Historic St. Louis: 250 Years Exploring New Frontiers

Above: The Mansion of Auguste Chouteau
(c. 1794-1841), the grandest early house
in the West, a view “engraved expressly” for
[Richard] Edwards’s Great West and Her
Commercial Metropolis, Embracing…
A Complete History of St. Louis…
(St. Louis, 1860), 534.
Below: Bourbon St. Louis, with a French
population but a Spanish commandant from
1770 to 1804, is represented by these two
coins from the 1760s—the larger one from
France with the profile of King Louis XV,
and the smaller one from Spain, issued
by Carlos III.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY THE AUTHOR FROM OBJECTS IN
HIS COLLECTION.
H I S T O R I C S T . L O U I S
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In terms of colonial French architecture,
St. Louis by 1795 was older than its mother
city of New Orleans, due to two huge fires and
three hurricanes that recently destroyed over
a thousand buildings in the southern capital.
Preserving the style of former French Louisiana
plantation homes was the magnificent mansion
of Auguste Chouteau. In the 1790s, he had
thoroughly remodeled and dramatically
expanded the original stone home he had
built for Laclede in 1764. That showpiece of
merchant affluence occupied an entire block in
St. Louis’s city center, with large dimensions
that were nearly identical to those of George
Washington’s impressive “Mount Vernon.”
Chouteau’s imposing “castle” served as a
community hospitality center for visiting
European nobles, Indian chiefs, and prominent
American dignitaries for decades. The mansion
had floors of black walnut; a crystal chandelier;
a dining room with three large tables, 46 chairs,
40 tablecloths, and 42 pounds of sterling silver
eating utensils; 11 landscape paintings; framed
portraits of Napoleon; a 600-volume library;
and a fancy clock with a bust of Voltaire on top.
Auguste shared the Laclede family’s affinity for
that famous French philosopher, as well as his
stepfather’s commitment to living well.
Chouteau was able to afford that expensive
lifestyle because of vastly increased fur profits
in the 1790s, which the Spanish Bourbon
regime facilitated. In building the trading outpost
of Fort Carondelet (named for the Spanish
governor) exclusively for the Osages in southwestern
Missouri, Auguste and Pierre curtailed
Indian raids on white farms and averted a
Spanish war against their Osage friends and
relatives. As a reward, the Chouteaus received
an eight-year royal monopoly on all Osage furs,
which amounted to nearly 60 percent of the
entire Missouri Valley trade annually. In order
to provide Osage customers and St. Louis consumers
with luxurious products from London,
the Chouteaus shipped the most expensive furs
up the Illinois River and Lake Michigan to
Michilimackinac. From there, British merchants
took them to Montreal’s coffee house auctions.