spring company. By 1946, it employed 100 and expanded from 2107 through 2119 Chouteau Avenue. The business was well located along Missouri highway and truck route 50. It kept to its specialty of leaf springs for cars, trucks and busses, growing into rebuilding, repairing and modifying existing leaf springs.
Here is a look at the Chouteau location in Lafayette Square (from where a ZX gas station is today) in 1955:
Norman Champ was a busy man from his early years. In 1937, he was on the Berkeley board of alderman, overseeing the municipal incorporation of that small village. At the same time, he was a deputy marshal and member of the Berkeley police board. Even this early, Berkeley had achieved a reputation of existing mostly for the revenue gained from fines for driving violations.
In 1957, 67 year old Norman Champ sold 400 acres of his land near Brown Road to the city, which exercised eminent domain to enlarge Lambert Field. He made $1.75 million on the sale. Champ continued to run a healthy business in dairy cattle on his remaining 180 acres at Goodwood. Originally, Champ’s 100 holsteins and guernseys were milked twice a day by hand. This required a lot of manual interaction, which was actually performed by German POWs during the latter stages of World War II. In 1954, the operation finally mechanized.
Norman Champ was much more than a dairy farmer, however. His status covers much ground, including trusteeship of Westminster College, Second Presbyterian Church, Shriners Hospital and Southside YMCA. He belonged to the Moolah Temple and Scottish Rite Masons. Champ had both money and ambition. Maybe it was a matter of time that his path would cross with that of Bill Bangert.
In January 1959, Champ sold 62 acres to Bill Bangert for creation of the village that bears his name. It lies near the junction of I-270 and I-70 in northwest St. Louis County. The county council approved expansion of this tract to 308 acres, ok’ed its incorporation and ratified five trustees for the village. These were Norman Champ, his son and his secretary along with Bill Bangert and wife Rosemary.
The village was created as a scheme Bangert and Champ devised, to develop a large sports stadium and industrial center there. The municipality itself was mostly undeveloped bottom land. Population of Champ then was fourteen. It has never gotten much past that.
It was probably inevitable that Champ and Bangert’s interests would eventually diverge. As Bill Bangert owned all the land involved, Missouri Attorney General Thomas Eagleton saw the new village as a private enterprise, rather than a true municipality. He pushed a suit against its legitimacy. Champ left the village board of trustees in late 1962, and testified a year later that he sold his holdings in the village to Bangert for $350,000. Norman added that he had never lived within the village, residing at his Goodwood home in Berkeley over the preceding five decades. Norman Champ was 74 years old, and tired of big dreams. He would die eight years later, in 1972, surpassing even the long life of his father.
In a final gesture of goodwill, Champ gifted $98,000 in stock to buy a park in north St. Louis County. Still there, the 120 acre site is called Norman B. Champ Memorial Park.
A third generation saw Norman B. Champ, Jr graduate MIT with an engineering degree and Harvard with a business degree. He became state finance chair for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign. He was also a committeeman for Clayton, in addition to being president of Champ Spring Company.
It came out in 1970 that Richard Rabbitt, the then-current Missouri House Speaker received a fee of $100,000 for negotiating a sale of twelve acres owned by Norman Champ Jr, for expansion of Lambert Field. The purchase price was $500,000 over the land’s appraised value. As it worked out, the parcel was never used for airport purposes.
Rabbitt was later charged with taking kickbacks and peddling influence, and convicted on 15 counts of extortion and mail fraud, .
Demonstrating a lifetime and bloodline of family privilege, Norman Champ, Jr fumed when his stepson was disqualified from a state high school tennis tournament for having attended school in Florida the year before. The Post-Dispatch in April of 1981 reported that Norman weighed whether to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Referred to as a “longtime Democratic power broker,” Norman Champ, Jr later became a vocal opponent to a proposed city sales tax increase. By this time, he had taken on a distinctly Bidwillian look:
In his strenuous opposition to the tax, he faced off against Mayor Vince Schoemehl, Charles Knight of Emerson Electric, and Civic Progress. Champ lost this one, as a majority of both city and county voters supported the levy.
In 1988, the Missouri Court of Appeals ended a five year challenge from Norman Champ, Jr over the use of public funds to pay campaign debts. This challenge was denied.
What were once big battles devolved into petty dustups between Champ and local government. His earlier political clout counted for nothing when the city placed a no-parking sign in front of the Champ Spring Company on Chouteau Avenue. It was part of a procession of such signs along the north side of the block. After 94 years of enjoying easy access, this made his blood boil. Now 62, he had remained a major contributor to Democratic politicians at every level. Champ vowed to take the signs down himself. A mayoral aide regretted him taking that stance, but said they had the authority to put them up, while he had no authority to take them down.
When Lambert Field expanded their property yet again in 1966, the Champ dairy farm moved out to Elsberry, MO, where Norman Jr’s brother Joseph and wife Tish continued the operation. Joseph Champ was vice president of Champ Spring Company, and drove a sixty mile commute each morning to work on Chouteau Avenue. He also managed the now 3,500 acre dairy farm on Highway 70. In 1992 a wayward cigarette most likely started a house fire that took both their lives.
Six years later, colorful local journalist Bill McClellan journeyed to 2107 Chouteau to call on Norman Champ, Jr. For over a century, the family business remained in place without changing their focus on heavy duty truck springs. Globalization had cut deeply into profits by then, as cheap labor and steel from India and China took business from Champ. The company was down to three employees from forty in 1963.
McClellan’s visit was inspired by something he learned a week earlier. An envelope under the front door of Champ Spring Company held a city notice that Champ had no occupancy permit. The firm was given 24 hours to comply or be shut down. It was both impersonal and jarring to a business occupying the same site for 102 years.
While scrambling to address the problem, Norman Champ mused on another issue several years earlier. While contesting a steep property tax increase, he was notified that his building was condemned. He complained, “How can you say my building is worth more at the same time you’re condemning it?”
Norman Champ, Jr died in 2005 at the age of 76. Like his father, he piled up accomplishments and accolades along the way. He was a member of the National Council on the Arts from 1977 through 1985. He served on President Carter’s Committee for the Preservation of the White House (a role that begs for reinstatement). For twenty years, Champ was a committeeman for Clayton Township, founding director of Laumeier Sculpture Park, commissioner of the St. Louis Art Museum, member of the Missouri Arts Council, and board member of Webster College.
In business, he was an executive with the St. Louis Car Company, director of Mark Twain Bank and Firstar Bank. Champ was both a longtime member of the Rotary club and President of the South Side YMCA. At another home on Chappaquiddick Island, he belonged to the island association and Rotary Club. Champ was a member of the University Club, Veiled Prophet Association, and Edgartown Yacht Club in Massachusetts. Not bad for a guy coming up from leaf springs and dairy cattle.
The village of Champ remains, the tiniest and least populated of St. Louis County’s 91 municipality grab bag. It is almost totally quarry and landfill. It really represents both the giveth and taketh away of a big city.
And of 2107 Chouteau Avenue? The area just west from the foot of Mississippi Avenue was revived by Paul and Wendy Hamilton in the mid-2010s, with the creation of Vin De Set, Hamilton Steakhouse, Winnie’s Wine Bar and other attractions. 2107 Chouteau became the Rhone Rum Bar, which is now a private event space.
St. Louis has many ‘old money’ families. Here were three generations of a largely self-made one. Norman, Sr was lucky to have pulled free from the village of Champ with his reputation fairly unscathed, especially after lending the family name to it. All this is by way of introduction to the next essay, a dive into the wild world of Bill Bangert, a man who had his name legally changed from William because, “everybody calls me Bill.” He turbo charged the Champ village story, making and losing fortunes along the way. It promises to be an eventful ride through St. Louis County history. Stay tuned.
Profile of village of Champ; Fox 2 News Joey Schneider Sep 30 2023 https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/only-10-people-live-in-st-louis-countys-smallest-village/
Photo of CEM Champ from St. Louis Post-Dispatch; August 29, 1933. Obit from same, August 28, 1933
Goodwood farm sells for $100,000; St. Louis Post Dispatch; December 21 1911
Berkeley driving violations from St. Louis Globe Democrat October 23, 1943
Champ dairy operation from Globe-Democrat; November 6, 1957
Creation of village of Champ; Post-Dispatch; January 22, 1959
Norman Chance for Carter; Post-Dispatch; January 3, 1977
The Richard Rabbitt story; Post-Dispatch; July 31, 1977.
Tennis DQ for Champ stepson; Post-Dispatch April 26, 1981
Sales tax fight; Post Dispatch; July 30, 1982
William Bidwill image from Post-Dispatch obit; October 3, 2019
No Parking Signs Irk Businessman; Post-Dispatch; Louis J. Rose; June 3, 1990
Fatal fire at Champ house in Elsberry; Post-Dispatch; Thom Gross; June 3, 1992
“After 102 years, manufacturer feels pinch from city” Bill McClellan; Post-Dispatch; December 20, 1998
Additional bio background of Norman Champ from https://stlouiscountymo.gov/st-louis-county-departments/parks/about/park-history-documents/champ-history/
Some bio background of Joe Champ from http://missouridairyhallofhonors.com/1988-distinguished-dairy-cattle-breeder-award/
Some bio background of Norman, Jr from https://vineyardgazette.com/obituaries/2005/02/18/norman-b-champ-jr-was-political-activist
http://barkerreunion.blogspot.com/2012/02/history-of-champ-goodwood-farm-on-brown.html
Photos of Village of Champ, Rhone Rum Bar and Norman Champ Park from Google.
A little known aspect of Lafayette Park history involves its role in expanding our national pastime. In the 1850’s, the mansion of Edward Bredell Sr. stood directly across from the park on Lafayette Avenue. Edward Sr. made his fortune in mining and dry goods wholesaling. He later established the Missouri Glass Company as an enterprise for his son to manage. Edward Jr. attended Brown University, where he likely was introduced to New York rules baseball. Games involving balls and bats in various forms have been described as early as the 1820s, but the New York game was well defined and quickly gained popularity in that area
Continue reading “1860: Lafayette Square on First “Back in 1995, first-wave restorationist and Lafayette Square MVP Ruth Kamphoefner composed a tidy summary of observations and cautionary tales from her 25 years in the neighborhood. It not only paid tribute to some outstanding doers, but feels nearly as appropriate today as it did then. I’m in awe of Ruth, and what she accomplished in her decades here. What I write is surely inadequate. She can better convey some of it for me. In her own words…
Early in the 1970s, so many people came to house tours that we had lines half a block long in front of houses. So many properties sold that we envisioned the complete restoration of Lafayette Square within a year or two.
“Pretty soon we won’t need to have any more house tours!” I gloated to Jerry Ferrell, LSRC president at the time.
Dreamer.
The LSRC neighborhood association turned ten years old in April of 1979. A resident wit and frequent contributor to the Marquis turned her attention to commemorating that anniversary. Linda Underwood lived for years on Whittemore Place. With her husband Gary, she was an early and frequent advocate for the neighborhood, involved in the day to day restoration of Lafayette Square. She did this with unfailing humor and the ability to take it all in stride.
Here’s a lightly edited and photo enhanced excerpt from her Marquis article, “You Think Lafayette Square Is Weird Today…Read On”
Continue reading “1979: The Pony Was The People”In 1874, an innovative farmer from DeKalb, Illinois received the original patent for barbed wire. Joseph Glidden established the Barb Wire Fence Company with Isaac Ellwood, also of DeKalb. It’s doubtful that either man foresaw this invention becoming one of what the BBC recently listed as “the 50 things that made the modern economy.”
All the iron on Earth originated in large stars that existed before our Sun even formed. Iron is the final product of a star’s radioactive decay, which fuses hydrogen atoms to form ever heavier elements. When the hydrogen fuel is exhausted and sufficient mass accumulates in the core of the star, it no longer supports its own gravity, and explodes; or so I’m told. In that supernova explosion, huge chunks of iron can be thrown many light years into space. Such a chunk came to land in eastern Missouri’s St. Francois County and became Iron Mountain.
Continue reading “1893: Iron Men Of Lafayette Square – Christopher And Simpson”
St. Louis is situated on some terrific ground with which to build a durable city. Limestone bluffs once lined the riverfront, and were quarried for facades and foundations. As mentioned in the preceding essay, a long deep seam of high grade clay ran under present day Manchester Road. There was coal galore, conveniently mined from the same area as the clay. Mold and fire the clay and you have a brick. Handy materials for an incredibly fast growing, if fire-prone city. Inexpensive and plentiful Italian and Irish immigrant labor kept production costs low. A terrible fire led to a city ordinance in 1849 mandating brick as the city’s construction material. Many such buildings have lasted over 150 years.
Edward Sterling (1834-1911) founded a bonafide brick-making empire, based in St. Louis. Early in his life, his uncle Elisha was managing a steam furnace company in Cleveland. Looking to diversify the business in the 1850’s, Elisha and his associate Ethan Rogers looked into the manufacture of bricks.
Until that time, brick production consisted of forming clay into molds by hand and then kiln-firing in batches. Now, late into the industrial revolution, underlying assumptions about labor and efficiency were challenged in almost every aspect of the economy.
Rogers invented and patented “a new and improved machine for molding and pressing brick by hydraulic pressure”¹. The first hydraulic brick machine was put into service in Cleveland in 1856. Three years later, that machine was sold to a manufacturer in Nashville, and eventually melted down for ordnance during the Civil War.
As a young man going his own way, Elisha’s nephew Edward unsuccessfully tried his hand at running a lumber company. He then returned to Cleveland and secured a financial interest in the patent rights for Rogers’s hydraulic dry brick press. Edward acquired a new press and in 1860 moved that 33-ton, cast iron machine to Memphis. In 1860, this press produced 8 million bricks in 11 months.
When the Civil War interrupted his production in Memphis, Sterling established a plant in St. Louis, He leased a brickyard near the southeast corner of Chouteau and Mississippi streets (in what is now Lafayette Square) and began manufacturing in late April 1865. With the luck of being in the right place at the right time, the following month brought the end of the Civil War, and began a long process of physical reconstruction.
The Sterlings family business soon attracted other investors, and Hydraulic Press Brick Company incorporated in 1868.
Edward Sterling became Hydraulic’s first president. The company took over the buildings, equipment and machinery in use at the plant on Chouteau and Mississippi. It also acquired an interest in the rights to three patents: the Rogers hydraulic press; a novel design for a brick kiln; and another design for an improved “perpetual kiln.” Hydraulic’s annual production in 1868 amounted to around 5 million bricks, and 7 million the following year. Sterling claimed this output was far less than the demand.
The quality of this brick – heavy, dense, and strong – proved itself in tests conducted by the government. The crush strength of a Hydraulic brick proved more than twice that of conventional handmade brick of the time. James Eads also performed tests and praised the solidity of Hydraulic brick. The product thus began selling itself. With both press and kiln patented, profits flowed to Sterling’s enterprise. Hydraulic product was used in the construction of Eads Bridge, the Bissell Point water treatment plant and Anheuser-Busch brewery. As word spread, it found use is both Chrysler and Manhattan Life buildings in New York.
By the end of 1872, the company had increased its throughput to nearly 18 million bricks a year. With 14 kilns and 2 brick presses, the plant could produce nearly 9,000 bricks per hour.
It’s possible to locate both Sterling’s home and business on the 1875 Compton and Dry map of St. Louis. At that time he lived at the intersection of 14th and Chouteau Ave. His Hydraulic Press Brick Works had migrated down the road to Chouteau and Grand.
As the company yards followed excavation of the clay deposits, several moves west ensued. The works eventually resettled at Kingshighway, where it remained at the turn of the 20th century. Hydraulic Press Brick by then was churning out over 100 million bricks per year, It was, by then, the largest brick company on Earth.²
Edward retired from the business in 1905. Eight years earlier, he prepared a home to retire to, in Redlands, California. “La Casada” was a 22 room mansion of 8,000 square feet. Italian/Mission Revival in style, it featured extensive formal Italian gardens and seven landscaped terraces running down a hillside. Scenic America magazine in 1912 proclaimed this home to be “The most beautiful residence in all southern California”…
…with nary a brick in sight.
Thanks to research sources, including
(1) Mimi Stiritz – National Bldg Arts Center 2017. Much of this post is influenced by her work at http://web.nationalbuildingarts.org/collections/clay-products/ornamental-brick/hydraulic-brick-company-the-early-years/
(2) Mound City On the Mississippi. City of St Louis Planning and Urban Design Agency
Bob Corbett of Webster University did an extensive amount of research into mapping the proximity of coal and clay mines in the Dogtown area of St. Louis. It proves the point in this essay’s first paragraph. http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/dogtown/history/mines.html
Thanks also to Michael Allen and Chris Kallmyer “The Land and The Brick” http://www.chriskallmyer.com/works/commonfield-clay/commonfield-clay-interviews/land
Part one of this essay series on St. Louis brick appears here: lafayettesquarearchives.com/1849-like-a-ton-of-bricks-part-1/
