Photography courtesy of Richard Schulte
This postcard from the Jewel Box’s 1940 Chrysanthemum Show falls during the tenure of city floriculturist Henry Ochs, who began his post in 1929 at the “little Jewel Box,” a 100-foot long greenhouse showcasing plants that could survive St. Louis’ coal-blackened air.
In 1944, on a weirdly warm Palm Sunday when Forest Park was packed with people getting their first look at the zoo’s first baby Mozambique guenon, folks also flocked to Ochs’ Easter display. He placed 1,000 Easter lilies at the edges of a star-shaped pool, installed a replica of an organ with a phonograph inside that played Easter music, and put up a giant stone cross flanked with taxidermied doves. (Ochs swore that it moved everyone who entered, because all visitors took off their hats.)
One year later, The Glass Menagerie debuted on Broadway, making Tennessee Williams a star. In a way, he owed part of that to Ochs, whose vision for the Jewel Box—echoing with harp music, filled with white and orange amaryllis imported from Holland—seems like the only one that could’ve conjured Laura Wingfield, at least the one we know, from Williams’ imagination.
