A 1938 Post-Dispatch obituary noted the death of Christian J. Zeitinger – inventor, promotor and hydraulic engineer. He was 73 years old and died from “the infirmities of age.” It recalled his frequent appearances in bankruptcy court, the result of financial scheming in the development of a gravity flour mill invention.
In 1946, Retta Reed, who lived for years at 35 Benton Place in Lafayette Square, bought and razed the abandoned house across from hers. Curious about 40 Benton Place, I began an expedition backward through the newspapers.
St. Louis was once preeminent in the manufacture of shoes and booze, white lead, bricks, and crackers. Less famously, it was home to a coffin trust, with a hammerlock on the funeral supply business. Here is the story of Frederick Gardner and the St. Louis Coffin Company.
Hardtack crackers were rumored to be bulletproof. Along with coffee, they’ve long been what an army marched on, and they sat in ones stomach undigested long enough to create a sensation of fullness. Making hardtack was dead simple; it consisting of flour and water, with a bit of salt for interest. It’s still with us today, in a merciful form, as saltine crackers.
What’s in a building? It’s entire history, for one; and in Lafayette Square, that can be considerable.
2001 Park Avenue has been holding down the Northeast corner of Mississippi and Park Avenue for a long time. It appears in the Compton and Dry map of 1876, looking much like itself, but for today’s first floor windows and the long single story extension down Mississippi Avenue:
The St. Louis House at 2345 Lafayette Avenue once boasted a dozen hard maple bowling lanes, and kept them busy for decades. As early as 1930, Obermeyer’s Alleys there made so much noise that German House manager A.G. Barrow decided not to renew their lease, and notified Obermeyer by turning off the lights during play. It was later resolved in the Circuit Court, and bowling resumed.
It was known in the 1950s as Mueller’s Lanes, and business was terrific amid the same postwar fellowship that caused fraternal organizations like the Eagles, Elks and Moose Lodges to thrive.
Bowling became so popular it was televised nationally, and its best practitioners were rewarded like pro baseball players today. In fact, St. Louisan Don Carter was the first athlete ever to sign a $1 million endorsement deal, from Ebonite bowling balls. And did Ebonite know how to promote! Curval grips, indeed…
Soon bowling became freaky styley, and everyone was doing it, from babes in beehives to Give ‘em Hell Harry, with his bowling shirt secured beneath coat, tie and vest. A group of Missouri boosters gifted the White House with two lanes in 1947. Eisenhower (from the opposite party and who famously preferred golf) later turned the space into a mimeograph room.
There’s still a bit of the old spirit around St. Louis today. On the Epiphany Of Our Lord parish web site, the tabs at the top read “Sacraments”, “Parish Life” and “Bowling Alley”. There are upstairs lanes in Maplewood at the Saratoga on Sutton, and downstairs lanes at the Magic Chef Mansion in Compton Heights and Moolah Temple on Lindell Boulevard.
With the rise of television followed by dual income families and finally, the internet and computer gaming, social groups began to fade away. Leagues folded and lanes were torn down for parking lots and condos.
In 2000, a popular book titled “Bowling Alone” was published to explain it all to us, and bowling became the emblem of our failure to connect. It reminded us that we are social animals, and have a tangible need for community. Unsure to what degree we’ve addressed that one, but plead guilty to keeping a neglected Ebonite ball on a shelf in my garage. I belonged to a Tuesday night league during the early 1980’s at Frontier Bowl in O’Fallon, Missouri. It was a hoot.
Incidentally, the Bowling Hall Of Fame and Museum that sat about where Ballpark Village is today, moved in 2009 to Arlington Texas.
It started here in a 50,000 square foot facility, but resides in a less ambitious 16,000 foot space near Globe Life Park, home of the Texas Rangers baseball team. It seems a little forlorn in the boonies between Dallas and Ft Worth, but the 50’s Budweiser team of Carter, Weber, Bluth, Patterson and Hennessey are there in life size cardboard to greet you. In the meantime, we can still claim proximity, at least, to the righteously underrated Horseshoe Pitcher’s Hall of Fame in Wentzville.
In this episode we resume piecing together the mystical story of a four story building at 2345 Lafayette Avenue. Here, we take a walk in faith along an assortment of entrepreneurial pathways to Heaven, when the instruments of salvation chose to land at the German House, then called the St. Louis House, and gathered up wool from the local flock.
“At 10:30 o’clock on Saturday mornings, bedlam breaks out in the auditorium of St Louis House, 2345 Lafayette Avenue, Yells, screams, stamping of feet and whistles express the enthusiasm of more than a thousand teenagers for a radio program specially built for them.”
In late August of 1939, Germany signed a mutual non-aggression pact with Russia. This pretty much ended any doubt about Hitler’s intentions toward Europe, or the counterbalancing effects of Communism to Fascism. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.
