Great Tornado of 1896 Archives - Lafayette Square Archives

1896: End Of The Lafayette Park Hotel

Tying loose ends

I’ve recently written about the old Lafayette Park Hotel. It dated back to about 1875, and rather mysteriously disappeared from view with the great tornado of 1896. Architectural historian Michael Boyd got me started when he asked if I could find anything related to its demolition. I searched high and low. Nope.

Here’s the first mention I could find of the building on Mississippi Avenue, just south of Park Avenue. It’s from August 29, 1875, a time when building activity was really taking off east of Lafayette Park:

1893: Iron Men Of Lafayette Square – Christopher And Simpson

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.

1861: Judge Leo Rassieur

The advent of civil war was a perilous time to be a state in the middle U.S. There were slave states with deep economic interests in that “peculiar institution,” and free states where slavery wasn’t legal. However, four slave states did not secede from the US in 1861: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. These states walked a tricky line, and it required political and sometimes military maneuvering to prevent their secession.

1896: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show Comes To St Louis

From May 18 through May 24, 1896, the most famous show of its type, the original and biggest spectacle of its age, stopped in St Louis, setting up at the corner of Compton and Manchester. The show was so large that it required 15 acres of empty ground to stage.

1897: No Picnic On Either Side Of The Law

I. Murder On The Riverfront

Morton Houseboat; Post-Dispatch December 29, 1894

Noble Shepard was a 28 year old glassblower from Illinois. He left his wife and migrated to the riverside near downtown St Louis, where he holed up in a tent. 100 yards away, Tom and Lizzie Morton lived on a flatboat tied to shore. Tom was a good looking man of “slight frame,” who wanted to roam. He joined a small circus and met Lizzie Leahy in Alton, Illinois. Abandoning the circus, the two went off on a flatboat and tied up at the foot of Potomac Street. Tom found work as a machinist with Barr Department Store. Lizzie made her living doing needlework. Two months into their stay, they met Noble Shepard.