When my mother was young, maybe a toddler, she and her parents would drive home past the Anheuser-Busch brewery complex on Broadway. Every time this happened, my mom would burst into tears and scream to my grandpa, “The poxes, Daddy, the poxes!”
She wasn’t talking about diseases; she was so little she couldn’t pronounce the “F,” in “foxes”— she was spying the fox statues on the cornerstone of A-B’s brewing facility. My grandparents soon learned it was best for everyone in the car to avoid the foxes, so they’d drive a couple blocks over in order to avoid the foxes my mom deemed so terrifying.
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The fox statues on the brewery are not considered scary to most of us. In fact, they seem pretty easygoing, with their mutton shanks and beer steins in hand. Every time my mom tells me the story of the “poxes,” she wonders why foxes were chosen for the building instead of traditional gargoyles. So I decided to find out.
It turns out the foxes have an interesting history that dates back to Anheuser-Busch’s survival strategy during Prohibition. A-B first brewed Bevo, its nonalcoholic near-beer, in 1916 after alcohol was banned in the military. By the time Prohibition rolled around in 1919, it ramped up production, and by the early 20s, A-B was selling 5 million cases of Bevo every year. It was so ever-present, it eventually became part of popular culture: Irving Berlin mentioned it in two songs, including “How Dry I Am.” The brewing building—the Bevo bottling facility—was named after the brand of “beer” that was available.
“It was a near-beer, so it was a product that tasted close to beer, but didn’t contain alcohol. So that was something we as a company would help us make it through the prohibition time period,” says Tracy Lauer, Anheuser-Busch’s archivist.
The mascot for Bevo was a playful character named Reynard the Fox. Reynard (Dutch: Reinaert, French: Renard, German: Reineke) is a popular character from allegorical Dutch, French, German and English fables and fairy tales. While other heroes in the stories had brute strength, Reynard was sly and witty.
“[Reynard] in the story was always funny whenever he was around, and he knew great places to find eats and drinks. That’s why the fox is shown on the corners with food and drink in its hand,” says Lauer. The fables originated in the 11th century, and the stories became so popular that the French word for fox was replaced with renard.
When the building was constructed, four fox statues were carved on each corner. The statues were commissioned from well-known sculptor Christopher Seale.
“Publications at the time said that on each of the four corners … they installed these giant blocks of solid granite, which weighed about six tons each,” says Lauer.
Seale carved the statues out of the granite blocks once they were set in place, leaving no room for mistakes.
“Every time I drive past and look at the corners of the building, I think of ‘Man, what pressure!’” says Lauer. Each statue is about 10 feet tall; the foxes are dressed in traditional Lederhosen, and are shown eating and drinking. The traditional German outfits were chosen because Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch were from Germany.foxes (or poxes, as the case may be) are familiar, yet overlooked to many St. Louis natives. The statues, like the bottling facility, have a rich history that is integrated with St. Louis; it’s also an example of how teasing out the history of one detail can open up an entire era of our city’s history. And now that you know Mr. Reynard’s name, you can give your regards to him properly when you go down to A-B’s campus this winter to look at the holiday lights.
