Courtesy of the National Park Service
The Old Courthouse
Perhaps one of the most famous stories—and lawsuits—in St. Louis history involves the ownership of the newly replaced Old Courthouse in the 1930s. In 1816, the founder of St. Louis, René-Auguste Chouteau, and John Baptiste Charles Lucas donated the square of land for the courthouse, the first expansion from the original town grid laid out in 1764. Original deeds in the archives of the Recorder of Deeds office and other primary source documents give us a fascinating window into the famous real estate transaction in the first decades of the 19th century—as well as the lawsuit that followed a century later.
The Old Courthouse's dome, which uses cast iron instead of brick or stone, was designed by William Rumbold and predates the United States Capitol by several years. That makes it an architectural monument in its own right. But it's also one of the most historically important buildings in St. Louis and the United States for the cases it saw. Harriett and Dred Scott began their suit for freedom here. Virginia Minor also brought her unsuccessful suit for women’s voting rights to the docket. Billy Lemp and the Lavender Lady’s divorce unfolded in the building.
But that rich history was decades away in 1816, when Lucas and Chouteau advertised the first addition to the original town plat of St. Louis. The advertisement, reproduced in 1883’s The History of St. Louis City and County, stated:
“…The new site is mostly level and commanding, as it is on an average [40] feet higher than the ground on which the old town is [situated], and presenting a full view of the Mississippi River for five or six miles down, and from several parts as far up, offering a horizon near as vast as on the ocean, and only limited at distant points for enhancement of its charms. Col. Chouteau and [John Lucas] have agreed to offer gratuitously to the county of St. Louis a whole square in the most central best situation for a court-house and a suitable public area, exclusive of a lot intended for the use of a jail.”
Courtesy of Recorder of Deeds
Original plat for Chouteau and Lucas' addition to St. Louis
The content of the original deed is recorded in Book F, pages 2–3, kept in the Recorder of Deeds office in City Hall. The deed is filled with all sorts of important information. First, we see how Chouteau and Lucas laid out the street grid for the speculative growth of the city, with the obvious intention that the presence of the courthouse would draw business up toward the new blocks they had laid out. The new streets are notable in that they are much wider than the original street grid, and purposely lay out what would become Broadway. The block labeled “A” would become the site of the new courthouse. The famous portion of the deed, which would later be the source of the lawsuit between the Chouteau heirs and the City of St. Louis in the early 1930s, appears towards the end, stating that Chouteau and Lucas would:
“…grant, Transfer Quit Claim and forever Set over to John C. Sullivan, Justus Post and Joseph V. Garnier the present Justices of the County Court of the County of St. Louis and to their Successors in office forever in Trust and for the use of the County of St. Louis all our Right, Title, Claim, interest, and estate in and to the above described Square of ground Situated and bounded as above Recited with all and Singular the privileges and appurtenances to the Same in any wise appertaining, but upon this Condition nevertheless that the Said piece of ground by these presents given and Conveyed shall be used and appropriated ‘forever’ as the Seite [sic] on which the Court house of the County of St. Louis Shall be erected.”
The formal transfer of the land to St. Louis County would require another deed, recorded in Book M, pages 421–422. A bill had been passed in the Missouri General Assembly on December 14, 1822, approving the bequest, and on August 25, 1823, three judges formally accepted the property. Auguste Chouteau’s wife Thérèse Cerré Chouteau also signed off on the deed to transfer the property. A few years later, the first courthouse was built on the site, only to be replaced a couple of decades later with our now iconic Old Courthouse. St. Louis County gave the building to the newly created independent City of St. Louis after the Great Divorce in 1876, when the county seat moved to Clayton.
All was well in the legal sense for around a century until the City of St. Louis completed the new Civil Courts Building in 1930, which I wrote about back in 2018. Isaac Taylor’s Municipal Courts Building at 1300 Market had already foretold the movement west of the City’s civic center when it opened in 1911. Talk began among some civic backers about installing a planetarium in the dome of the Old Courthouse, after having jealously watched Chicago open the Adler Planetarium in 1930. The prevailing opinion, however, called for the creation of a museum and restoration of the building. However, Henri Chouteau, a descendent of Auguste and a real estate developer, would have none of the discussion. He sued in state court, arguing that the land should revert to his family since the land was no longer being used as a courthouse.
He lost after a series of appeals. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled that while the deed recorded in Book F had indeed used the word “forever,” it had not provided a “determinable fee” or other terms for what would happen if the county and then City of St. Louis stopped using the land for its intended use. In other words, there was no explanation of what happened if “forever” ended. And despite a popular urban legend, the state of Missouri does not need to hold one trial a year in the Old Courthouse to keep the property. The city donated the Old Courthouse to the federal government in 1940.
The whole lawsuit seems a bit like grasping at straws. The original intent of Chouteau and Lucas, besides civic duty, for donating the land for the courthouse was to draw the City of St. Louis to the west, away from its humble strip along the riverfront. Wouldn’t those two founding fathers have been happy to see that their once-tiny village had blossomed into such a burgeoning and successful city that it no longer needed their largesse?
Chris Naffziger works as the archives researcher in the office of the Recorder of Deeds of the City of St. Louis. His email is naffzigerc@stlouis-mo.gov.
