Due to recent headlines, I thought I’d see if there were any historical “beer barons behaving badly” stories. There were the usual colorful accounts from the 1920s, mainly of breweries during Prohibition selling beer that was too high in alcohol content. I found a tale or two of shady licenses for some taverns (before the outlawing of intoxicating spirits, bars had allegiances to particular breweries). And there was an occasional arrest of a brewery heir for, say, carrying a concealed revolver at a ward meeting. But the stories that captured my attention revolved around the private amusement spectacle at Lemp’s Park, just north of the brewery at the corner of Lemp and Utah avenues.

Courtesy of the Missouri History Museum Lemp's Park The entrance to Lemp's Park

First, a little bit of background on Adam Lemp and others’ land purchases in the St. Louis Commons. Our rapidly growing city had inherited the old French common fields south of the original colonial settlement. The City was already been renting out some of this land, but by the early 1840s, it had become apparent that it was time to cash in on the land wealth. By city ordinance, the land was sold off in large, individually numbered blocks. Adam Lemp, who had just founded his brewery in 1840, was already successful enough to buy the southeast quarter of Block 52 on September 6, 1843, for the not unsubstantial price of $970. On that lot, his lagering cave and beer garden would be established. The following month, on October 13, 1843, John Withnell bought the northeast quadrant, site of the future Lemp’s Park.

× Expand Courtesy of the Library of Congress Concordia Park Concordia Park, shown in the Compton and Dry Pictorial St. Louis, 1876

By the time the 1876 Compton and Dry Pictorial St. Louis was published, Withnell’s northeast quadrant had been transformed into Concordia Park, which according to city directories was privately owned, yet was listed as a “beer garden” in the book’s index. Looking closely at the plate featuring the park, you can see several buildings, including a Chinese-style pagoda in the center of the greensward, and along 13th Street, several long buildings. As is typical of Victorian park design, the walking paths curve to create picturesque vistas, as would be seen in English gardens. Judging from an advertisement in Rippey’s Index Map and Business Guide from 1883, a Hermann Bachmann operated the park and instructed those interested in picnicking onsite to inquire in person.

We learn from Ernst Kargau’s German-language St. Louis in früheren jahren: Ein Gedenkbuch für das Deutschthum that the name of the park came from the Concordia Turnverein, or gymnastics club, of which Adam Lemp’s heir William Sr. was a member. There were previous owners of the park, including John Scholten and his partner Moritz Schilling. There was a dance hall (one of the buildings along 13th Street). I suspect William Lemp bought the possibly financially-strapped park from the Concordia Turnverein as a favor and as a business decision. After all, the original Lemp’s Cave beer garden to the south had been developed into upscale houses, and the brewery was looking to get back into “family” entertainment.

× Expand Courtesy of the Missouri History Museum Whipple Fire Insurance map, 1896

By the early 20th century, with the Lemp Brewery as owners, the park’s public programing had become much more formal. If you examine Whipple and Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, as well as a photograph from the Missouri History Museum archives, an idea of the appearance of Lemp’s Park begins to emerge. A monumental ornate brick entrance, angled at 45 degrees, sat at the southeast corner of 13th and Utah, and I suspect there was a streetcar stop there. Advertisements suggested that visitors take Broadway lines to reach the park, and that major thoroughfare was only a block or so from that archway. North on 13th Street was the grand hall, sitting right on the edge of the park and looking like a Central Asian palace with twin towers. Inside was an auditorium with a stage for live performances. And there was an even larger wood frame dance hall on the west side of the park, stretching almost the entire length of the Lemp Avenue border. While the older pagoda was now gone, the fire maps show another octagonal building, which I suspect was a replacement of the older structure.

Entertainment, as revealed by newspaper articles, was less than what we might consider to be ethical or legal today. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article from October 8, 1902, reveals that a lion tamer barely avoided being mauled to death by Spitfire, a lioness who’d reportedly already killed two men (presumably in Germany, as that country had ordered her deported immediately). Exiled from Germany, she’d come to St. Louis in the Gaskill-Mundy Carnival. The newspaper breathlessly recounted how Spitfire had knocked trainer James Dyer to the ground and, moments before she could deliver a fatal blow to acquire her “expected meal of human flesh,” had been chased off by another lion tamer with a red-hot poker and the firing of a half dozen blank cartridges from a revolver.

The night before, on October 7, 1902, the monkeys at Lemp’s Park weren’t having any of their human cousins’ tomfoolery, either. Seventeen-year-old George Speice, of 1626 Market Street, had overestimated the domestication of several monkeys on display, presumably from the same Gaskill-Mundy Carnival, and attempted to feed the simians by sticking his whole arm through the bars with a peanut. His arm was promptly bitten—hard—requiring the attention of a Dr. Poeppen at 3123 S. 7th Street. The Post-Dispatch was even able to secure an interview with the two monkeys, and Mr. Monkey had gone on the record to say, “How do you like that?” while Mrs. Monkey had replied, “What fools these mortals be?”

Acrobats at Lemp's Park Acrobats at Lemp's Park, shown in the St. Louis Star and Times, September 20, 1911

Usually the events at Lemp’s Park were more mundane; there are newspaper announcements of meetings and graduation celebrations, acrobatic acts performing, a drunk Lemp Brewery worker punching a guard in the face after being refused entry. In 1913, however, a March 13 Post-Dispatch article revealed that Charles Lemp had gone down to the Board of Aldermen to lobby hard for converting the park into a railyard for the brewery’s shortline railroad, the Western Cable Railway (a story in itself, saved for another day). Amazingly, Charles was attempting to convince the then-bicameral legislature of the City of St. Louis to grant the brewery rights to run a rail line down the alley between 13th and 18th streets to Lemp’s Park, where a switching yard would replace the dance halls and pagoda. Public opposition to the titan brewery focused on the danger to children who, as they walked to school nearby, would have to cross the railroad. Besides, the Lemp railyards were already oriented to the southeast along the Levee. The Lemp Brewery’s efforts failed, and the land once trodden by lions, monkeys, and revelers is now known as Cherokee Park.