Photograph by Alexander Piaget
Like Hyde Park Beer, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus and Union Leader Tobacco, the corner of Wharf and Chestnut is gone. And so is the Old Rock House. Built in 1818 by “Black Manuel” Lisa to cache pelts, it passed to James Clemens Jr.—Mark Twain’s cousin—in 1820 and became a sail-making shop. In 1880 it became a saloon catering to “roustabouts and riverfront bums,” offering such unwholesome refreshments as pig knuckles and nickel whiskey. The fellow in those slatted shadows surely saw his share of pig knuckles, though by the mid-’30s, owners Alex and Albina “Mom” Paintinida had cultivated a clientele of newspapermen and artists—the bartender was jazz bandleader Wayne King! But as this anonymous chap paused to lean on the wall, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association was being formed, an act that would ensure the building’s demise. By 1942 it was nothing but numbered rubble in the basement of the Old Courthouse. On this April morning, though, in the dark of the bar, the beer flowed, the dice tumbled, cigar cherries glowed like semaphores—and the circus was making its way to town.
Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Historic American Buildings Survey Collection (HABS MO,96-SALU,5-2).
