Hi, everybody. I'm Veronica Theodoro. And this is the House of Loo podcast. Today, we're exploring a topic that has a lot of relevance to me and to a lot of Saint Louis homeowners, we're talking about old houses and how to research them. This episode of House of Blue is sponsored by car, big kitchen and bath in the past 18 years or so. I've lived in two old houses in Saint Louis, both built right around the turn of the 20th century. My first house was in the central west end and we
lived there for about 10 years. We bought our second home just one block away in the Skink or of Oliver neighborhood. Though a lot of us think of this part of town as the central west end too. I'm drawn to old houses for a lot of reasons. The architecture is at the top of that list followed closely by the attention to detail and craftsmanship that's often still found in many of them. There's also this sense that a lot of us share that were caretakers for the next generation of owners. To me.
At least I like knowing that the work and time that I invest in the house will outlast my time living there, maintaining the beauty and artistry of a home, feels really good to me. So if you live in a historic house or maybe you just love historic architecture, I think you're gonna really like hearing from today's guest, Dennis Northcott is an archivist at the Missouri Historical Society Library and research center specializing
in genealogy and house history. He studies all kinds of sources in his quest to help researchers learn about the history of a house as well as its former residents. At the end of this episode, I'll be sharing details about three upcoming home related events that I think you'll find super interesting. But before all that, I wanna share a little bit about what's been up with me at home and around town.
I'm constantly delighted by the sheer number of talented and accomplished people who were born and raised in Saint Louis. I recently attended a lecture by Andrew Rams, a Saint Louis based architect, writer and historian about the early career and life of Charles Eames. Now when I think about Eames and maybe you do this too.
The first images that come to my mind are of his iconic furniture designs, pieces like the Eames lounge chair and ottoman or the molded plastic armchairs, even the tandem sling seating that you can still find in airports across the country. What I don't typically do is think much about his early life in Saint Louis where he was born in 1907. I'm not exactly sure why, but I bet it has a lot to do with the fact that we don't
often hear much about his early life. A lot of us associate themes with really cool furniture that he created with his wife, Ray after he left Saint Louis. I love that. Andrew focused on his early life. His lecture was held at the Pilgrim congregational Church on Union just north of Delmar Eames was a member of the congregation from 1929 to 1938. And he married his first wife, Catherine Warman there and made various contributions to its architecture
that's visible to this day. Things such as the Narthex stores and transoms a chandelier in the chancel, the redesigned tower roof, and a lighted sign that you can catch a glimpse of when you're passing by. Now. I've driven by this church probably hundreds of times. It's literally right up the street from my house, but I never knew that there was that connection to Eames. I love it. When I discover treasures hidden in plain sight, I'll be sure to include information about Andrew as well
as the address of the church. In case you're interested in visiting it in person, we'll be right back whether you want a new kitchen, laundry room or children's nursery, carpet, kitchen and bath can handle it all from design and construction to interiors. KBE serves as a one stop shop for all the essentials needed to create spaces that are hashtag nothing ordinary for those seeking to renovate or build, schedule a free design consultation today by visiting carb.com/project dash consultation.
So, welcome back everyone and now on to my interview with Dennis. So about Dennis, I saw Dennis in action for the first time last September when I attended one of his very popular house history workshops. Dennis teaches workshops twice a year and they tend to sell out pretty quickly. So keep that in mind if you're interested in going. But on the day of the workshop, I learned so much about my house. I mean, like a lot of people, I know the name of the architect who designed my house and the
year it was built. But once I got my hands on a copy of the census report from 1910 and other documents, it was incredible the amount of information that I found out. So Lewis Kupfer was the first resident of my house which was built in 1908. He was also an owner of the Missouri Brass Foundry and he lived in my house with his wife Emma and their two sons, Lewis and Oliver, as well as a girl of German descent named AA. Her relationship to the head of household is listed in the census as servant.
There were a lot more interesting tidbits about the house, but I really want you to hear directly from Dennis. So without further ado, welcome to the podcast, Dennis. Thank you. Good to be here. It's great to see you. What is an
archivist? Ok. So everybody knows what a librarian is, I'm sure. And an archivist is effectively the same. But a librarian deals with published material, books, maps, newspapers, historical journals, things like that. Whereas an archivist deals with original documents, letters, diaries, court records, business records, records of institutions, minute books, unpublished material, oftentimes handwrit which causes younger people problems these days. How
did you become interested in the
field? Well, I certainly didn't grow up dreaming about being an archivist. I'm sure I didn't know what an archivist was maybe till I was in college or maybe afterwards. Um But I was a history major at FSU and when I graduated, everybody said, and maybe they say this now too. Are you going to law school or are you going to be a teacher? Seemed like those were the two only options available? Neither which particularly sounded like
something I wanted to do. So I went to my advisor and told him my dilemma and he had a colleague who worked at the Missouri Historical Society and edited the historical journal which was then called Gateway Heritage. Now it's Gateway. So I began working as not working volunteering there um for several months helping out with the magazine. And then one day somebody of the staff came down the hall to where my desk was and said we have a job open in the library and another job open in
the photos department. Do you want one of these? I said sure as far as I can recollect, there was no resume, no interview. It was just, oh, you know, that kid is when coming the last three months, he seems confident enough. Why do we give him the job? So, um I worked in the library for about five years or so and then I switched over to position in the archives and I've been there ever since. You've
been there ever since. OK. So are you from ST Louis originally? Yes,
born and lived here all my life. And
so in your day to day work, you help people search for information about their aunt, ancestors and their homes. Um What are some of the similarities that you find between those two subject areas?
So they're very similar in the sense that you're both researching people. When you're doing your family history, you're researching your ancestors. And when you're doing the history of your house, just like you talked about with your home, you're researching the people who used to live in their home. Um And this can lead to all kinds of exciting
and strange and interesting stories. So you have to be aware, it's not always good things you're going to find out whether it's your ancestors or somebody who lived in your home. In fact, many years ago. I was helping this woman research her home and we found through city directories and newspapers and census records and such. Um these various people who lived in their home.
And I said, if you like, we can go to this death certificates database, the Missouri State archives is indexed and digitized the death certificates for all of Missouri from 1910 to 73. There's a 50 year privacy rule before they release them. So 1974 will come out next year. So we knew the name of this particular guy who lived in her home. And I said, do you wanna go see if we can find his death? Cert and she said, sure, that sounds fine.
So I'm standing at the computer and she's right behind me over my shoulder and I key in his name and I find the death certificate and I click view image. I use his death certificates all the time. So my eyes immediately went to the cause of that section of the document. And the first thing I see is jumped out of second story window, fractured skull, suicide. And I thought, oh boy, is she gonna be prepared for this? So I'm standing at the computer looking at it thinking
one Mississippi, two Mississippi. And then I hear this blurred out behind me. Oh my God. Did that guy jump out of the window of my house? And I had the sheepishly say, yeah. Yeah, I guess it looks that way. Now, fortunately it was 100 years ago and she, she got over it. She was fine with it, but I'm a little reluctant to show people death certificates. Now.
It's incredible to me the amount of information that you've been able to digitize.
Right. Yeah. And there's so much in recent years, it's getting so much better because, um, newspapers have been digitized. Massively, the post dispatch is digitized from 1874 to the present, the old globe Democrat from 1853 to 1963 something like that. And, and a lot of the old German language papers from Saint Louis, there were German language papers from the mid 19th century, well into the 20th century and once they're digitized, they're rendered full text, keyword, searchable.
So you can search for your address. Now today, if we'd show up in the paper, they wouldn't print our address. But back then in the 19th century and into the 20th century, if you ever made news, for some reason, they'd put your address in the newspaper. So it's great for house history researchers.
And I understand employee magazines from years ago are a treasure trove of information for you as
well. Yes. And they're one of my pet favorite sources. So my dad and grandfather worked for Union Electric. My grandpa began there in the 19 twenties. My um dad was a really good athlete and he used to say that grandpa wasn't interested in sports because he grew up during the depression. And he thought if you had free time in your hands, you shouldn't be playing sports, you should be getting an extra job to make ends meet. So that was the view I had of my grandpa.
So one day I'm back in the stacks and I see we have this run of Union Electric employee magazines going back to 1913. So I grab one off the shelf from the 19 thirties or so. And I start flipping through on the off chance I might find something about my grandfather and here I find this photo of him jumping the hurdles. He won the 100 yard hurdle in the annual Field Day competition that they put on
every year. And then subsequently, I had one of my volunteers read through all these issues of the magazine 1913 to 69 and key in all the names and in some cases, it gave their addresses as well into this database. It ended up with about 50,000 entries. And afterwards I searched for my name and there were 47 pictures and stories and announcements about my dad and
grandfather and various people in the family. So it's great for genealogy, but also in the 19 thirties, Union Electric had a savings alone that would help finance homes for employees. It was kind of a benefit. So in the magazine, they'd published a spread of photos of employees homes that have been financed by the savings and loan with the
name of the employee and the address. So we keyed in, I should say we, my dutiful volunteer keyed in these names and addresses into our online genealogy and local history index, which people can search when they're researching their ancestry or
the history of their home. And years ago, I was giving a talk in Brentwood and I met this woman and she told me some story may be getting a little jumbled as years ago, but she had a side door or a back door that she believed used to have a few stairs that led to it, but they weren't there anymore. And she figured they must have been there. But she wanted to prove it. Our photos department might have a historic photo
of your home. But I said, also look in our genealogy and local history index where we've indexed images of homes from various public sources. She searched her address and it turned out her first owner had worked for Unit Electric. There's a picture of her home in the magazine in the 19 thirties showing the stairs just like she dreamed they would be. So that doesn't happen every day by the way. But it was very fun. Why do you
think people are so interested in learning about their homes? Um,
I guess it's just something about place, you know, it's where we spend all our time. Um It's just natural to want to know, who lived there, I suppose. And in the last 15 years or so, with more and more resources being digitized and indexed and things of that nature, it's become easier and easier. So 30 years ago, it might have been quite a bit more challenging. So maybe that's part of the reason as well.
And so who does the digitizing is that
team? Yeah. So there's various people, our photograph staff or digitizing photographs in their collection. Uh The archive staff periodically is digitizing stuff from our collections and libraries and archives around the country and around the world are doing things similarly. So Google books was this initiative maybe it started 20 years ago or so where Google partnered with these huge academic libraries, Harvard University of Michigan, University of Illinois and such.
And they were going to try to audaciously digitize all their published material, but when they digitize it, they not only take a picture of it but they use this software called optical character recognition, which is what makes it full text keyword, searchable, which is just revolutionized genealogy research house history, research, historical research in general. Um It just makes vast amounts of material and data available that wasn't available previously. What are
people looking for? Would you say most of the time when they see information or a photo perhaps like what gives them the most satisfaction? So
people wanna know how old their home was, they wanna know who lived in the home and find out more about their lives. Um They wanna find a historic photo of their home, sometimes they wanna find architectural plans. Um Occasionally they've experienced a ghost in their home and they want to try to document that. It's not that
uncommon that that happened. So with the photographs, for example, I tell people, our photographs department has hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of photos, historic photos of Saint Louis homes. But by no means, do we have a historic photo of every home in fact, far from it. But sometimes you could find historic phone, uh photos of phones in employee magazines like I mentioned or digitized newspapers.
Or there was a story recently where somebody um emailed me and they had a brick that was stamped with the Lale Christie Fire Clay Products Company. And they had some very detailed question about this brick. I don't know anything about bricks, but I said, let me get your email, I'll look into it and I'll see what I can find. So I happened to find that we had a few catalogs of this brick company from the early 19 hundreds.
And I looked in there and lo and behold in one of the catalogs, there were images of a bunch of bricks with the stamps on them. And I sent him a scan of this and he was thrilled. So that was great. But as I was looking through this catalog, we had one from 1911 that had a dozen or so photos of Saint Louis homes. And you know, this is great stuff. People are always looking for historic photos of their homes, but they didn't say the address. They say this is the home of
Julius Walsh. He lived in Saint Louis County. So I was trying to identify through various means, the exact addresses of these homes. So we could upload that address into our genealogy and local history index and then somebody could find it very quickly. So one of these homes was identified as the home of Edward Cross in Maplewood in 1911. So fortunately I knew that the Saint Louis Mercantile library had a digitized Maplewood City directory from 1912. So just a year off. So I thought easy, I'll
look up Edward Cross. It'll give me his address, no problem. So I look up Edward Cross and there's no entry for him. And I thought, oh, what a, what a shame he must have moved, you know, just at that around that time. So I looked in census records and Saint Louis County directories and newspapers couldn't find any reference to a guy named Edward Cross who lived in Maplewood. It was a quest. Now, I had to find this
address of this home. So I printed out a map of Maplewood and I went out for a drive and snake through all of Maplewood. And eventually I found the house and I thought, well, why didn't it show up in this um city directory? So now when I found the house by driving, I had the address, I went back to this digitized directory keyed in the address and found an entry for not for Edward Cross Cr Os s but for Edward Closs cl Os s. So it was just a simple typo that led me on this crazy adventure or miss
Adventure. Who are
the people who you see coming into the library most often to do the research? I mean, is it a range of people or, I mean, I would imagine you have to have some connection to an older
home, right? Generally, um, you know, it's not often that somebody's researching a home, say from the seventies and Oakville or something like that. You know, when somebody says, oh, what would you qualify as an older home? And it's totally subjective, I'd say, oh, maybe thirties and earlier. But I think of it as older. But usually when people sign up, they're researching a home, I would say that goes at least back to the
19 forties. You know, there's occasional exceptions, but usually, um they're at least in the 19 forties.
How has the internet changed the way you do your work?
Yeah, it's revolutionized everything. Just like I was talking before. So many sources are now digitized and rendered keyword, searchable. Like the newspapers I mentioned.
Can anyone come into the library and do this research with your help. I mean, do you have to make an appointment? How does that
work? So, our library and research center on skin care is free and open to the public. You don't need to be a member of the Missouri Historical Society to use the library. You're welcome to come in. Um You don't need to make an appointment to use our library and archives material, which is what most people come into to use the books and newspapers and documents.
You only need an appointment if you want to use our photograph collection, our objects collection, which is dresses and furniture and paintings and such or our and visual materials like audio recordings and such. But most people who come in are there to use the documents in the books. In which case, you don't need an appointment. And there's I and various staff members who are there.
If you come in and say I'm researching our house, we'll show you how to use city directories and digitize newspapers and the various sources. And then you could sign up for one of the house history workshops, which is really intensive about that topic. But you can also just come in whenever you like. Do
you have some historical tidbits about a particular house in Saint Louis that you know, has been the most surprising to you to learn
or? Well, one thing that's surprising when I'm helping researchers and we get to the census from 1930 or 40 or 1920 or such 100 years old or so, is sometimes people are absolutely shocked when they find their address in the census and there's eight or 10 people living in their house and, and, you know, maybe it's a couple with a single child and they feel like we feel cramped. How in the world do they have
10 people in there? Um, but there was another case recently where somebody asked me to do, you know, um Hacienda restaurant shot in Manchester. So, um somebody asked me to do a little research on that. And the story was, it was built by a steamboat captain in the mid 18 hundreds. I think it was 1861. And when I first heard that I thought, is that really an old residence? You know, but I think when I'd gone out there, the trees are in front. I didn't, you know, I couldn't get a good view of it.
So it turns out I did some research and the home that was built presumably in the mid 19th century had burned down around 1900. And in 1902, they built a new building on the same spot. So it actually doesn't go back to the steamboat cap. It goes back to 1901, which is still pretty historic. And there's an article in 1902 with the whole story about it and a beautiful sketch of the, the restaurant. What's now the restaurant
there's so much history all around us. Right. Who would you say are the most enthusiastic house
researchers? Well, generally, almost all of them are quite enthusiastic, which is great. But if I had to guess, maybe the young homeowners, the people who bought their first home. In fact, just earlier this week, this woman came in and she was researching, her 25 year old son had just bought his first home in Maplewood and she was, she was quite excited. I don't know if the 25 year old was, he probably was, but she was doing research on his home.
But maybe the, the young homeowners who had their first home were the ones who are most excited.
I would imagine that that would be a really fun and interesting way to, to start your, your journey and home ownership.
And also when the holidays come around Christmas time, I've noticed in recent years we tend to get a few people who contact us and they want to do this for their spouse or for a family member. They want to research somebody's home and give it to them as a personal Christmas
gift. I am just on a mission to find an old photo of my house with the original awning above the front door. I just can't find
back and forth by email about
that because I want to recreate it and I'll bring it back because I think the house needs it. But, um, I was hoping to, you know, have something made that was like the original but,
and you never know too. Our collections certainly aren't static. You know, we're constantly getting new donations. We're constantly indexing and creating finding aids and digitizing stuff. This is an example. Our photos department got this donation in recent years of the Seavers, um, photograph studio from maybe the twenties to the seventies. And for the last handful of years they've gotten a grant to do, um, decade by decade catalog and digitize those photographs. I think
they're in the fifties now, what they're working on. So there's more stuff, whether it's our side or others, there's more stuff coming on online all the time.
All right, Dennis. Well, now we're at the part of our interview where we do the rapid fire question.
I'm prepared.
The first thing you do when you get to work in the morning.
Regrettably, I will check my email. So I had these grand plans of what I'm going to do for the day. And then I opened my email and the grand plans go out the window, the
Saint Louis house that most piques your
interest. Maybe the Magic Chef Mansion. You know that one on Russell, just east of Grand. Um Also I had an architect years ago who um she and her husband who were also an architect, they bought an old um telephone company exchange building and they were renovating it into their house. It was quite a massive building and she had an interesting story. She had an interior, um, door that had a woman's name on it. A staff member. And we had indexed these Southwester Bell employee magazines which
led her to find a photo of this woman. Your
favorite style of architecture.
Oh, I guess I don't have a favorite style. I mean, the gingerbread houses in South City are fun. The big homes in Webster Groves with the wraparound porches are nice. Um, lots of cool homes in the central west end. All kinds of possibilities. Your
favorite research
tool to use? Oh, if I had to pick one these days, probably digitized newspapers.
And this is a fill in the blank being a researcher is like detective work. What qualities make a good researcher?
Just simply passion and determination. There's nothing inherently difficult about all the stuff we do. I, if you want to find the answer, just ask questions and start digging and we'll, we'll help you
out. How do you maintain your enthusiasm for your job?
Well, that's very easy because we're sitting on this treasure trove of fascinating documents about local history. And I get to spend my time while whether it's helping researchers or cataloging a collection. I, I'm always discovering fascinating documents so it's no challenge to be enthusiastic about it.
What can homeowners do to ensure that important historical facts are documented for posterity?
So we had a researcher a few years ago. Who's researching her home in Sar, she was coming in weeks and weeks on end to our library and research center. But she can piled this huge binder with all the information she found out about the previous residents of the, of her home and who owned the property before the home was built. And I think her intent is to give that to the next homeowner whenever she moves. So just record the information that you find, I guess would be the best answer.
What is your favorite book about houses?
Maybe the Julius Hunter book about Westmoreland and Portland Place. There's great images in there. That's a good one. He wrote one
about King's Bay Place also. Oh,
right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the first one that pops to mind. All right,
Dennis. Well, thank you so much for joining
us. Oh, well, thanks for having me.
And now on to these views, I want to share details about three specific events in ST Louis because I know that there are a lot of you out there who love history and architecture. Naturally. The first event I want to mention is dennis' House History Workshop on May 11th. The class will be held at the Missouri History Museum
Library and Research Center on Skink. Dennis will walk you through all of the resources that we've talked about today so that you can become familiar with them as you do your own work if you're interested in Dennis's genealogy workshop. The next one is scheduled for Saturday, April 13th. If you're a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, be sure to reserve May 18th on your calendar.
Thats when architecture Professor Ken Tadashi Oshima from the University of Washington will be in town to discuss Wright's design of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan. The hotel opened in 1923 and it's considered one of Wright's most ambitious commissions that talk will take place at the ST Louis Art Museum and it's being sponsored by the Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebbs
Park. I fell down a rabbit hole preparing for this episode and was thrilled to find out that the Landmarks Association of ST Louis is launching a lecture series beginning in April and ending in June. There are 13 lectures planned topics include the architectural history of the Lent Brewery and how to work with the city's cultural resource office. Space is limited and reservations are a must. So be sure to sign up if you're interested, I'll add all of this information to our show notes.
Thanks for listening to the House of Lou podcast. Our episodes drop on the first Wednesday of every month. Be sure to follow us and share the episodes with your friends. Be in touch. Subscribe to our design and home newsletter at STL mag.com/newsletters and follow along on Instagram at Saint Louis Mag. You can follow me at VT
Look book. If you love what you heard. Show us some love by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts, Spotify and wherever you choose to listen, we'll see you next time and just remember there's so much to see in Saint Louis if you know where to look.