3322 DeMenil Place

The history of 3322 DeMenil Place is closely tied to the Lemp family, whose fortunes rose in three generations from immigrant brewers making beer behind a grocery store to owners of a massive brewery with a national market, great wealth, and eventually self-destruction. The mansion itself was built in 1868 by German immigrant Jacob Feickert, who first appeared in St. Louis directories in 1838 as a baker and later became a partner of saloonkeeper Frederick Jacoby, whose Jacoby House saloon held a prime riverfront location by the 1850's. In 1861, Feickert's daughter Julia married brewer William Lemp, who helped expand the brewery by working closely with employees and guiding its growth. At its height, the brewery employed a thousand workers and produced half a million barrels of beer annually, while the family added a three story vault to the house to store art and treasures. Depressed by the deaths of his son and his friend, Milwaukee brewer Captain Frederick Pabst, William Lemp committed suicide in the mansion built by his father-in-law, and two more family members later also took their own lives there. After Prohibition, the closed Lemp Brewery at the south end of the street stood silent, and the mansion was divided into apartments and declined into a notorious flop house. In 1975, the Pointer family purchased the mansion, saved it from further decay, and began restoring it as a restaurant and inn.

St. Louis, Missouri · United States