Rivière

Sectional view of River des Peres Valley April 1 1906. From the mouth to Delmar Blvd. Ave. All numbers and circles in red are connecting points. Forty six sections in all An extraordinary archive of 44 original linen-backed panoramic photographs capturing the River des Peres meandering through the border section of St. Louis along the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad route into Forest Park and finally to Delmar Ave.

1906 · 62652 — St. Louis MO: Holt St. Louis Streets Dept. 1906. Forty-four of 46 original linen-backed panoramic silver gelatin photographs comprised of 116 approx. 8 x 10 in. images divided into 2-4 panel panoramic photographs w/ captions neatly written w/in negatives at lower fore-edge annotations in red & black ink occasional pencil notes sectional numbers on versos edgewear & rubbing some lifting to fore-edges of some of the images creasing soot soiling to versos minor over-exposure to some images still a VG archive. This historic archive of panoramic photographs meticulously document the now largely disappeared and built-over River des Peres in a Ruscha-like manner and if pasted end-to-end would span nearly 100 feet. Capturing the River des Peres Valley which still meandered at the beginning of the 20th-Century along the Western boundaries of St. Louis MO and reveal a fast-growing Western city industrializing and appropriating the marshy lowlands farms and rural areas into factories breweries and railroad routes. Eleven of the images wind through Forest Park where much of the river had been channeled in 1904 through wooden sewers and culverts in order to cut down on the stench and prepare the park for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Holt 1866-1925 was renowned for his excessive photographic documentation leading groups of city engineers armed with large format cameras shooting on glass plate negatives recording the sprawling activities of the burgeoning St. Louis community in the Progressive Era. As evidenced by this meticulously shot archive of panoramic images Holt and his team document from the Mouth of River des Peres looking North with railroad bridge in right foreground and steamers in the river alongside the banks. The images continue along the River des Peres capturing the brewery next to the Railroad and between Broadway & Alabama Ave.; the sprawling unidentified factory on Webster; and also demarcating where the City Limits Stones were set and what numbers. A four-panel panoramic photo denotes the Saints Peter & Paul Cemetery on Gravois Avenue followed by others indicating different distances from Gravois Road bridges and houses along the road a road grading and roadbuilding team West of Gravois and then recording the rural lowland areas Southwest of Gravois and then towards Echelberger Street. About halfway through the series the images begin capturing more industrial and suburban development including the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad Line Frisco RR telephone poles along Fyler Ave. Frisco RR stone station on Fyler with nearby culvert; the Hirsch Rolling Mill Co. complex with railcars labeled and carrying steel and railroad bridge in the distance. The photos show the River des Peres winding around revealing the Clifton Heights in the background; between Knox and Sulpher Ave. with Fire Engine House in the right foreground and many different railroad company cars including those for the Cotton Belt Line the Chicago Peoria & St. Louis RR the Missouri Kansas & Texas RR; and many for the Frisco RR. Several photos shot by Holt and his team May 10 1906 capture the sprawling Laclede Fire Brick Manufacturing Co. complex the Frisco RR Arch Bridge and even a Birds-Eye view. Other photos approaching Forest Park also depict the Police Headquarters Stables the Forest Park Highlands and once in the Park a group of boys playing baseball in the lower foreground. The final three-panel panoramic photo was taken looking West with Delmar Blvd. on the right and the Frisco RR trestle in the middle foreground Delmar Garden in the background and center field filled with the trestle stretching over the River des Peres. Unsurprisingly this cataloguer could find no similar partial or extant collection of images and the original negatives appear to have probably been dumped by St. Louis City Hall housecleaning around 1950 when they offloaded the thousands of photos shot by the Holt for the Street Department. The historically invaluable images were all sold at an auction comprising three 13 foot high stacks of negatives nearly all of them on glass. Purchased originally by Swekosky the collection was lent to Dick Lemen of Moline IL who cleaned printed and enlarged the photos purchased them and later donated the remnants of what he preserved to the St. Louis Mercantile Library. These photographs capture a Western waterway almost entirely displaced with nearly all of its original route completely rebuilt as it was engineered to operate as the backbone of the St. Louis sewer system and almost completely underground with just a few sections near the mouth with a channel and paved bans. In 1904 the Forest Park section was covered in a “large wooden box†to prevent visitors to the World’s Fair from breathing the unhealthy stench and after a 1915 flood backed up sewers killed 11 people in flooding and destroyed over 1000 homes chief engineer Horner was ordered to prepare a plan to completely control and build over the River des Peres. It still carries storm water and sewage in separate pipes and now that the channel has almost no direct source from the Mississippi River and all of the lowland meadows wetlands and areas that existed at the beginning of the 20th Century have been entirely paved over there largely remains no water to supply the river itself. Some of the River at the site of the former Carondelet Coke Plant has been largely remediated and a short piece connected to the Mississippi Greenway near River City Casino. See: Kelly Moffitt Salvaged Photographs from the St. Louis Street Department circa 1900-1930 Catalogued in New Book St. Louis on the Air St. Louis Public Radio Aug. 2 2017; Enter Dick Lemen Dr. William G. Swekosky The collection Grows Unwieldy Lafayette Square Archives 2020; Michael Allen The Harnessed Channel: How the River Des Peres Became a Sewer Preservation Research Office Nov. 27 2010; Chris Naffziger Reconnecting with the Roots of River des Peres in St. Louis Terrain Magazine 2022. Holt, [St. Louis Streets Dept.], unknown