A Walk in 1875 St. Louis
Now Open
Missouri History Museum
FREE
Richard Compton, a St. Louis sheet music publisher, and Camille Dry, a wandering mechanical draftsman, teamed up on a task that sounds impossible – draw every single home, building, street, and tree in St. Louis in accurate perspective. The result was “Pictorial St. Louis,” the largest pictorial map of any city in the 19th century.
In A Walk in 1875 St. Louis, panels from this map are blown up to 10’ x 30’, guiding visitors on an imaginary walk through nine different neighborhoods in Gilded Age St. Louis, featuring everything from lavish opulence to crowded tenements.
Large images of the map are complemented by vivid and expressive graphics by artist Dan Zettwoch that illustrate the complex and often surprising world hidden in the map’s landscape, including the realities of home life, crime, water and brewing. Learn about the city/county divorce, the Whiskey Ring Scandal and Tony Faust’s Oyster House. The Museum has created an exhibition that looks so closely at one single year in St. Louis’ history that visitors can imagine they were actually there.
