During the Gay Nineties, DeMenil Place was known simply as the 3300 block of South Thirteenth Street. As Americans read Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court and verses by St. Louisan Eugene Field, watched Irish-American George M. Cohan entertain vaudeville audiences, and sang songs like After the Ball is Over while dancing the Hootchy-Kootchy, the block's households stood among St. Louis society. When the decade began, every household on the block was listed in the St. Louis society's Blue Book, including the Lemp family, their in-laws the Feickert family, the Alexander DeMenil family, and six other families. Among them were the families of Henry Ziegenhein, then City Collector of revenue, the Helmbachers, who owned a forge and rolling mills, and the Cramers, who owned an engraving company. Also living in the households, though not included in the Blue Book, were servants, cooks, and gardeners, many of them immigrants.
