The Academy of Science

of St. Louis
© 1856 - 1988 e

By John R. Hensley

Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis
Volume 33, No. 1

George Engelmann, Founder of the Academy of Science of St. Louis

‘“The Lycaon Butterfly’’ — Ilustration for Charles V. Riley’s ‘‘Hackberry
Butterflies’’

“Ventral View of Shoulder Girdle of Rana catesbiana’’

— Illustration for Julius
Hurter’s ‘‘Herpetology of Missouri’’

The Museum of Science and Natural History at Oak Knoll Park

The Academy of Science of St. Louis:
1856 — 1988

John R. Hensley
Technology and Humanities Curator
St. Louis Science Center

With an Introduction by
Jules D. Campbell
President, Academy of Science of St. Louis

Transactions of the Academy
Science of St. Louis
Volume 33, Number 1
1988

MISSOURI BOTANICAL
JUN 06 1999

GARDEN LIBRARY

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank both the Academy of Science of St.
Louis and the St. Louis Science Center for providing support and en-
couragement for the research and writing of this paper.
Special thanks are due Jules D. Campbell, President of the Academy
of Science, and Dennis M. Wint, President of the Science Center. Karen
Corley, Print Design Coordinator at the St. Louis Science Center, proved
invaluable when the time came to oversee the design, layout, and
printing.

Part of this paper appeared previously in Gateway Heritage, the
journal of the Missouri Historical Society. The editors of that publica-
tion have my gratitude for their assistance, cooperation, and permis-
sion to reprint the section.

John R. Hensley
August 8, 1988

Introduction

Part I.

Part II.

Part III.

Part IV.

Part V.

Part VI.

Part VII.

Part VIII.

Part IX.

Contents

A False Start — The Western Academy of Natural
maeuences OF ot. Logis, IN3G-1843 =... 5

The Academy of Science of St. Louis, 1856-1881:
Years of Triumph, Years of Tribulation ...... 11

A Period of Change, 1881-1903 ..,.......... 28

New Quarters/New Disappointments,
PG Ee reg I a a, 33

1918-1941: Years of Retrenchment, Reorganization
nu eet ce 40

The Search for a New ‘‘Permanent’? Home ... 50
1957-1971: Oak Knoll Park, The Museum of
Science and Natural History, and the Metropolitan

Zoological and Museum District ............. ee

Bolstering Tradition and Forging Ahead,
RIO ieee ey oe ety Gaus «ccs 67

Introduction

The Academy of Science of St. Louis traces its origin to 1836,
with the formation of the Western Academy of Natural Sciences of St.
Louis, whose goals were to improve the cultural standards of the city
and to aid in the exploration and exploitation of the West. Although
this first institution for the advancement of science west of the Mississippi
was founded by learned men of the highest order, the Western Academy
lapsed after only seven years because of funding problems. However,
in those few years, it established a firm foundation of precedents upon
which the Academy of Science of St. Louis was built thirteen years
later. The Western Academy’s legacy was great: the new organization
inherited not only its library and museum collections, but also its goal
of encouraging the growth of science on the frontier and its application
to the needs of society.

Over the years, through many vicissitudes and trials and tribula-
tions, the Academy pursued its goals by adding to its library and museum
collections, by sponsoring lectures on learned subjects, and by the
publication of Transactions.

With the establishment of the Museum of Science and Natural
History in the late 1950s, one of the Academy’s foundation goals final-
ly came to fruition. The merger of the Museum and the McDonnell
Planetarium to form the St. Louis Science Center, under its own ad-
ministration and partly tax-supported, freed the Academy to concen-
trate on some of its other goals, including the promotion of public
understanding and appreciation of science and technology, the encourage-
ment of education in science and its related disciplines, and the foster-
ing of collaboration—in a recreational atmosphere—among learned in-
dividuals who share similar goals. To these ends the Academy now is
devoting its resources.

Over the years, several short histories of the St. Louis Academy
of Science have been published. This publication, however, is the first

comprehensive, fully documented narrative of the organization’s rich
and fruitful past.

Jules D. Campbell
President, Academy
of Science of St. Louis

Part I. A False Start — The Western
Academy Of Natural Sciences Of
St. Louis, 1836-1843

St. Louis in the 1830s and 1840s grew from a frontier settlement
into a bustling town well on its way to becoming a major American
city. Ideally located for the distribution of manufactured goods to the
developing hinterlands of the Midwest and for the transhipment of furs,
ore, and produce to the East, St. Louis became a boomtown. Its wealth
and population rapidly expanded, and the town reaped both the rewards
and the penalties of incipient urbanization. Its prosperity, epitomized
by frenetic steamboat traffic on the river and by the commodities piled
high on the levee, was easy to see. But the town’s ailments were just
as obvious: rampant disease, frequent fires, shortages of housing and
drinking water, streets made impassable by mud and overcrowding,
creeping sandbars that threatened to choke the river harbor, and insuf-
ficient drainage that created slime-covered pools in the numerous
garbage-choked sinkholes around town.

To visitors and immigrants from the East and abroad, St.
Louis appeared raw and uncouth. The drovers, rivermen, and trappers
who came to town seemed inordinately predisposed to drunkenness,
brawling and gambling—even by frontier standards. These vices ex-
tended also to St. Louis’ more settled and respectable residents, many
of whom, for example, frequently rowed to ‘‘Bloody Island,’’ a sand-
bar in the middle of the Mississippi River, to settle questions of honor
with a brace of pistols.!

Although St. Louis deserved its rough-and-ready reputation, the
youthful city showed signs of becoming a center for education and the
arts and sciences in the expanding Midwest. Science gained a foothold
on the western bank of the Mississippi in 1836 when a group of amateur
scientists, most of them recent arrivals from the East and foreign coun-
tries, established a private society for the advancement of science on
what one of them termed ‘‘the verge of civilization.’’? They christened
the infant organization the ‘‘St. Louis Association of Natural Sciences”’
but soon changed the name to ‘‘Western Academy of Natural Sciences
of St. Louis.’’ This was the forerunner of the Academy of Science of
St. Louis.

The group that founded the Western Academy of Natural Sciences
consisted of seventeen learned St. Louis men. Seven had medical degrees
or practiced medicine. Benjamin Boyer Brown, C.J. Carpenter, George
Engelmann, F. Johnson, Henry King, Phillip A.M. Pulte, and G.A.V.

5

Reed all had practices or taught in St. Louis. That so many medical
men helped establish the Western Academy of Natural Sciences of St.
Louis was not coincidental. A close association existed between members
of the medical profession and most natural history societies and
academies of science. Physicians of the era studied chemistry,
mineralogy, and other sciences along with anatomy and materia medica,
thus making them de facto natural scientists. Furthermore, most in-
dividuals who went into medicine were intelligent and inquisitive and
often extended their studies into fields such as the study of plants that
related to the medicine of the time.

Intelligence and curiosity about the natural world was not confined
to the medical profession, as the remaining names on the list of founders
of the Western Academy illustrate: Theodore Engelmann, a teacher;
William G. Eliot, minister of the First Congregational Church; Karl
A. Geyer, a botanical collector; David W. Gobel, a professor of
mathematics; Edward Harren, a businessman; Marie P. Leduc, a judge
of the county court; and William Weber, a publisher. The other founders,
whose vocations are not noted in the record, were G. Scheutze, Jasper
Meyer, and M. Thomas. Friedreich Wislizenus, a physician; D.A.H.
Armstrong, a school teacher; and W.R. Singleton and C.M. Sell, oc-
cupations unknown, joined the organization soon after its creation.

The founders of the Western Academy wrote a constitution and
by-laws similar to those of established science groups in the East, such
as the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, which they strove
to emulate in order to improve the cultural standards of their town and
region. The constitution called for the usual roster of officers—president,
vice-president, corresponding secretary, treasurer, and librarian. The
organization was to meet semi-monthly and hold an annual meeting at
which officers would give reports. The founders established four
categories of membership: active, associate, corresponding, and
honorary. Active members gained admission if they could demonstrate
a familiarity with one or more branches of the natural sciences. Associate
members attained that rank simply by paying dues: the Academy did
not require them to prove profound knowledge of science. Correspond-
ing members were nonresidents who had distinguished themselves as
scientists. The Academy conferred honorary memberships on persons
of ‘‘sufficient scientific or literary attainment.’’ Each active member
served on one or more of the Academy’s ‘‘departments’’ for zoology,
botany, meteorology, natural Philosophy, and mineralogy and
chemistry .3
i. on —_— 4 ee ype cultural standards for their town,

west cademy acted out of genuine intellec-
tual curiosity and the expectation of making significant contributions
6

to natural science. As men of education and culture steeped in the
Baconian tradition of observing and analyzing nature, they felt a keen
desire to explore the unknown lands on their doorsteps, perhaps mak-
ing exciting new finds that would secure their reputations. Moreover,
as members of a scientific community that extended from Europe to
all parts of the globe, they viewed such work as their duty.

Western Academy members were also motivated by patriotism and
a sense of the Midwest’s economic potential. They wanted to promote
immigration to Missouri by increasing and disseminating knowledge
of the region’s fertility and favorable climate. A larger population would
enhance Missouri’s economy and, concurrently, further the broader na-
tional aim of extending American institutions and influence west of the
Mississippi. Similarly, the Western Academy intended to promote set-
tlement and economic growth by discovering exploitable mineral deposits
and distributing published descriptions, which would entice entrepreneurs
to develop what was discovered.

Finding and developing local sources of iron, coal, lead, clay, sand,
stone, and gravel were deemed essential to extending industry and pro-
viding homes, stores, and other structures for the Midwest’s swelling
population. The St. Louis science group began its work of helping to
discover mineral resources as soon as it was formed by taking out a
newspaper notice to inform interested parties that its chemical and
mineralogical department would analyze all minerals sent to it. How
much the members learned about the natural wealth of their region as
a result of its newspaper message is difficult to measure. Nevertheless,
this part of the association’s mission was at least partially attained when
some of its members found and described a three-foot vein of good quali-
ty anthracite coal in Missouri’s Iron Mountain district.*

All of the mineralogical specimens gathered by the members were
placed in the Western Academy’s museum, located upstairs in a building
at the northeast corner of Fourth and Chestnut streets. Many other kinds
of natural history specimens were brought in by members as well. For
example, George Engelmann gave his herbarium, mineralogical
specimens, and bird and animal skins; Henry King donated his entire
collection of rocks and minerals; and Benjamin Brown contributed
numerous zoological specimens.

Others also gave to the Western Academy’s museum. Chief among
the donors was Merriwether Lewis Clark, son of William Clark, who
deposited some of his famous father’s ‘‘scientific collection.’’* Other
prominent citizens, such as Ed Charles, John O’ Fallon, and William
Stewart, contributed fossils and natural history specimens collected in
the Far West; Dr. A. Reavy of Illinois supplied the Western Academy
with a collection of European bird skins; and other individuals presented

7

their collections of skins, plants, and geological and mineralogical
specimens. ®

These specimens and objects were received, identified, and arranged
by the Western Academy’s different departments for display. The
museum was open to the public, but how many non-members visited
the museum is uncertain. The members enjoyed working with their col-
lections at the little museum and no doubt appreciated having a place
to take visiting scientists and friends.

In addition to its museum, the Western Academy attempted un-
successfully to establish a botanical garden. To this end, members pur-
chased a small plot of land at Eighth and Chouteau— then on the outer
limits of the town. The botanical garden seemed doomed from the start.
The members failed to get the land cleared and fenced in time for plant-
ing for at least two years after buying it, and later attempts were half-
hearted.’ Ultimately, the garden was abandoned.

The troubles the Western Academy faced initiating a botanical
garden mostly stemmed from a shortage of funds. From its inception,
the organization relied on dues and donations from its active members
for all of its activities, even though it continually attempted to find other
sources. For example, in 1836-37 the Western Academy made an ap-
peal to the Missouri Legislature. Missouri’s lawmakers declined to give
the organization any money, although they did grant it a charter. Hav-
ing failed at the state level, the members petitioned Congress asking
for “‘the aid of the General Government, in the purchase of a library
and instruments, the erection of a suitable building, and the purchase
of a lot of ground for a botanical garden.’’8

In their entreaty to Congress, the members stated several reasons
why their organization should receive government money. They pointed
out that St. Louis’ geographical position made it the ideal headquarters
for Western exploration. Furthermore, they argued that their academy
could oversee the investigation of the vast region more efficiently and
get the job done more quickly than ‘‘individual exertions.’’9 Despite
a eloquence, however, no money was forthcoming from Congress,
either.

The Western Academy approached another possible source of
monetary backing through a printed solicitation it distributed to
“‘the people of St. Louis.’’ This appeal invited interested individuals
to join the organization and assured all St. Louisans that their financial
contributions would help create a brave new era of prosperity while
at the same time ‘‘drawing the attention of the scientific world.’’!°

Unfortunately, the Western Academy failed to rouse widespread
community enthusiasm. Public financial support remained slight, and
the Academy died after only seven years of existence. Its last public

8

action was a reception given for the artist and naturalist John J. Audubon
in St. Louis in 1843."!

The demise of the Western Academy was largely due to bad tim-
ing. Most St. Louisans in the 1830s and 1840s were, in Henry King’s
words, ‘‘too occupied with the wants of life’’ to be overly concerned
with the welfare of something as seemingly superfluous as an academy
of science.'? Western Academy members therefore failed to attain one
of their main goals: permanently establishing the culture of science in
Missouri. Nevertheless, this was only a partial failure, for they did
manage to sow seeds that would later take root in the growing town.
As Western Academy member William Greenleaf Eliot put it, the
organization served to remind the community that ‘‘there are intellec-
tual and moral events that money cannot buy.’’!3 This accomplishment,
as high-minded as it sounded, had more practical political overtones.
The Western Academy’s quest to plant American culture and institu-
tions on the threshold of the West dovetailed exactly with one of the
nation’s dominant political credos.

Throughout its life and even after the demise of the Western
Academy, the men who founded the organization benefitted from, and
in their way played a significant part in, the overwhelming American
surge westward. The idea that the United States was fated to extend
its boundaries to the Pacific Ocean had been discussed at least since
the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 (the so-called ‘‘Transcontinental Trea-
ty’’), when the United States acquired Florida from Spain. This con-
cept, which became known as “‘manifest destiny,’’ grew in popularity
in the 1830s and found its greatest expression in the 1840s, when the
United States expropriated territories even more immense than those
of the Louisiana Purchase.

Science enthusiasts in St. Louis sat in the perfect position to benefit
from the United States push to gain dominion over the continent. Cen-
trally located, reasonably secure, and reliably connected to the power
centers in the East, St. Louis did indeed, as the members of the Western
Academy stated in their petition to Congress, provide the logical start-
ing point for early Western exploration, military conquest, and settle-
ment. Members of the Western Academy made the most of St. Louis’
unique situation by associating themselves with the military and trading
expeditions that were the thin edge of American westward expansion.
They paid for the privilege of furthering their scientific pursuits by pro-
viding their services as scientists and physicians. For example, George
Engelmann provided advice and helped numerous explorers, such as
John C. Fremont and Joseph Nicollet, who in return acquired for the
enterprising amateur naturalist a bounty of specimens for study and trade.
Another illustration of this symbiotic relationship was Friedreich

9

Wislizenus’ service as a physician during the Mexican-American War,
when he joined the invading American army as a surgeon and concur-
rently made scientific observations and collected a vast quantity of
previously unknown specimens.

The invasion of Mexico and other grasping behavior was sanc-
tioned by numerous factions, including powerful commercial interests.
The recent opening of China excited American traders and shipowners,
who saw the harbors of San Diego, San Francisco, and Puget Sound
as necessary waystations on the route to the Far East. St. Louisans such
as Senator Thomas Hart Benton and Academy member Henry King were
determined to see that their town also served as a stopover for such
commerce via an overland route. Consequently, they promoted a trans-
continental railroad that would connect the East with the Pacific Ocean
by way of St. Louis.

America’s future independence was believed to rely not only on
commerce, transportation systems, and the exploitation of western
mineral wealth. Another key element was the westward expansion of
American agriculture. The extension of cotton culture into Texas was
a natural outgrowth of the expansionist philosophy as was the settle-
ment of Oregon by American farmers. The Western Academy promoted
immigration beyond the Mississippi and encouraged agriculture. George
Engelmann was especially active in both areas. He worked directly to
bring Germans to Missouri, for instance, and admonished them to adopt
American ways. Also, he hoped to stimulate the region’s agrarian econ-
omy by learning about its climate, geology, and indigenous plant life. 14

Despite the laudable individual efforts of some of its members and
its clear ties to the powerful concept of manifest destiny, the Western
Academy of Natural Sciences of St. Louis as an organization made only
minor contributions to scientific knowledge. Although it did help enhance
the collections of some science groups in the East and in Europe through
the exchange of specimens, its failure to publish anything on its own
relegated the Western Academy to almost complete obscurity.

The most significant contribution the Western Academy made, in
fact, was that it served as a pilot organization for a more successful
and productive society for the advancement of science in St. Louis. This
new society, founded thirteen years after the Western Academy’s demise,
fell heir to both the older organization’s philosophical outlook and its
collections of specimens and books. It also inherited the experience and
expertise of some former Western Academy members, including George
Engelmann and Friedreich Wislizenus. These Stalwart amateurs, along
with other ‘‘men of science’? in the community, carried on the work

and continued to prosper.
10

ee

Part Il. The Academy Of Science Of
St. Louis, 1856-1881: Years Of
Triumph, Years Of Tribulation

In January 1856, former Western Academy leaders George
Engelmann and Friedreich A. Wislizenus met with a group of ten other
medical doctors, a lawyer, a businessman, and an engineer to discuss
the formation of a second St. Louis society to advance the study of
science. In addition to Engelmann and Wislizenus, this group consisted
of Charles P. Chouteau, James B. Eads, Nathaniel Holmes, Moses
Linton, William McPheeters, Moses M. Pallen, Simon Pollak, Charles
A. Pope, Hiram A. Prout, Benjamin F. Shumard, Charles W. Stevens,
William H. Tingley, and John H. Watters. The motives of this group
mirrored those of the founders of the Western Academy: they hoped
to improve St. Louis’ cultural life and they wished to aid in the ex-
ploration and exploitation of their state and the West.

On February 8, 1856, eleven of the original fifteen men assembled
as an ad hoc organizing committee to talk about the proposed society.
After careful consideration, the group decided that the new society’s
raison d’etre would be ‘‘the investigation of subjects pertaining to the
various branches of science, the accumulation of a scientific library,
and the formation of a museum which should contain collections in the
various departments embraced in the term, Science, and also objects
illustrating the manners and customs of the aborigines of North
America.’”!

The ad hoc committee also discussed how the new society might
be financed and talked about the desirability of acquiring certain col-
lections of fossils and other specimens located in St. Louis. The com-
mittee appointed William H. Tingley, Benjamin Shumard, and Charles
P. Chouteau to prepare a circular addressed to the people of St. Louis
who could donate funds and collections.

In addition, the ad hoc committee decided to make application for
a charter at an upcoming session of Missouri’s General Assembly. The
organizers then named Hiram Prout, William Tingley, Benjamin
Shumard, and Nathaniel Holmes to a subcommittee charged with draft-
ing a constitution and by-laws. Furthermore, this subcommittee was
instructed to consider whether the new society should be named the
**Academy of Science’’ or the ‘‘Academy of Natural Science.’’? The
meeting adjourned after the planners agreed to meet again on being
notified by the chairman of the subcommittee.

In March, the chairman of the subcommittee, William Tingley,

11

called another meeting of the ad hoc organizing committee. At this
meeting Tingley reported that the subcommittee had finished writing
a constitution and by-laws. After discussion which resulted in minor
revisions, the group adopted the document.?

The constitution they accepted consisted of six articles covering
the society’s name, its mission, members, officers, meetings, and amend-
ments. According to Article I of the Constitution, the new society would
be called ‘‘The Academy of Science of St. Louis’’ instead of ernie
Academy of Natural Science.’’ This decision reflected a conscious ef-
fort to give the new organization a broader scope than the old Western
Academy of Natural Sciences. The natural science tradition was still
strong in the Midwest in the mid-nineteenth century, but ‘‘natural
philosophy,’’ a term used to define the study of Newtonian physics,
had also long been in vogue.* Some of the founders of the second St.
Louis science society, such as engineer James B. Eads, were more in-
terested in natural philosophy than natural history—hence the choice
of the all-encompassing name.

Article II outlined the Academy’s mission, which included the pro-
motion of ‘‘Zoology, Botany, Geology, Mineralogy, Paleontology,
Ethnology (especially that of the Aboriginal Tribes of North America),
Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Meteorology, Comparative Anatomy
and Physiology.’’ Other ‘objects’ of the association would be ‘‘to col-
lect and treasure’’ specimens, to maintain a library and instruments for
the study of specimens, to publish original research, and to establish
correspondence with ‘‘scientific men, both in America and in other parts
of the world.’’5

Article III dealt with membership; two categories were defined:
associate and corresponding. The authors of the Academy’s Constitu-
tion defined associate members as St. Louis residents ‘‘desirous of
cultivating one or more of the branches of Science.’’ The drafters of
the document categorized corresponding members as ‘‘men of science,
not living in the city and county of St. Louis, who shall be elected such
by virtue of their attainments, and of other persons, not resident in the
city of St. Louis, who may be disposed to further the objects of the
Academy by original researches, contributions of specimens, or other-
wise.’’6

Article IV named the offices of the Academy and outlined the
responsibilities of each office. In addition to the usual roster of presi-
dent, vice-presidents, corresponding secretary, recording secretary,
treasurer, and librarian, the Constitution required the offices of a board

Articles V and VI provided for meetings and amendments. The

12

guidelines for the composition and responsibilities of standing commit-
tees; outlined procedures for the library, museum, and publications;
and stated when regular meetings should be held and what agenda
categories should be.’

The founders of the Academy of Science of St. Louis were accom-
plished individuals. George Engelmann, the group’s first president, was
its best-educated and most enthusiastic supporter. Engelmann acquired
his interest in science as a youth growing up in Frankfurt, Germany.
His father, an ordained minister and head of a school for girls, was
also something of a savant who took George with him to the meetings
of Frankfurt’s Sekenberg Society of Natural History.

Engelmann’s father wanted him to follow family tradition and enter
the clergy, but the young man decided to study medicine instead.
Engelmann made this choice largely in order to obtain a good educa-
tion in science. He started his studies at the University of Heidelberg
but was expelled for expounding liberal radical views. After Heidelberg,
he attended the University of Berlin and later the University of Wurz-
burg. He received his M.D. from Wurzburg in 1831 at the age of twenty-
two. Interestingly, his thesis was in botany instead of medicine. It con-
cerned abnormalities in the formation of blossoms.

After receiving his M.D., Engelmann spent several years at the
University of Paris studying natural history in the company of Alex-
ander Braun and Louis Agassiz, both of whom he had met during his
stay at Heidelberg. Leaving Paris, he came to America in 1834 to set-
tle some business matters for several uncles who had invested in pro-
perty near Belleville, Illinois.

The young physician thrilled at the prospect of living so near the
American West, a land virtually unknown to botanists. After landing
in Baltimore, Engelmann immediately left for Philadelphia where he
met with the botanist/ornithologist Thomas Nuttall at that city’s Academy
of Sciences. Nuttall was one of the few natural scientists who had traveled
extensively in the Mississippi River Valley, and Engelmann was eager
to find out what he had learned of the region’s flora.

After coming to Illinois, Engelmann put his eagerness to study and
collect aside for a time in order to make a few dollars practicing
medicine. He began as soon as he could—in 1834 and again in 1837
he made extended trips through Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri.
He chronicled these journeys in the journal Das Westland, a periodical
written in St. Louis and printed in Germany that encouraged German
immigration to the St. Louis area.

Engelmann’s trip in 1837 was not to be his last excursion through
the untamed, romantic lands west of the Mississippi, although it would
be several years before he went again. Later in life he visited Colorado,

13

Utah, British Columbia, California, and the Mexican border regions
of Arizona. In the early years of his practice in St. Louis, however,
he had to spend a great deal of time attending patients. And his hard
work paid off, as he eventually gained the reputation as the communi-
ty’s most prestigious obstetrician.

Although his professional duties kept him busy, Engelmann con-
tinued to compile scientific information and collect specimens in St.
Louis. Throughout his life he made detailed daily meteorological readings
and published summaries of his findings. Engelmann’s meteorological
commentaries constituted more than a hobby: they were directly ap-
plicable to important scientific work undertaken by explorers and scien-
tists in the Midwest. The French geographer and astronomer Jean
Nicollet found Engelmann’s data, along with those accumulated by the
Jesuit Fathers of St. Louis University, useful in preparing for his survey
of the Upper Mississippi River Valley.®

In addition to busying himself with watching and recording the
weather, Engelmann continued to personally collect plants when he
could. He also traded for or bought specimens from other collectors,
which he in turn sold or exchanged with museums and naturalists in
the United States and Europe. He also procured specimens by affiliating
himself with exploring parties heading for the West, including those
of John C. Fremont and Josiah Gregg. Engelmann gave advice and
checked the accuracy of the explorers’ scientific instruments, and they
repaid him by gathering botanical and geological specimens. Engelmann
frequently managed to get his own collectors appointed to trading and
military expeditions. These individuals were university-trained St. Louis
Germans hand-picked and instructed by Engelmann.

In the course of his collecting, Engelmann made many contacts
with scientists and science societies all over the country and the world.
He had strong ties with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
and corresponded with a variety of prominent scientists, including the
pioneering naturalist Jacob Lindheimer, who worked in Texas, and the
distinguished Asa Gray of Harvard. Gray frequently received botanical
specimens from Engelmann and, in return, helped the St. Louis amateur
scientist raise funds for collecting expeditions.

Engelmann soon gained a national reputation, which sprouted from
his collecting and grew as a result of scholarly accomplishments. He
was the first to point out that American grapes were immune to the
phylloxera that ravaged European vineyards. In 1842 he wrote a paper
on American as glories, which according to a later nineteenth
century appraisal, ‘‘caused a true sensation in botanical circles.’’ In
1852 he published in the American Journal of Science the first scien-
tific description of the impressive saguaro cactus. He subsequently

14

authored papers on most of the species of cacti in the United States using
specimens and information provided by other collectors, members of
the Pacific Railroad Survey, the Mexican Boundary Commission, and
other botanists working in California and Arizona. This work long stood
as the standard authority on that family of plants.

In the 1850s, Engelmann’s status as a prominent amateur botanist
prompted Henry Shaw to employ him to help plan a botanical garden
on the wealthy merchant’s estate.'° The garden they mapped out became
the renowned Missouri Botanical Garden. His work garnered many
honors for Engelmann. Washington University in St. Louis named its
principal botany professorship after him, for example, and fellow
botanists gave his name to three genera and several plant species, in-
cluding a cactus and the majestic Engelmann spruce.

George
Engelmann

Engelmann would eventually join thirty-three science societies. He
was a charter member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and
remained active in that most eminent organization for many years. When
Engelmann died in 1884, the Academy of Science dedicated an issue
of its journal, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis,
to his memory. Enno Sander, a fellow Academy member, wrote in that
issue that Engelmann had done ‘‘more than any other member for the
establishment of [the Academy’s] fame and reputation among the scien-
tific world.’’!!

Like George Engelmann, Friedreich Adolphus Wislizenus earned
a reputation as an accomplished observer of Western natural history.
Wislizenus was born in Thuringia, Germany, in 1810. When his parents
died of typhoid, the four-year-old Wislizenus went to live with a maternal
uncle, a physician, who saw that his nephew received a good gymnasium
education.

After completing his gymnasium course, Wislizenus attended the
universities in Jena, Goettingen, and Wurzburg. He suspended his
university career, however, to join a revolutionary uprising against the
German government, which at the time consisted of a loose union of
independent states known as the German Confederation. In 1833 he took
part in the unsuccessful storming of the Federal Diet, the Bundestag,
in Frankfurt. Unlike many of his fellow revolutionaries, who were caught
and sent to prison after being routed in Frankfurt, Wislizenus managed
to elude capture. He fled to Strasbourg and from there to the safety
of Switzerland.

Wislizenus made the best of his exile to Switzerland by entering
the newly-formed University of Zurich. He had only been there at short
while, however, before once again joining a revolutionary cause—a
movement to aid Giuseppe Mazzini in his bid to overthrow the Italian
monarchy. This scheme met with no more success than the raid that
forced Wislizenus to flee Germany. The expedition mounted by the Maz-
zini sympathizers was met at the border by Swiss troops and forced
to disband, whereupon Wislizenus laid down his gun and went back
to Zurich to concentrate on learning. 2

At the University of Zurich, Wislizenus attacked his studies with
the same zeal as he had his political adversaries although fortunately
he esteemed the faculty more than he did either the German Confederacy
or the Italian monarchy. Wislizenus’ professors were some of Europe’s
most knowledgeable scientists, including the naturalist Johann Schoelein
and Lorenz Oken, the founder of the first German Congress of Natu-
ralists and Physicians. Under the tutelage of such mentors, Wisli-
zenus learned almost as much about the natural sciences as he did about
medicine, his major field of study. He graduated with honors in 1834.

16

The young doctor went to Paris for a short time after earning his
degree. He stayed there a few months observing the practice of medicine
in hospitals but concluded that his destiny lay elsewhere—perhaps in
the New World. Wislizenus sailed from Paris to New York City, where
he remained for two years before once again growing restless and electing
to go west.

After hearing that many of his compatriots had found good homes
there, Wislizenus arrived at the small community of Mascoutah in
Southern Illinois. In three year’s time, however, Wislizenus had grown
disenchanted with the settled life of a country doctor and made plans
to relocate in St. Louis. But before moving, he would make a six-month
journey into the untamed regions west of the Mississippi.

Wislizenus had long harbored a craving to see the American
wilderness, so in 1839 he went to Westport, Missouri, and joined a
St. Louis Fur Company expedition bound for the Rockies. From this
“‘jumping off’’ point he traveled with the traders, sleeping on the ground
and feasting on buffalo meat, up the Kansas River to the Platte, along
the Platte to Fort Laramie, and over the Black Hills and the Wind River
Mountains to the annual rendezvous on the upper Green River in what
is now Wyoming. The traders conducted their business there, exchanging
goods for beaver pelts with thousands of Indians and some mountain
men, and then departed for Missouri. Wislizenus stayed behind and con-
tinued westward with a large group of homeward-bound NezPerces and
Flathead Indians, going as far as Fort Hall on the Snake River, near
the site of present-day Pocatello, Idaho. From Fort Hall, Wislizenus
intended to cross the Sierra Nevadas into California. His plans fell
through when he failed to find a guide willing to show him the route,
and he returned to St. Louis via the Arkansas River.

After his arrival in St. Louis, Wislizenus published an account,
in German, of his travels. Since he took no instruments and made no
systematic records, he regarded his journey as an adventure, not a scien-
tific expedition, and he disclaimed any scientific expertise in his book.
Nevertheless, his descriptions of the plants, animals, geology, and in-
habitants of the West were rendered in considerable scientific detail in
the narrative.!3 The book made little impact on the learned community
who could read it, however, and it had even less popular appeal.

Wislizenus was disappointed with the reception his book received,
but he must have been pleased with his decision to move to St. Louis.
When he returned from the Rockies, he plunged into the practice of
medicine at St. Louis with characteristic fervor. And in a short time,
the young doctor enjoyed a large income and a favorable reputation
among his colleagues and the town’s growing community of Germans,
who were his principal patients.

17

Wislizenus worked diligently at his practice for six years, even
taking care of his friend George Engelmann’s patients for a time when
Engelmann went to Germany to be married. His fascination with the
West remained compelling, however, and as soon as he could afford
it, he started on an ambitious trip to observe and record the flora, fauna,
geology, climate, and topography of northern Mexico and parts of
California.

Wislizenus’ timing for this expedition turned out to be extremely
bad. The explorer reached Mexico just before war broke out between
that country and the United States. He and other Americans there were
promptly imprisoned by the Governor of the state of Chihuahua and
spent several months, in Wislizenus’ words, ‘‘in a very passive situa-
tion’ that lasted until their release by invading American forces.!4 Upon
being set free, Wislizenus temporarily joined the army as a surgeon
and continued his scientific observations. He remained with the army
until it reached the mouth of the Rio Grande, proceeding from there
to New Orleans and up the Mississippi to St. Louis.

The war frustrated Wislizenus’ effort to make a scientifically fo-
cused tour. Nevertheless, his research and collecting yielded a wealth
of information and specimens despite the numerous difficulties he faced
and the changes in plan he was forced to make. The intrepid German
managed to visit several mines in New Mexico and analyze their ores;
and he made detailed studies of numerous geological formations, com-
piled meteorological tables, calculated the elevation of key points along
his route, and collected an impressive number of previously unknown
plants.

At the insistence of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, the
United States Senate published Wislizenus’ account of his expedition
in English in 1848. In addition to Wislizenus’ daily journal entries, the
book contained maps, meteorological tables, and a ‘‘botanical appen-
dix’’ written by George Engelmann. '5 This book, unlike the first one
Wislizenus wrote, was widely appreciated. In fact, it was the most im-
portant scientific contribution Wislizenus made during his active and
fascinating life. The explorer Alexander von Humbolt praised and used
it, for instance, and a German translation was sold in Germany.

Wislizenus went to Washington to supervise the publication of his
book in 1848. When he returned to St. Louis, he found there a raging
Asiatic cholera epidemic. This pestilence was not new to St. Louis. The
first cholera outbreak occurred in the early 1830s, brought by travellers
to St. Louis from Pittsburgh and Cincinnati via the Ohio and Mississippi
rivers. It came again in 1848 when thousands of German immigrants,
fleeing a European epidemic as well as poor harvests and economic
malaise in Germany, arrived at the city. '6

18

Wislizenus and every physician in St. Louis worked hard to relieve
the suffering of the epidemic’s victims. Some of the doctors contracted
the disease and died themselves. Wislizenus survived, however, and
was among those who called for the construction of adequate sewers
to fight the spread of the malady. He and his St. Louis colleagues
suspected that the disease might be transmitted by human sewage, though
it would be fifty years before Robert Koch discovered the responsible
bacterium. !7

After the medical crisis in St. Louis became less severe, Wislizenus
traveled to Istanbul to marry Lucy Crane, a woman he met in Washington
when he was overseeing the publication of his second book. He and
his new bride honeymooned in Europe. They came to Washington in
1851 and to St. Louis a year later. His marriage mellowed Wislizenus’
urge to roam. After 1852 he never again displayed the roving spirit
that had taken him to so many places. He remained in St. Louis, deep-
ly immersed in his medical practice, scientific studies, and cultural and
educational organizations for the rest of his life.

Like his friend and colleague George Engelmann, Wislizenus was
an earnest observer and recorder of the weather. He kept detailed records
which he published in various journals. He also authored medical papers
and works on archaeology, entomology, and natural philosophy. In ad-
dition to his writing and his practice, Wislizenus found time to help
establish numerous organizations in St. Louis, including a school for
midwives, a lying-in hospital, and the Missouri Historical Society.

The other ten doctors who founded the Academy of Science of
St. Louis were also avid amateur scientists. Benjamin Shumard, who
worked as a field paleontologist on the United States survey of Wiscon-
sin, Minnesota, and Iowa, arrived in Missouri to undertake the state’s
first exhaustive geological study. He later moved to Texas to work on
a geological survey of that state. Moses Linton taught at the St. Louis
University Medical School. He established the St. Louis Medical and
Surgical Journal, the first medical journal published west of the
Mississippi River, in 1843.

William McPheeters taught at the St. Louis Medical College and
at the Missouri Medical College and served as chairman of the
Academy’s first standing committee on entomology. Moses M. Pallen
came to St. Louis to teach at St. Louis University in 1842. Pallen
developed a profound interest in the study of fishes and reptiles and
during the Asiatic cholera epidemic of the 1840s served as the city’s
health officer. Simon Pollak emigrated from Poland, arriving in St. Louis
in 1845. Pollak helped found, in addition to the Academy of Science,
the Missouri School for the blind.

Charles A. Pope chaired the Academy’s first standing committee

19

on comparative anatomy. For many years, Pope held the position of
dean of the St. Louis Medical College. (Because of his considerable
influence, many people referred to the school as ‘‘Pope’s College.’’)
He gave the Academy numerous specimens and allowed the members
to meet and to house their collections and library in one of the college’s
buildings.

Hiram A. Prout received his medical degree from Transylvania
University in Kentucky in 1827 and came to St. Louis to teach medicine.
He became an expert paleontologist, publishing fifteen articles on
geology and paleontology between 1846 and 1868. Charles A. Stevens
taught at the St. Louis Medical College for nineteen years before tak-
ing over as superintendent of the St. Louis County Insane Asylum in
1868.

Another medical doctor, W.H. Tingley, enjoyed a good practice
in St. Louis. He served as the Academy’s first corresponding secretary
but left the city before the end of 1856. John Henry Watters came to
St. Louis in 1854. He taught at the St. Louis Medical College and at
the Missouri Medical College. '*

Although medical study offered the best opportunity for learning
the fundamentals of science during the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, other wealthy professional men developed significant scientific
interests as well. The three non-medical Academy members illustrate
the point.

James B. Eads, a self-taught engineer, chaired the Academy’s first
committee on physics and later served as president of the organization.
At various times, Eads salvaged sunken river boats, designed and built
armored steamboats for the Union during the Civil War, and engineered
a system of jetties that opened an unobstructed Mississippi River chan-
nel to the Gulf of Mexico. His most celebrated accomplishment,
however, was the St. Louis-Illinois bridge he built over the Mississip-
pi at St. Louis.

Another science enthusiast, lawyer Nathaniel Holmes, came to St.
Louis from New England. He served for twelve years as the Academy’s
corresponding secretary. He communicated with a myriad of science
societies in the East and abroad and acquired large numbers of their
publications for the use of Academy members. Charles P. Chouteau,
the grandson of the pioneering Pierre Chouteau, also became a very
active member of the Academy. Chouteau’s American Fur Trading Com-
pany conducted business in the West, and Chouteau developed a fascina-
tion for the region’s natural history.

During the first years of its existence, the Academy gained many
new members. In the first two years alone, 146 new associate members
joined. Among those who enlisted as associate members were Albert
20

C. Koch, a physician and naturalist; Louis Boisliniere, who became
St. Louis County Coroner; and Enno Sander, a pharmacist who ran
a highly profitable mineral water company in St. Louis. In the same
two years, the Academy elected seventy-nine corresponding members,
including Joseph Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Louis
Agassiz, the famed naturalist; and Lieutenant Governor K. Warren, an
officer in the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. !9

The growth of the Academy, which greatly heartened the founders,
was overshadowed by a bothersome deficiency—the Academy did not
own a building of its own. For the first thirteen years, the members
met in the east wing of the O’ Fallon Dispensary building at the St. Louis
Medical College. After that wing burned in 1869, the Academy was
forced to move to the Hall of Public Schools.

Lack of money kept the Academy from acquiring its own struc-
ture. The Academy relied on dues and contributions for financial sup-
port, and it frequently ran short of cash. Through its first quarter-century,
Academy members often set the priorities of amassing an endowment
fund and buying a building but never met their goals. They did main-
tain their organization, however, even when membership declined during
the lean and trying years of the Civil War.?° In fact, the Academy ac-
tually benefitted from the war. When Federal troops confiscated
McDowell College turning it into a prison, the Academy salvaged the
school’s large natural history collection.?!

At the Academy’s semi-monthly meetings, members read letters
from their corresponding counterparts, considered papers for publica-
tion in Transactions, discussed topics of scientific interést, elected new
members, and gave presentations. These talks often had considerable
merit, considering the ‘‘amateur’’ status of most of the members. For
example, at the January 12, 1857, meeting, a member exhibited some
specimens of aluminum, which at the time cost more than gold. He gave
a brief history of the ore and talked about methods of mining and pro-
cessing aluminum. He predicted, quite correctly, that aluminum would
be manufactured in large quantities and at a cheap rate.??

Academy members regarded collecting and preserving scientific
specimens an important and stimulating activity. Although the organiza-
tion could afford to buy few items, its museum collection rapidly grew.”?
Charles Chouteau donated many specimens he obtained from the area
of the Upper Missouri River. In 1856 the intrepid businessman gave
a large collection of fossils gathered by naturalist Ferdinand Hayden
in the Nebraska Territory. Later that year Chouteau donated some animal
skulls, a buffalo head, two stuffed buffalo, the head of a grizzly bear,
three stuffed mountain sheep, a mastodon tooth, and Indian artifacts
he obtained on his annual trip to his company’s trading posts. In 1857,

21

the Academy sent a taxidermist along with Chouteau on his sojourn
up the Missouri. The men returned to St. — with a profusion of

fish, bird, reptile, and mammal specimens

In addition to Chouteau’s contributions, the Academy accumulated
the skeleton of a European cave bear and a rare fossil ox skull dredged
from the bottom of Chouteau’s Pond in St. Louis before the little lake
was drained and filled. The Academy also acquired the rocks and ore
samples Friedreich Wislizenus gathered in Mexico in the 1840s, fossils
collected by Albert Koch in Missouri and Arkansas, and important type-
specimens found by Governor K. Warren.?5 Other Academy holdings
included a large collection of marine and fresh water shells; plant
specimens gathered by St. Louis Bishop Joseph Rosati; bird skins from
California, Texas, and New Mexico; a collection of several hundred
mounted birds obtained from the Smithsonian Institution and the
Academy of Sciences of Philadelphia; and an ‘‘interesting collection
of East Indian figures’’ donated by a corresponding member living in
Calcutta, India.26

The Academy kept its collections in the O’Fallon Dispensary
building at the St. Louis Medical College, where many of the specimens
were displayed in locked cases. Respectable citizens could visit the small
museum free of charge on Tuesdays and Fridays from one o’clock un-
til sunset.?7

St. Louis Medical College

This museum met an unhappy end in 1869 when a fire in the
Dispensary building destroyed the collections. Members of the Academy
22

continued to collect after the catastrophe, but for many years, new ac-
ca seemed inadequate substitutes for those obliterated by the
blaz

"The Academy’s library, also stored in the dispensary, survived
the fire only slightly damaged. Like the museum collections, the library
had by 1869 grown to an impressive size. In fact, it had the reputation
of being the largest of its kind west of the Allegheny Mountains.
Members added to the library by soliciting donations of books and by
exchanging the Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis
for the publications of other science societies. Joseph Henry, Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution, oversaw exchanges between the St. Louis
group and foreign organizations. By 1881 the Academy’s library held
over 3,000 books and nearly 8,000 issues of periodicals.?*

Members of science societies in the East and abroad were eager
to receive copies of the Academy’s Transactions, which contained
papers on the natural history of the American West, a still largely unex-
plored and unknown area. The Transactions also featured papers on
the natural history of Missouri and on other local and regional topics.

George Engelmann contributed papers on St. Louis’ annual rain-
fall, on the stages of the Mississippi River at St. Louis, and on the town’s
elevation above sea level. Other Academy members wrote about
Missouri’s fossils, coal measures, lead deposits and iron industry; about
Indian mound excavations in the Mississippi River Valley; and about
the deep wells at the St. Louis County Insane Asylum and the Belcher
sugar refinery.°

One Transactions paper caused a heated debate among Academy
members. In the first issue of the journal, Albert Koch published a paper
on some mastodon bones he had found in Missouri.*° Koch concluded
that humans had coexisted with the mastodon and had in fact hunted
the great beasts. He wrote:

I will state then, that, in the year 1859, I discovered and disinterred,
in Gasconade county, Missouri . . . the bones of the above-named
animals. The bones were sufficiently well preserved for me to decide,
positively, that they belonged to Mastodon giganteus. Some remarkable
circumstances were connected with the discovery. The greater portion
of these bones had been more or less burned by fire. The fire had ex-
tended but a few feet beyond the space occupied by the animal before
its destruction; and there was more than sufficient evidence on the spot,
that the fire had not been an accidental one, but, on the contrary, that
it had been kindled by human agency, and, according to all appearance,
with the design of killing the huge creature . . .*!
To further his contention, Koch declared that he had found a large
number of heavy stones mingled with the remains of the mastodon. He
23

assumed that humans had carried these stones to the site and threw them
at the beast. As additional evidence, Koch unearthed several stone pro-
jectile points, a stone spearhead or knife, and some stone axes on the
site. >?

In a later issue of the Transactions, Friedreich Wislizenus refuted
Koch’s claim that homo sapiens had lived as a contemporary of the
mastodon. Wislizenus concluded that Koch’s find could not be used to
support the hypothesis that the mastodon, which Wislizenus referred
to as an “‘antediluvian animal,’’ had coexisted with humans nor with
any “‘intelligent apes.’’*? Nathaniel Holmes, the lawyer, supported
Koch’s theory. At a meeting of the Academy, the New Englander de-
fended Koch and cited several scientists whose work suggested that in
all probability man had existed as a contemporary of the mastodon.*4

Science has since proven that human beings did live at the time
of the mastodon in North America and probably preyed on them, but
the Koch-Wislizenus-Holmes debate involved deeper issues.?5 Wislizenus
favored a conservative approach to interpreting the evidence. He ap-
parently believed that Koch’s fossils dated from before Noah’s flood,
which was a view founded in the conventional wisdom of the early nine-
teenth century. Holmes and Koch, in contrast, discounted the deluge
theory and seemed inclined to accept radical ideas.2° The debate
demonstrated the rift that separated those who believed in the traditional,
creationist interpretations of the fossil record and those who espoused
newer theories.

Although the Academy printed papers on local and regional sub-
jects, many Transactions offerings through the first twenty-five years
reported on work being done in the Far West by the Army Corps of
Topographical Engineers. In the two decades before the Civil War, John
C. Fremont and other military explorers undertook grand surveys of
the topographical and natural history of the West. They concentrated
on developing a national definition of the West, locating the best routes
for future immigration, and compiling an inventory of the region’s natural
resources. The information accumulated by the Army was widely used
by the government to promote settlement and by railroad companies
to plan the Transcontinental Railroad and other lines.

Academy members studied the scientific data the Corps provided
them and examined the specimens the Corps collected. In the first volume
of the Transactions, members published sixteen articles that described
hundreds of newly discovered fossils gathered by scientists working
with the Corps. Hiram Prout, for example, wrote four lengthy papers
on Bryozoa specimens collected by geologists who accompanied Cap-
peer i on a survey expedition to Texas and New Mexico in

a, 7

24

The ten railroad surveys conducted by the United States in the 1850s
and 1860s provided excellent opportunities for scientists to study the
natural history of the West. Christopher C. Parry was a scientist who
labored on the Union Pacific Railroad Survey. As a corresponding
member, Parry sent the Academy of Science of St. Louis news of the
scientific work being done on the survey. He also occasionally wrote
romantic accounts of his experiences. His description of what he saw
when he climbed Pike’s Peak, for example, no doubt stirred the im-
aginations of many Transactions readers. He wrote:

As the sun rose majestically above the well defined horizon of the plains,
the resemblance to a wide open sea was strikingly manifested. A slight
haze served to heighten the pleasant illusion, the inconsiderable eleva-
tions appearing only as ripples, or low islands, on its surface. To carry
out the resemblance still farther, the rounded grassy swells, the reef-
like edges of tilted rock, at the foot of the mountains, could easily be
taken for surges and breakers.**

The most thrilling tale of Western exploration to appear in the
Transactions told the exploits of a mining prospector. It also came from
Christopher C. Parry’s pen. As a group, mining prospectors roamed
the West even more extensively in the 1850s and 1860s than the moun-
tain men of an earlier era. Christopher C. Parry reasoned that these
men probably knew more about Western topography than anyone else.
To find out about the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, which had been
explored in part by Joseph Ives in 1857-58, Parry questioned a former
prospector named James White.

White claimed that he and three other men had left Fort Dodge
to float down the Colorado in 1867. Traveling through the summer,
the prospectors reached the Green River, where Indians attacked their
camp killing one man. White and the other two survivors escaped in
a raft and floated down the Green to the Colorado. The party felt lucky
after their escape. Their mood soon changed as they rushed down the
fierce Colorado. Only White escaped the violent rapids of the river,
he told Parry. Reaching a downstream settlement after passing through
what would become known as the Grand Canyon, White settled down
and was living on the banks of the Colorado when Parry questioned
him.*?

Parry published White’s account in the Transactions in the late 1860s.
White’s assertion to have been the first European-American to pass through
the Grand Canyon was later discredited by the doughty, one-armed ex-
plorer/scientist John Wesley Powell, who struggled through the canyon
two years after White said he had4° The announcement of White’s claim
in the Transactions demonstrated how strongly the Academy felt its
responsibility to disseminate the latest information about the West.

25

After the Civil War, the Corps of Topographical Engineers gave
way to civilian explorers such as John Wesley Powell. Powell and others,
among them Clarence King and Ferdinand Hayden (who had once
gathered specimens in Nebraska for the Academy), completed the in-
ventory of the West started by the Army. Unlike their military
predecessors, this new generation of explorers had specialized training
obtained in European schools or in new science departments attached
to American universities.

Many of these new professional scientists went to work on state
geological surveys. After the first Missouri Geological Survey in 1853,
another, more comprehensive one began in 1870 and a third started
five years later. Academy members became involved in all three, and
they contributed to the knowledge of Missouri’s geology.*!

Men of learning all over the world recognized the unique position
of the Academy of Science of St. Louis in relation to the geology and
natural history of the American West. Scientists in the East and abroad
frequently asked for specimens and information gathered west of the
Mississippi by members and their collaborators. Jules Marcou, a Swiss
scientist, for instance, contacted the Academy in 1858 requesting
members to help him with his research. He wrote:

My endeavors at Geological maps are very crude and imperfect, and
T earnestly desire that the learned Geologists of the West may make them
more correct, and give them the form that may approximate them more
nearly to the truth.42

Such acknowledgment from so far away must have been gratify-
ing, as no doubt was the recognition given the St. Louis group by their
American colleagues. A demonstration of that recognition came in
August 1878, when the American Association for the Advancement of
Science held its annual meeting in St. Louis as the Academy’s guest.43

The founders of the Academy of Science of St. Louis created an
association that emulated their contemporaries in the East and in Europe.
They also recognized the importance of science in exploring and ex-
ploiting the newly-acquired territories in the West.

Through its first twenty-five years, the Academy lived with and
flourished under the legacy of manifest destiny. It worked closely with
fur traders, explorers, and scientists devoted to the exploitation of the
West and to the promotion of westward expansion. In this, the second
science academy in St. Louis was not much different from the first.
But the Academy of Science was different from its ancestor in that while
it performed its ‘‘manifest destiny’’ role, it also succeeded in
disseminating information on a wide scale.

Whereas the Western Academy never published anything of note
in its entire seven-year life, the Academy of Science in its first four
26

years alone published an entire volume of scientific papers. In the next
twenty-one years, the organization would produce two-and-a-half more
volumes, and by 1881 the Academy was exchanging those volumes for
the publications of 260 science societies in Sweden, Holland, Belgium,
Spain, Russia, Germany, France, Portugal, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy,
Great Britain, and the United States. These publications, and the other
activities of the members of the Academy, helped establish the city’s
reputation as a center for science in the expanding Midwest.

Part Ill. A Period Of Change,
1881-1903

In his annual address for 1881, the Academy’s president, George
Engelmann, predicted that the Academy would attract greater public
attention in the future as it developed and grew.!

As Engelmann anticipated, the organization did change in its next
twenty-two years. Members revised the constitution in 1893. By that
time death or retirement had claimed the Academy’s founders. As the
membership evolved, Academy meetings also transformed from relative-
ly informal gatherings to large structured affairs with official programs
that often featured lectures ‘‘divested of the technicalities on matters
of current scientific progress’’ for the benefit of those who could not
understand such information.?

The revision of the constitution in 1893 did not call for any radical
departure from the Academy’s original mission, but members did make
major changes in the membership categories and in how the organiza-
tion elected officers and conducted its administrative affairs.

The revised constitution identified four membership categories:
active, corresponding, honorary, and patron. Active members were those
who lived in the St. Louis area who and had an interest in science. They
alone conducted the organization’s business. Corresponding members
were defined, as they had been in the original constitution, as non-
residents who might help the Academy in some way. Honorary member-
ships were bestowed to people the Academy held in high esteem. Patron
member status was granted to any person who gave the Academy $1,000
or its equivalent.3

The revised constitution provided for elections-by-mail and for the
yearly election of a special non-office-holding committee to nominate
candidates for the upcoming year. These innovations gave the franchise
to the entire membership ‘‘instead of leaving it through non-attendance
to the few members who might be at the meeting when a vote was
taken.’’4

In addition to the provision of a nominating committee charged
with preparing a list of nominees, the members also amended their con-
stitution in ways that took routine administrative business out of the
hands of the membership, placing such matters under the supervision
of a council consisting of the principal officers.

These constitutional alterations reflected changes in the Academy’s
growing membership. By 1885 most of the founders—including Eads,
Pope, Prout, Holmes, Shumard, Engelmann, and Wislizenus—had either
died or retired from public life. Their places were taken by other amateur
28

scientists and by a growing number of professional scientists from St.

uis colleges and universities. Moreover, the number of ‘‘non-
professional’’ members—many of whom could not even rightfully claim
the title of ‘‘amateur scientist’’—had greatly increased. The constitu-
tional modifications were an attempt to address the needs and desires
of this new membership. They led to a more democratic process for
nominating the most qualified persons; allowed the non-professional
members to take a more active role; and removed the business details
from meetings, leaving the sessions free for the ‘‘strictly scientific pur-
poses of the Academy.”’

The meetings transformed significantly in the 1890s. In 1903
botanist William Trelease wrote a ‘‘biography’’ of the Academy in which
he described the meetings of the 1880s. He wrote:

My own connection with [the Academy] dates from the autumn of 1885,
when I came to the city to live. The notices I received were more com-
monly to the effect that the next meeting would be held at a certain time
and place than with any indication of what would be done at the meeting.
On a long table were to be found the recent additions to the library. At
the head of the table sat the president and recording secretary. Around
it were half a dozen or a dozen members who looked over the papers
between attending to the items provided for the order of business. When
*‘written communications’’ were called for, a paper for publication might
be handed in, sometimes accompanied by an oral abstract, sometimes
not. The order ‘‘oral communications’’ was pretty sure to lead some
member to produce a specimen, piece of apparatus, or recent publica-
tion, on which he spoke, usually in a way to interest everybody present.
Not infrequently nearly the entire body, like a German scientific gather-
ing, gravitated after adjournment to a summer garden or winter *‘lokal,”’
where the discussion was apt to be continued over a glass of beer . . .°

Trelease also related how women sometimes attended meetings in
the 1880s. He remarked, however, that the ‘‘ladies . . . appeared awed
by the informality of the seating about the board, and could rarely be
made to feel welcome. . .’”’

In the 1890s the impromptu character of meetings gave way to for-
mality when the Academy began meeting in a lecture room at the
Missouri Historical Society. The room was equipped with a platform
for the officers and regularly placed seats for the other members, who
constituted an audience. For each meeting the officers produced a detailed
program.

Some members mourned the passing of the spontaneity so
characteristic of meetings before the 1890s. Nevertheless, by populariz-
ing the proceedings and at the same time making them more formal,
the Academy succeeded in doubling attendance. The officers also noted
with satisfaction that more women attended meetings.*

29

In the 1890s, specimens that had not been announced on the pro-
gram were rarely presented as they had been at earlier meetings.
However, the Academy continued to collect throughout the last two
decades of the century. Major acquisitions included a collection of ap-
proximately 10,000 paleontological specimens, a collection of over 600
butterflies, and several hundred pots and dozens of skulls from Missouri
Indian mounds.° The library also kept growing. At the end of 1902 it
contained over 14,000 books and almost 11,000 issues of periodicals
and pamphlets. !°

Arch. Se. St Louis, hea. of Ses.

ba

5 Hambach, tec, .

A Gast & CoLith

Illustration from Contributions to the Archaeolo ] [
gy of Missouri b

the Archaeological Section of the St. Louis Academy of eid

Like its meetings, the Academy’s publications changed, too. The
number of articles on Western geology and natural history decreased,
30

and papers weighted toward laboratory research increased." Through
its first twenty-five years, the Academy served as a critical transmitter
of knowledge between the frontier and the East. When the frontier
vanished, that role ended. Nevertheless, St. Louis remained a center
for science, and the Academy continued to play a major part, particularly
in the publication of research.

One of the most distinguished professional scientists who helped
govern the Academy between 1881 and 1903 was Francis E. Nipher,
a member of Washington University’s faculty. Nipher wrote articles
on many subjects, including ‘‘animal mechanics,’’ the human memory,
and meteorology. His primary interest, however, was physics. He was,
in fact, one of only 200 Americans practicing the discipline of physics
by the early 1890s. Moreover, he numbered among the one-fifth of the
profession that regularly published research in heat, light, electricity,
and magnetism. !? His contributions to the Transactions included ‘‘On
temperatures in gaseous nebulae’’ (1899), ‘‘The law of minimum devia-
tion of light by a prism’’ (1895), ‘‘On the electrical capacity of bodies,
and the energy of an electrical charge’ (1895), and ‘‘On a rotational
motion of the cathode disc in the Crookes tube’’ (1896). Nipher served
as Academy President from 1885 until 1901.

Although the Academy was largely under the direction of profes-
sional scientists such as Nipher in the 1890s, the organization still ap-

ed to amateurs who contributed to contemporary knowledge in mean-
ingful ways. One member, Julius Hurter, illustrates the point. Julius
Hurter, Sr., was born in Switzerland in 1842. He trained as a millwright
and mechanical engineer in Europe. He came to St. Louis in 1866 to
work as chief draftsman at the Fulton Iron Works, a position he held
until 1906.

Hurter, like those other immigrants Engelmann and Wislizenus,
harbored a passion for nature. When he first came to St. Louis he spent
his leisure hours collecting birds in the fields and woods near the city.
His collection grew to contain almost 300 specimens. !?

The young engineer began collecting reptiles and batrachians in
1884 and became a respected amateur herpetologist, publishing four
scholarly articles in the Transactions.'* His herpetology collection,
which at the time of his death in 1917 contained over 3,500 specimens,
was bequeathed to the National Museum of Natural History.'°

Both professional and amateur scientists belonging to the Academy
remained concerned over the homeless state of the organization. Since
the beginning in 1856, the lack of a real, permanent abode for the
Academy plagued the members. Even before the disastrous fire that
demolished the O’Fallon Dispensary in 1869, the Academy had at-
tempted to find a suitable facility to call its own. After the fire, the

31

Academy met in another temporary setting—the St. Louis Public School
Board’s building. These makeshift quarters proved unsatisfactory for
a variety of reasons, and in 1876 the Academy made the first of several
attempts to raise money to erect or buy a building of its own.

This first effort, which was shared by the Missouri Historical Socie-
ty, resulted in the acquisition of a building site on which a home for
both was to be constructed. The Academy could not procure enough
money to build, however, and was forced to sell its share in the land.

After this failed attempt, the Academy carried on meeting in the
Hall of Public Schools for the next twelve years before launching another
campaign to acquire a home. This endeavor also failed, and the Academy
moved to rooms at Washington University. In the 1890s the organiza-
tion relocated to the Missouri Historical Society, which had by then
secured a building.

The Academy was grateful for its quarters at the Missouri Historical
Society, but the accommodations there were also insufficient. The
Historical Society provided a large meeting room and limited shelf space
for the Academy’s many books, but the museum materials were stored
in a basement and in other out-of-the-way places. '6

The Academy made a new effort to obtain the much-desired build-
ing at the turn of the century, but with little success at first. Then, in
1903, the organization became the owner of a structure at 3817 Olive
Street in St. Louis. After some rennovations, the building, a gift from
Mrs. William McMillan and her son William Northrup McMillan,
seemed more than adequate for the Academy’s purposes. For the first
time in its nearly fifty years, the Academy owned a home of its own with
a suitable place for its library and plenty of space to exhibit specimens.
The Academy’s future had never looked brighter.

Part IV. New Quarters, New
Disappointments: 1903-1918

In 1903 the Academy’s prospects looked good: it owned its own
building; the membership appeared active and growing; and its revenues,
totalling for the year over $12,000, seemed adequate. The members
rejoiced in their good fortune and looked forward to improving their
new headquarters, adding to the library and collections, and enhancing
their organization’s finances. They also felt confident that in the new
century “‘scientific results of merit’’ would be offered for publication
in the Transactions in increasing number. Furthermore, the members
believed that their meetings would continue to stimulate ever-growing
public interest while at the same time maintaining the scholarly tradi-
tions of the past.!

he optimism of 1903 carried through to 1906 when the Academy
celebrated its fiftieth birthday. The organization observed its semi-
centennial with a lavish banquet at which members and delegates repre-
senting other science societies gave speeches praising past accomplish-
ments and expressing confidence in future successes. Among the distin-
guished delegates present were William Lochhead, Entomological
Society of Ontario; Oliver C. Farrington, Field Columbian Museum;
E.A. Birge, Dean of the University of Wisconsin; T. C. Chamberlain,
Academy of Science of Chicago; C.H. Pammel, Iowa Academy of
Science; and W.J. McGee, representing both the Philosophical Socie-
ty of Washington and the National Geographic Society. The highlight
of the evening came when a medal, emblazoned on one side with the
image of George Engelmann and with the Academy’s seal on the reverse,
was given to all present under the auspices of Academy President Adolph
Alt.?

In 1909 the Academy’s condition appeared, in some ways, even
healthier than it had been in 1906. For example, the membership in-
creased 40 percent in 1909, placing it at its highest point (380) in the
organization’s history. In addition, by 1909 the Academy controlled
a substantial endowment and could boast of a surplus in its annual fund.*
Nevertheless, clouds seemed to be gathering on the horizon.

President William Trelease’s address for the year 1909 lacked the
sanguinity of addresses for recent past years. He seemed most concerned
with the Academy’s financial state, particularly with the incessant need
to find large sums to pay for maintaining the Academy’s building on
Olive Street. He reported that this constant drain on the Academy’s
resources had strained the publication budget, causing the articles in
the 1909 volume of the Transactions to be “‘neither long nor

33

numerous. ’’ Trelease admonished the membership to look to the financial
well-being of their Academy. He suggested that current pressure could
lead to serious difficulties in the immediate future, and he called for
efforts both to increase the size of the membership and to find people
willing to make more large cash donations.4

By 1915 the Academy’s financial state had worsened, as Trelease
predicted it might. Its revenues for the year totalled only $3,164—down
from $7,159 in 1909 and $12,437 in 1903.° Reacting to this crisis, the
Academy made several attempts to increase its membership and to add
to its bank accounts.

In an attempt to gain new members, the Academy broadened the
constitutional definition of the associate membership category to include
teachers, members of laboratory staffs, and university and college
students.° It also organized a meeting of ‘‘scientific men’’ to discuss
ways of making the Academy a more effective catalyst of scientific and
educational activities and called for changes in its lecture programs to
make them more attractive to those interested in industrial research and
development. Concurrently, it struggled to find more sources of cash.”
Unfortunately, all this energetic activity proved futile, and both the
membership and revenues continued to drop.* The Academy paid heed

showing up for any one meeting. Pa a

The topics covered varied greatly ,
the best-attended meetings for 1903, |
attended meeting of 1903, which drew
34

=

as a survey of the minutes of
909, and 1913 shows. The best-
an audience of fifty people, con-

sisted of a talk, illustrated with lantern slides, on the Grand Canyon.
One-hundred people came to the March 19, 1909, meeting to hear a
lecture entitled ‘“Birds of the Missouri Botanical Garden.’’ The highlight
of the most popular 1913 meeting was a talk called ‘‘How Worlds are
Formed”’ given by G.O. James. James enthralled an audience of sixty-
nine with his knowledge of the workings of the cosmos. !°

In addition to meetings, the Academy busied itself with publishing
eleven volumes of the Transactions between 1903 and 1920. Many
of the papers issued were enduring scholarly works, including Thomas
L. Casey, ‘‘Observations on the Staphylinid Groups Aleocharinae and
Xantholonini, Chiefly of America’’ (1906); Otto Widman, ‘“‘A
Preliminary Catalogue of the Birds of Missouri’’ (1907); and Mary J.
Klem, ‘‘The History of Science in St. Louis’’ (1914).

Although he published few papers in the Transactions in the first
two decades of the twentieth century, William Trelease was one of the
Academy’s most active members. Trelease was born in Mt. Vernon,
New York, in 1857. He was graduated from Cornell University with

“A representative group of
trees in the Mexican state of

laxaca’’ — Illustration
from William Trelease’s
“The Agaveae of Guate-
mala’’

degrees in science, and lectured at the University of Wisconsin, Har-
vard University, and Johns Hopkins University before coming to St.
Louis as Engelmann Professor of Botany and Head of the Shaw School
of Botany at Washington University in 1885. Four years later, Trelease
was appointed Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, a position
he held until 1912. In 1913 he became a professor of botany and Head
of the Botanical Department at the University of Illinois, a job he kept
until his retirement in 1926.

Trelease received many honors during his long career, including
honorary degrees from the University of Wisconsin, the University of
Missouri and Washington University. He joined the Academy in 1885
and served as secretary from 1896 until 1903 and as president from
1909 until 1912.

Trelease believed strongly in the necessity of field study. He ac-
companied many scientific expeditions and traveled widely in America
and Europe to collect specimens and to conduct research. One of the
most important expeditions in which he participated was the Harriman
Alaska expedition of 1899.

Trelease wrote prodigiously, and his writings covered a wide range
of subjects in botany, including works on Agave, Piper, Peperonia,
and Quercus. His bibliography numbered almost 300 titles. 1!

Another very dynamic Academy member was Henry M. Whelpley.
Whelpley was born in Michigan in 1861 and was graduated from the
St. Louis College of Pharmacy in 1883 and from the Missouri Medical
College in 1890. He taught at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, where
he became Dean and Professor of Pharmacology, Materia Medica, and
Physiology; he also taught at the Missouri Medical College, where he
was Secretary of the Faculty, Professor of Physiology and Histology,
and Director of the Biology Laboratory.

In addition to teaching, Whelpley served as President of the
American Pharmaceutical Association and was the treasurer of that group
from 1908 until 1921. He was President of the American Conference
of Pharmaceutical Faculties from 1905 to 1906 and was Secretary of
the Missouri Pharmaceutical Association for thirty years.

One would think that Whelpley’s considerable academic and pro-
fessional duties would have left him ]j

respect of amateur and professional archaeologists by writing many arti-
cles on the subject. He was President of the Anthropological Society
of St. Louis and Chairman of the Committee on Archaeology of the
36

Missouri Historical Society. In addition, he served as Vice President
of the St. Louis Society of the American Institute of Archaeology and
was a member of both the National Research Council State Archae-
ological Survey Committee and the Missouri Archaeological Survey. !2
As an active member of the Academy of Science, Whelpley worked
on many committees and served as one of the Academy’s directors for
many years.

The Academy obtained several consequential donations of
specimens and artifacts in the years 1909 to 1918, although it did not
acquire Dr. Whelpley’s impressive collection of Indian artifacts until
the 1940s. The Academy received a large collection of mineral specimens
from the Department of Mines and Metallurgy at the 1904 World’s Fair
in St. Louis, specimens from Arizona’s Petrified Forest, Indian artifacts
from Alaska, and a fine collection of fossil brachiopoda from Tennessee.
Some of these items, along with the Academy’s butterfly, pottery, and
meteorite collections and those few items salvaged from the 1869 fire,
were exhibited in a hall on the third floor of the Olive Street building. '°

Collecting, publishing and organizing meetings were all familiar
activities; however, the roles of property owner and landlord were new
ones for the Academy. And although the acquisition of the Olive Street
building in 1903 appeared to be a blessing, even then some nagging
concerns about the property worried a few members. In his “‘biography”’
of the organization written in 1903, William Trelease expressed some
of these apprehensions. He wrote:

Ample as the new building is for the present life of the Academy, it is
but temporarily suited to the housing of valuable collections. . . . |
unfortunate, too, while the Academy is nominally able for the first time
in many years to arrange its library and more important collections for
convenient public use, it is actually confronted by the necessity . . of
utilizing no inconsiderable part of its new home for the purpose of
revenue, by housing other homeless bodies, so that . . . its publication
resources may be maintained.'*
This early uneasiness about the Olive Street building blossomed
into full-grown disenchantment among some of the members by 1913,
who recommended that the property be sold and a new building erected
at another site. The proponents of this proposal based their recommen-
dations on the belief that ‘‘the present building was planned for a
schoolhouse and is not well adapted to the Academy’s needs. ’*!°
The Academy did not sell the building in 1913, but it did attempt
to find money to improve and enlarge it. Such funds proved elusive,
however, and the Academy found itself hard-pressed to come up with
cash to merely pay bills for repairs, maintenance, and utilities as the
world stumbled toward war.

<
o
2

37

The Academy rented space to other organizations to raise money,
as Trelease expected it would. Among those who rented from the
Academy were the Angle School of Orthodontia, the St. Louis Avia-
tion Club, the International Correspondence School Fraternity, and the
St. Louis Chemical Society. Its star tenant, however, was the Engineers’
Club of St. Louis.

The Engineers Club’s tenancy turned out to be a mixed blessing.
Its association with the Academy as a tenant provided benefits and created
problems. On one hand, the Club provided much-needed capital. On
the other hand, it made demands that tried the patience of its landlord.
For example, the club insisted that the Academy wallpaper its rooms
or at least share the cost. The engineers also changed the wiring in the
library ‘‘in a way to endanger the building’’, and they pestered the
Academy for permission to erect a large electric sign with the name
of their Club on it above the main entrance to the building. '6

Like a good landlord, the Academy tried to accommodate the
Engineers’ Club and all its tenants. This was quite an administrative
task, especially when one remembers that the Academy’s council con-
sisted of the unpaid elected officers.

The Academy thrived in the beginning because of its unique posi-
tion on the frontier. It was held together by a tightly knit elite com-
prised of amateur and professional scientists as well as accomplished
and influential dilettantes. The former group, steeped in the traditions
of European science societies, was intensely interested in science as

the American industrial revolution. Historian Daniel J. Kelves has written
eloquently on the disdain the ‘“cultivated”’ affected for industrializa-
tion and on how they turned to Science as a way to reach higher cultural
ground. In his book The Physicists, Kelves wrote:

To applaud science was to set Oneself apart socially in a country
so exuberant over mere gadgets and machinery. To discuss it was to
mark oneself as a cultivated man. Patrician and landed gentry, profes-

38

sionals and mercantile businessmen—most of the patrons of science liked
to be called cultivated; a description of pleasingly lofty connotations,
it signified their sense of distance from a country they found downright
philistine. . . .!’

In the nineteenth century, the Academy functioned like a private
club supported by a few learned and ‘‘cultivated’’ members. By 1893,
the organization had transformed into a more populist one. It still
endeared itself to amateur and professional scientists and to the cream
of society, but in addition it attracted educated members of the middle
class who also wished to be associated with the lofty notions of science.

At the turn of the century, the Academy still enjoyed the support
of this diverse range of constituents. But much of this support quickly
evaporated. The reforms the Academy instituted in the 1890s—
democratizing the voting process and popularizing meetings—had a
levelling effect that worked for a brief period. In those expansion years
the Academy worked to become all things to all people, which forced
it to balance the scholarly activity of publishing with public programs
that alternated from popular to ‘‘uplifting’’ to technical. Despite this
juggling act the organization found it increasingly difficult to attract
and hold new members.

Younger scientists and engineers favored specialized professional
organizations, such as the American Physical Society and the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers, over the discursive Academy and other
organizations that served as common clearing houses of scientific
thought. Popular support for the Academy declined because the mid-
dle class, and often the elite, moved away from the “‘higher’’ abstrac-
tions of science toward a preoccupation with the gritty realities of social
reform. For them, science went out of style in the Progressive Era.

The Academy tried to adapt when it became apparent that its ap-
peal was flagging. It turned reform-minded—supporting a bill that limited
the diversion of water from Niagara Falls.'* At the same time, the
Academy courted engineers and professional scientists by offering more
lectures on highly technical subjects and by making other overtures in
attempts to lure them back into the fold.'* Unfortunately, these attempts
failed and membership plummeted. However, enough amateur scien-
tists and ‘‘old school’’ professionals remained active through the try-
ing times of war to carry on into the third decade of the century.

is

Part V. 1918-1941: Years Of
Retrenchment, Reorganization And
Revitalization

The years between the world wars were critical ones for the
Academy. The members who remained active from 1918 until 1929
struggled to keep their organization afloat. Ironically, the Great Depres-
sion ushered in a period of reorganization and revitalization that car-
ried through those lean years up to the beginning of World War II.

The Roaring Twenties, that decade of impetuous abandon for most
of America, was a period of conservative retrenchment for the
Academy—a time to cut down on expenses and activities. After the
Academy decided to vacate the building on Olive Street, it acted swift-
ly to reduce expenditures by having the Engineers’ Club, which wanted
to stay, assume the costs of janitor service, heat, lighting, and other
building maintenance expenses.

n another economy measure, the Academy made arrangements
with the St. Louis Library to house its books and periodicals. It also
made provisions to store its museum collections with the Washington
University Department of Geology, the School of Medicine of
Washington University, and the Missouri Historical Society.

When the Engineers’ Club moved out of the Olive Street building
after a few years, the Academy gave a lease to the Theosophical Socie-

, which took over the maintenance costs of the structure and paid a
rental of $500. This arrangement was terminated in 1928, and other
tenants took over the next year.

The Academy had intended to sell the Olive Street building.
However in 1925, after consulting with several real estate brokers, it
decided to keep the property since it seemed likely that the value of
the land, if not the building, would escalate. !

After the Academy put its policy of economy into effect in 1918,
the organization’s financial situation began gradually to stabilize. By
1922, the association’s fiscal State had improved to the point where it
could reduce the annual dues from Six to three dollars in the hope of
attracting new members. Few new members joined, though, and the
Academy’s activities remained curtailed.

The Academy’s regular meetings were eliminated after Worid
War I. George T. Moore, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden,
who served as Academy President from 1918 until 1928, explained why
the meetings were suspended. He wrote:

Conditions in the scientific world have changed rapidly and the increase
40

in the number of special societies has resulted in the elimination of what
was formerly one of the chief functions of the Academy of Science. In
spite of this fact the old Council tried a number of different schemes
calculated to arouse interest in the meetings and it was only after the
failure of all of these that a definite policy of abandoning the regular
meeting was decided upon. Money was spent to bring speakers here from
out of town and different types of programs arranged, without success.
The three lectures given by Professor Massart of the University of
Brussels were miserably attended, although the widest publicity was given
to them, and the faithful few who attended the meetings as a matter of
duty were frequently humiliated by the handful of people who came to
hear a speaker whom the Council had invited to appear as its guest.”

Although the Academy abandoned one traditional activity after
1918, it doggedly pursued another: between March 1920 and June 1928
it published eighteen papers in two volumes of the Transactions. These
papers included: Leo Loeb, ‘‘Cancer, Its Course and Causes’’ (1922);
R. Walter Mills, ‘‘Medical Fads and Fancies’’ (1924); and Phil Rau,
‘*The Ecology of a Sheltered Clay Bank: A Study of Insect Sociology”’
(1926).

One of the most significant papers that appeared in the Transactions
in the years immediately following the war was ‘‘Ecological Studies
of the Entomostraca of the St. Louis District.’’* The author of this paper,
Charles Henry Turner, was an outstanding scientist and respected
member of the Academy of Science of St. Louis. When he died in 1923,
the Academy published a special memorial issue of the Transactions
in his honor. The memorial issue contained the text of an ‘‘apprecia-
tion’’ of Turner, read by Augustus G. Pohlman at a service given at
Sumner High School; an essay on Turner’s work by Phil Rau; a list
of Turner’s published papers; and three of Turner’s unpublished works.°

Charles Henry Turner was born in Cincinnati in 1867. He earned
B.S. and M.S. degrees from Cincinnati University in 1891 and 1892.
In 1907 the University of Chicago conferred upon him the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy, magna cum laude.

Turner held a number of teaching positions, including Chair of
Biology, Clark University, 1892-1905; High School Principal,
Cleveland, Tennessee, 1907-1908; and Teacher of Biology and
Psychology, Sumner Teachers College, 1908 until his death. Although
Turner was an excellent educator, he was best known among scientists
for his research.

Turner published almost fifty papers during his lifetime on sub-
jects in neurology, invertebrate ecology, and animal behavior. He also
composed book reviews that appeared in Psychology Bulletin and The
Journal of Animal Behavior. Many of Turner’s significant contribu-
tions were in the field of insect behavior studies. He was the first to

41

describe a kind of insect orientation performance that came to be known
—in France at least—as Turner’s circling.

Turner’s interests were not confined to scientific deliberation. He
devoted much of his life to projects aimed at raising the standard of
living for blacks. From personal experience, Turner knew full-well the
problems faced by blacks in America, and especially by black scien-
tists such as himself. His accomplishments were, therefore, all the more
noteworthy. In his essay on Turner’s scientific work, Phil Rau paid
tribute to Turner’s bravery and perseverance. Rau observed:

The handicaps under which Dr. Turner’s work was accomplished were
many, and honestly and bravely met. Only one of these [problems] was
the limitations of a small salary, out of which he was compelled to pur-
chase his own tools and library for research, since he did not enjoy the
access to laboratories and institutions where equipment is supplied. And
when at last one considers the quantity and quality of his scientific
research work, accomplished under handicaps, and in addition to a full
life of other activities and unusual efficiency in the classroom, one can
only say — well done!*é

Following his death, a school for handicapped black children was
named in Turner’s honor. Today, this is Turner Middle School, a public,
integrated junior high school in St. Louis.

42

As a devoted entomologist, Charles Henry Turner no doubt sup-
ported the Academy’s efforts to help establish a natural history museum
in St. Louis. When the Academy stored its collections in 1918, several
concerned members joined the St. Louis Natural History Association,
and throughout the 1920s they and the Academy worked closely with
this organization to establish another museum in the city.’

The Museum Association and the Academy proposed various
schemes for the development of a museum, but without success. The
most interesting plan was a proposal to obtain the old courthouse from
the city. This plan, which was supported by members of the city govern-
ment and by many influential civic leaders, was still being considered
in 1929—the year a major reorganization of the Academy began.*

In January 1929, the Academy Council met to discuss the state
of the organization. Attending the meeting were the newly elected presi-
dent, Arthur C. Thacher, and the other new officers. The new Council
was determined ‘‘to rehabilitate the Academy of Science.’’? Over the
next five years these individuals and other hard-working members
breathed life back into the Academy by reviving regular meetings;
spearheading attempts to create a museum; analyzing and reorganizing
the Academy’s finances; taking stock of its collections; carrying out
extensive membership drives; and forging strong bonds between the
Academy and other local science groups and with state and national
science organizations as well.

The Academy’s meetings became very successful affairs when they
were revived in the early 1930s. The meetings were planned to appeal
to a large variety of people interested in science, and the best-attended
meetings were organized in cooperation with other organizations such
as the Washington University Association and the St. Louis Bird Club.
In 1934 over 9500 people attended eighteen Academy meetings. The
most popular meetings of that year included an illustrated lecture given
by Laurence Gould entitled ‘‘With Byrd to the Bottom of the World”’,
a talk on cosmic radiation given by Robert A. Milliken; and a presenta-
tion called ‘‘Animal Close-ups’ given by George P. Vierheller and
Marlin Perkins of the St. Louis Zoo. Over 4000 people attended these
three events alone.!°

The Academy’s efforts to establish a museum were not as fruitful
as its meetings, but it did make important strides toward that goal. For
example, it helped bring together the various organizations, such as the
associations of the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of
Science and Industry, interested in establishing a museum. In addition,
the Academy made the formation of a new museum an institutional goal
by changing part of Section 2, Article II, of its constitution. This state-
ment, which originally read ‘‘[the Academy] shall . . . establish and

43

maintain a cabinet of objects,’’ was rewritten as ‘‘[the Academy] will
establish and maintain a museum.’’!!

The Academy’s ties to those organizations interested in starting
a new museum were strong, and it took little effort to make them
stronger. Similarly, the Academy sought better relations with other
science groups in the city, including the St. Louis Horticultural Socie-
ty, the St. Louis Herpetological Society, and the St. Louis Bird Club.
The Academy also affiliated itself with larger organizations such as the
Missouri Academy of Science, which was established in 1934; the
American Association for the Advancement of Science; and the Associa-
tion of Academies of Science. !?

The Academy strengthened ties to other organizations by extend-
ing membership to them. Other ways the Academy increased member-
ship included direct-mail and personal solicitation.'? These member-
ship schemes proved very successful. One year’s growth illustrates the
point: membership grew from 183 active members at the beginning of
1932 to almost 300 by January of the next year.

A larger membership meant more revenue from dues and dona-
tions, which of course was good news. The bad news was the ineffi-
cient way the Academy administered its finances. To remedy this, a
finance committee was formed. The new committee promptly analyzed
the organization’s finances and subsequently introduced novel manage-
ment procedures and investment strategies that led to a safer and more
lucrative trust. !4

The Academy also took stock of another important asset—its col-
lections. In 1929 the whereabouts of some of the collections that had
been removed from the Olive Street building ten years before was uncer-
tain. This concerned the members, who began an inventory. An ex-
haustive list of the collections had been completed by 1932. Darling
K. Greger, who compiled the inventory, made this observation about
the collections:

It is fortunate for the Academy that the collections . . . are in safe hands
and [that] their preservation is assured against the time when the Academy
may acquire a permanent home and when they may go to form the nucleus
for extensive collections of their various types. !5

While the members kept busy reorganizing and revitalizing the
organization in the early 1930s, the Academy’s more routine activities
went on as usual. The publication of the Transactions remained a vital
part of what the Academy accomplished. Three volumes were printed
between 1929 and 1934. Some examples of the scholarship contained
in these volumes include Phil and Nellie Rau, ‘‘The Sex Attraction and
Rhythmic Periodicity in Giant Saturnid Moths’’ (1929); Gayle B.
Pickwell, ‘‘The Prairie Horned Lark’’ (1931); and C.E. and H.E. Burt,

44

‘SA Preliminary Check List of the Lizards of South America’’ (1931).'®

Another routine activity that kept the Academy Council busy was
the administration of the building on Olive Street. The building was
occupied by a series of tenants and brought in some revenue, but it re-
mained a source of consternation despite several attempts to make it
a better asset.!7

In 1931, the Academy celebrated its 75th anniversary. Academy
members marked this occasion with a formal dinner at the Chase Hotel
for 75 people. The guest of honor was Robert G. Aitkin, Director of
the Lick Observatory. '®

Three years after its 75th birthday party, Academy President Albert
Kuntz eloquently summarized the accomplishments of the reorganized
Academy in his report for 1934. He also made ‘‘a few suggestions
regarding the possible extension of the activities of the Academy.”’
Specifically, Kuntz called for the production of a monthly or quarterly
publication, outlined a scheme whereby specialized science organiza-
tions in St. Louis might be enticed to join the Academy, and recom-
mended that the Academy should provide for junior membership.'? The
organization put these suggestions into effect and engaged in other ac-
tivities that Kuntz had not mentioned, causing a revitalization of the
Academy between 1934 and 1941.

The publication that Kuntz called for took the form of an informa-
tional organ entitled Bulletin of the Academy of Science of St. Louis.
The first issue appeared in January 1935. The issues that followed an-
nounced meeting times and programs, made officers’ reports and the
Academy’s financial statements available to the membership, listed
members’ names, featured biographical sketches of the Academy’s
founding members, and presented summary reports submitted by the
Academy’s various sections.”°

Article VIII of the Academy’s constitution had, since the nineteenth
century, provided for the formation of special sections under the auspices
of the Academy. These sections could be formed by members if they
could show in a written application that the proposed section would *‘en-
courage and promote special investigation in any branch of science."*?*
In the mid-1930s, the Academy made a concerted effort to increase the
number of its sections both to more fully serve the interests of individuals
and groups within the Academy and to attract new groups of members.
The strategy worked well. A science teachers’ section and new sec-
tions for the study of astronomy, entomology, gemology, geology,
mathematics, and the history of science were formed between 1935 and
1941.2

The Academy organized another section, too. This section was
devoted to serving the needs of young people interested in science. The

45

Academy Council authorized the Junior Academy of Science section
in 1936, and it soon attracted a great number of students who formed

Junior Academy of Science Officers, 1939

chapters in many of St. Louis’ schools. Junior Academy members en-
gaged in a wide range of activities. They organized and took part in
educational radio broadcasts, wrote papers on scientific subjects, con-
ducted experiments, went on field trips, attended the Academy’s regular
meetings, prepared individual and chapter exhibits for display at their
own annual meetings, and produced their own newsletter.23

In addition to encouraging budding scientists through the Junior
Academy section, the Academy sponsored the work of professional
scientists during the Great Depression. The most significant project
undertaken with the Academy’s help was a series of archaeological in-
vestigations carried out in the late 1930s and early 1940s under the direc-
tion of archaeologist Robert McCormick Adams. The Academy gave
Adams administrative support and paid for necessary supplies. The
46

Works Project Administration provided the labor, the Missouri
Resources Museum in Jefferson City acted as the project’s official spon-
sor, and the Smithsonian Institution gave the project approval.

Adams’ investigations, which included excavations of mounds,
village sites, and rock shelters in Jefferson Country south of St. Louis,
yielded a wealth of Amerindian artifacts and information about the past
lives of native people in the Mississippi River Valley. The cultural
materials Adams unearthed went to the Academy, the Missouri Resource
Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution. The knowledge gained on
the project was disseminated in various publications, the most impor-
tant being an article by Adams that appeared in the Academy’s Trans-
actions.”

The Academy published two volumes of the Transactions between
1935 and 1941. In addition to Adams’ article, these two volumes con-
tained ten other papers.25 The Academy continued to exchange its
publication for those of other academies and it constantly added to its
list of exchange partners. In 1939, it reopened its library, which had
for some years been stored and unavailable for public use.?°

The Academy continued to accept donations of specimens and arti-
facts.27 Unlike the library, however, its museum collections remained
in storage. The establishment of a museum remained an important goal
for the members. They expressed their desire for a new museum time
and again in articles in the Academy Bulletin and made several pro-
posals for the erection of a science museum in the city. One of the
members who so vigorously sustained the push for a museum was Robert
James Terry, who served as Academy President from 1935 until 1937.

Robert James Terry was born in St. Louis in 1871. He earned his
M.D. degree from the Missouri Medical College in 1895 and later
studied at Edinburgh, Freiburg and Harvard. In 1901 he returned to
St. Louis to occupy the Chair of Anatomy in the Medical Department
at Washington University.

Terry was an active member of many science societies, including
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American
Association of Anatomists, the American Anthropological Association,
the Anatomical Society of Great Britain, and the American Ornithological
Union. He also belonged to the St. Louis Medical Society, the Missouri
Historical Society, the St. Louis Anthropological Society, and the
Naturalist Club of St. Louis. He authored numerous articles on human
comparative anatomy, and he wrote a book entitled An Introduction
to Human Anatomy.

Terry joined the Academy in 1896 and in subsequent years served
as a curator and as librarian. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the
St. Louis ‘‘museum movement,”’ and he worked hard toward establishing

47

such an institution. Neither his plans for a new museum nor any of the
others put forth during his administration were successful, however.?®

Although not as sensational as the creation of a museum would
have been, the Academy did accomplish one task it considered impor-
tant: in 1936 the members voted to change the constitution and by-laws.
The new constitution resulted from a year-long study conducted by the
Council and a special committee. The most significant change was the
addition of an article calling for the formation of a Board of Trustees
as part of the Academy’s governing body. Members of the Board were
chosen in 1937 and charged with handling the Academy’s finances and
property. With the formation of the Board of Trustees, the Academy
felt confident that it had removed ‘‘the last obstacle towards acquiring
a new home”’ and that its financial situation would be vastly improved.?9

One of the first Board members, Father James B. Macelwane,
served as the Academy’s president from 1937 until 1939. Macelwane
was born in Ohio in 1883. After attending high school, he entered the
Society of Jesus in 1903. Macelwane came to St. Louis in 1908 and
received his undergraduate degree from St. Louis University two years
later. He earned his M.S. in 1912 and after that taught physics at St.
Louis University while at the same time studying theology. He was or-
dained to the Catholic priesthood in 1918.

In 1921 Macelwane entered the University of California at Berkeley
and received his doctorate in physics, mathematics, and seismology two
years later. After completing his doctoral program, Macelwane accepted
the position of Assistant Professor of Geology at Berkeley and served
as director of the seismographic stations at Berkeley and Mount
Hamilton.

Macelwane returned to St. Louis in 1925 as Professor of Geophysics
and Director of the new Department of Geophysics, which he organized,
at St. Louis University.

At various times Macelwane served as director of the Central Sta-
tion of the Jesuit Seismological Association and also as president of
that organization. He was twice elected to the presidency of the
Seismological Society of America. Furthermore, he was active in
American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American
Geophysical Union and frequently served as an officer of various other
prominent professional science societies. 3°

Father Macelwane’s successor to the Academy presidency was
Arthur Henry Timmerman, who was elected in 1939. Timmerman was
an engineer who received his education at Cornell University. He taught
physics at Washington University in St. Louis in 1893. After a year
there, Timmerman moved to Rolla, Missouri, to teach physics and elec-
trical engineering at the School of Mines. He came back to St. Louis
48

Stratford Lee Morton

in 1899 to work for the Wagner Electrical Organization. Timmerman
was active in numerous civic and professional organizations. He joined
the Academy of Science in 1893.3!

Stratford Lee Morton was elected Chairman of the Academy’s
recently formed Board of Trustees in the same year that Arthur Tim-
merman became president. Morton was born in Dixon, Illinois, in 1888.
He came to St. Louis with his family when he was 14. Five years later
he began a career as a life insurance agent with the Connecticut Mutual
Life Insurance Company. He was extremely successful, becoming the
company’s first million-dollar producer. At the age of 24 the company
named him General Agent—the youngest in the company’s history.

Morton, in addition to being a hard-driving salesman, was an avid
collector of ‘America ana. He also collected minerals, sea shells, and
fossils. He was an energetic civic leader as well. Other organizations
with which he was associated during his lifetime included the Municipal
Opera, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the City Art Museum, and the
Missouri Historical Society.

Morton’s involvement with the Academy of Science of St. Louis
would endure 30 years, until his death in 1970. For many of those years,
he worked to give St. Louis residents a science museum to be proud
of—plans for a museum and ways to win support and find funding for
such an institution were uppermost in Morton’s mind in the 1940s and
1950s, and he and other members of the Academy toiled diligently to
reach this goal.>?

49

Part Vi. The Search For A New
‘‘Permanent’’ Home, 1941-1956

The Academy lost some of the momentum gained in the late 1930s
after the outbreak of World War II. Nevertheless, it remained extremely
active, under the circumstances, throughout the conflict. For example,
the Academy published three lengthy articles despite the paper shortage. !
The main activity, however, was the struggle to begin a science museum
in St. Louis that would also serve as the Academy’s home.

The effort to start a museum was concentrated in the Board of
Trustees and the Council. During the first two years of the war several
proposals were drawn up—including the possibility of using the ground
floor of the old courthouse building, which by that time was controlled
by the National Park Service. However, this and other plans never jelled.

In January 1943, the Board and the Council held a special meeting
at #1 Portland Place, in what was called the Faust House. Chairman
of the Board Stratford Lee Morton explained that the meeting was be-
ing held in the house since there was a possibility that the structure might
be obtained by the Academy.”

The Faust House, an elegant 3-story mansion inspired by the Villa
Borghese in Rome, was built by Mr. and Mrs. Edward A. Faust in 1911.
They lived there until their deaths in 1936. Their son, Leicester Busch
Faust, occupied the home from 1936 until 1938.

When Leicester Faust moved from #1 Portland Place, he offered
the property to St. Louis for use as a mayor’s residence. The city declined
it, however, on the grounds that it would be too costly to maintain.
The Academy approached Faust about possibly acquiring the building
after the city turned it down, but these negotiations also fell through.

In 1943, The Academy learned that the Faust heirs had decided
to donate the residence to some worthy organization. When this came
to light, Stratford Lee Morton contacted Leicester Faust and Faust
promptly offered the house to the Academy with ‘‘no strings attached.”’
The building was in a residential area, however, which was an obstacle.
Faust informed Morton that the residents of Portland Place had to con-
sent to the Academy’s tenancy of the building. Faust wrote:

We have discussed with you the current existing restrictions upon the
use of the property in Portland Place and the necessity of either the
modification of such restrictions by the residents of that Place or their
consent to the proposed use.3

Unfortunately, when the residents of Portland Place met to discuss
the proposed use of the Faust House as a museum, some of them ob-
jected on the grounds that the Academy appeared financially unstable.

50

And since the transfer of the property had to be approved by 100%
of the owners, the plan stalled. Nevertheless, the Academy did not for-
sake hope that it might acquire the Faust House. Instead, it tried to con-
vince the property owners that it was financially sound and that a museum
at Portland Place would be an asset. These efforts, which lasted
throughout 1943, included the publication of a detailed description of
the Academy and the election of an influential Portland Place property
owner to the Academy’s Board. All of the other owners could not be
persuaded, however, and the Faust House eventually faded from the
list of possible sites for a new permanent home.

Another possibility cropped up in 1944 when Palmer B. Baumes,
St. Louis Park Commissioner, notified the Academy that the Laclede
Police Station in Forest Park would be rehabilitated. Baumes suggested
the Academy might consider trying to acquire the building. After some
deliberation, the Academy abandoned this possibility because of the
limitations of the old police station.*

The Academy appointed a special committee in 1944 to study and
outline some options for the immediate post-war construction of a science
museum in St. Louis. This committee drafted a detailed plan that called
for the development of a science center to include a planetarium, an
aquarium, a museum of natural history, and a museum of science and
industry. One committee member even suggested a possible design for
the science center—a huge structure in the shape of a globe. The com-
mittee also recommended that steps should be taken to have the science
center included as an item on a bond issue to secure funding.°

This plan met with enthusiasm and optimism. Unfortunately, the
construction of such an institution appeared unfeasible in the 1940s.
The Academy, however, remained determined to create a new museum.

In August 1944 Stratford Lee Morton announced at a meeting that
Joseph Desloge, President of the Academy, had located a residence at
4642 Lindell Boulevard that would be satisfactory for use by the
Academy as a headquarters and small museum. The price of the building
was $16,500. President Desloge was willing to donate $8,000 and the
balance could be had by selling the Academy’s Olive Street building.°®
The members agreed that this purchase seemed the proper course, and
the Academy sold the Olive Street property and bought the building
on Lindell Boulevard.

The Academy lost no time in setting up a museum in the Lindell
building. It formed a new committee to plan it and appointed curators
to develop specific exhibit topics. The curators were Harold A. Bulger,
anthropology and archaeology; Edward P. Meiners, invertebrates; Carl
Miller, geology and paleontology; John J. O’Fallon, aeronautics, and
Max Schwartz, birds and mammals.

51

The curators brought the collections out of storage and oversaw
the acquisition of new ones, including the Whelpley Collection of Indian
artifacts, the Hurter Bird Collection, a valuable collection of marine
shells, an extensive gem stone collection, and three important collec-
tions of butterflies and moths.7

From 1945 to 1956, St. Louis residents had the opportunity to see
some of the Academy’s collections, both old and new, in exhibits at
the Lindell building. The exhibits included an Indian textile display,
an “‘industrial room,’’ an exhibit entitled ‘‘Indian and Stone Age Man
in America,’’ and an exhibit on the history of aviation.®

In 1946 the Academy named Donald P. Lowry Director of the
Museum. Lowry, formerly a curator at the museum of the Chicago
Academy of Science, had primary responsibility for development of
exhibits. He resigned in 1947, however, and Richard C. Froescher was
chosen to take his place. But Froescher also left after a year. For some
time afterward, the museum had no director, and the curators entirely
supervised the development of exhibits.9

Like the exhibits at the museum, the Academy’s publications
featured a wide variety of topics. For example, the organization published
both Arthur L. Hughes’ ‘‘Nuclear Energy and the Hydrogen Bomb’’,
an explanation of nuclear physics; and August P. Beilman’s ‘‘What Tree
Shall I Plant?’’—a list of the kinds of trees that grow best in Missouri. !°

In addition to publishing, the Academy conducted a lively lecture
program. One year’s offerings included talks on viruses, the natural
history of ferns, the history of fabrics, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ef-
fects of radiation, and technical developments in the glass industry."!

The lectures often attracted fair-sized audiences. Nevertheless,
many members were not entirely happy with the programs—they felt
that in order to draw larger numbers of people, the organization was
forced to present subjects of popular interest lacking real content. As
one member put it, this led ‘‘to neglect of fields that are of great scien-
tific significance.’ !2

This concern and others like it prompted changes in the Academy
during the years it occupied the Lindell building. For instance, the
Academy once again changed its constitution and by-laws in ways that
altered how it governed itself. Specifically, in 1950 the Academy changed
the administrative body from the old Council to a Board of Directors.
Another change came in 1956 when the organization elected Mrs. Elmer
L. McCaddon to the Board. She was the first woman to serve on the
administrative body in more than 50 years. Mrs. MaCaddon organized
the Women’s Division of the Academy, which became very active. !3

Another part of the Academy, the Junior Academy, remained busy,
too. Junior Academy members continued to take prizes for their pro-
52

jects at science fairs that the Academy helped organize. The Academy
promoted another kind of fair as well. In 1947 the organization initiated
plans for a St. Louis World’s Fair for 1953—the sesquicentennial year
of the Louisiana Purchase. Under Academy leadership, an advisory com-
mittee consisting of 106 prominent civic leaders formed to study whether
a St. Louis World’s Fair was feasible.'* As it turned out, such a pro-
ject proved inappropriate for the city in 1953. Although the project failed,
the Academy’s involvement demonstrated how deeply the organization
felt its cultural responsibility.

Another activity the Academy undertook was the establishment of
a “‘trailside museum’’ in Forest Park. The idea behind this project, which
never developed, was to provide a way for people to learn more about
nature than they could at the Academy’s small museum on Lindell. '5

The inadequacies of the Lindell building were apparent even when
the Academy purchased the building. But at the time it seemed to be
the best temporary solution until the construction of a truly world-class
science museum of the kind proposed in 1944. Members kept the dream
of such an institution alive in the 1950s. In 1952 the Academy made
a study which resulted in a proposal for a St. Louis cultural center.
The organization submitted its findings to the city’s Board of Public
Service, hoping to incorporate the cultural center in an upcoming bond
issue. !6

The Academy’s report sketched an ambitious plan. The ideal
cultural center would include a science museum which would have
150,000 square feet and cost $4,500,000; a planetarium comparable
to Chicago’s Adler Planetarium at a cost of $1,700,000; a symphony
hall with seating for 2,500 that would cost $2,000,000; a library with
a 350,000 volume capacity and a price tag of $1,340,000. With park-
ing facilities and the cost of land, the total amounted to approximately
$10,500,000. !7

The Academy’s plan for a cultural center had the support of many
St. Louis leaders, including the mayor. The Board of Public Service
declined to add it to the bond agenda, however, and the plan seemed
to wither. Nevertheless, the Academy retained the vision. !8

Whatever dreams the Academy cherished, it had to face realities,
and one of the harshest of these was the problems associated with the
Lindell building. The property simply lacked enough space. For instance,
it was too small to house both the Academy’s collections and its library,
which had to be kept at Washington University and, later, at the old
courthouse. !9

By 1954 the building had become too small to accommodate all
of the Academy’s exhibits. In that year the Mahlon B. Wallace, Jr. family
donated a collection of mounted African animals. This group was en-

53

tirely too large to fit in the Lindell building, so the Academy was forced
to seek another location in which to exhibit it. Eventually, the city
allowed the animals to be shown in a portion of the Old World’s Fair
Pavilion in Forest Park, where they remained for several years.?°

Taking over the pavilion in Forest Park was a stop-gap measure.
In 1956 the Academy building committee recommended a more per-
manent solution: sell the Lindell Building and use the proceeds to help
finance the construction of a ‘small museum . . . which would contain
an auditorium, and which would also double the present museum
space.’’?! The Academy decided to take action on at least part of this
recommendation, and in September, it sold the Lindell building for
$82,050.22

With the sale of the Lindell building, the Academy was once again
without a home, but not for long. Within two years the organization
would put down its roots again—starting a new era of cultural activities
and public service.

Part Vil. 1957-1971: Oak Knoll
Park, The Museum Of Science And
Natural History, And The Zoo-
Museum District

eC eee ow Lindell mw een _ Academy i sila an —

pi He suggested
— Campbell im-
iately ord Lee Morton ar '

In the months that followed, Morton spearheaded an evaluation
of the structures in what became known as Oak Knoll Park with an eye
toward using one or both of the structures as a museum and headquarters.
The buildings seemed suitable and the Academy began negotiating with
the City of Clayton. Early in 1958 the Academy accepted a proposal
the city put forth that enumerated several conditions placed on its oc-
cupancy of the buildings. These conditions stipulated that the Academy
would assume the cost of maintaining the buildings and also carry fire
and liability insurance. The arrangement seemed very agreeable. The
rent was only $1 per annum and Clayton agreed to take care of the
grounds and to provide for public parking.”

Throughout the spring and summer of 1958, the Academy made
plans for the houses in Oak Knoll. In October it hired Murl Deusing
as Museum Director and Sally J. Orchard as Museum Curator.’ Both
of these individuals were museum professionals. Deusing left a posi-
tion at the Milwaukee Public Museum and Orchard moved to Oak Knoll
from the Missouri Historical Society. Deusing and Orchard promptly
set about moving and organizing the collections and developing educa-

55

tion programs; Deusing began a search for qualified people to run the
programs and to fabricate the exhibits he outlined in a written exhibi-
tion plan.*

The Academy’s new museum—christened the Museum of Science
and Natural History—was scheduled to open on October 1, 1959. Deus-
ing described the frenzied preparations for the opening in the first issue
of Your Museum, the institution’s newsletter. He wrote:

There is a pounding of hammers, the buzzing of drills, the slap of paint
brushes . . . Plumbers, carpenters, electricians and painters are swarm-
ing over the place. Artists are bending over drawing boards laying out
exhibit designs. Educators are sweating over the wording of labels. A
taxidermist is struggling with the skeleton of a frigate bird. Volunteers
are everywhere helping to get the job done.
There isn’t much to see yet. A hole in the floor where a drinking foun-
tain will stand, electrical conduits where an illuminated exhibit will stand,
pewritten words on a page that will unfold a fascinating story in your
museum halls of the future.‘

In addition to Deusing’s progress report, the first issue of Your

useum introduced St. Louis residents to the Museum’s staff, described
the first permanent exhibit, outlined the Education Department’s pro-
grams, reported on the activities of the Women’s Division of the
Academy, and identified things to ‘‘watch for’’ in coming months. The
staff, in addition to Director Deusing and Curator Orchard, consisted
of Marguerite Yates, Office Manager; Donn Braizer, Education Super-
visor; Veryl Collins, Teacher; William Groth, Teacher; John Maxfield,
Exhibits Specialist; Charles Solt, Exhibit Designer; and James Redmond,
Maintenance.

The museums’ first five years were busy and fruitful. New ex-
hibits opened regularly, education programs thrived, the collections
grew, membership swelled, and the Museum staff kept active within
the institution and the museum profession. The Academy oversaw this
activity and worked hard to find the funds needed to pay for it all.

The museum’s first—and for a time, only—permanent exhibit was
entitled *“The Story of Flight.’’ It was installed at No. 2 Oak Knoll,
formerly the Alvin Goldman residence. The exhibit consisted of three
sections, beginning with ‘‘The Bird as a Flying Machine.’’ The next,
‘*Man Learns to Fly,”’ featured aircraft models. The third section was
very appropriate for the early years of the ‘‘space race.’’ It was called
‘Reaching for the Moon’’ and gave visitors a chance to see a model
space capsule, satellites, and a scale model of the lunar landscape.

In the first five years, the museum expanded its exhibit space to
nine major galleries and several additional areas for temporary and travel-
ing exhibits.® The ‘‘stories’’ told in the permanent exhibit galleries dealt

56

with geology, biology, ecology, physiology, space travel, chemistry,
communications, light, and electricity. Some of the exhibits, such as the
Hall of Ecology and the Morton Hall of Lighting, featured items from
the collections. Others, including the Hall of Man and the Hall of Com-
munications, relied more on the model-making and artistic skills of the
exhibit staff.

The education programs either in progress or being developed when
the Museum’s first exhibit opened in 1959 included a school visit pro-
gram, a science career program, and Saturday ‘‘enrichment’’ classes
in natural history, biology, earth science, and chemistry. In addition
the Museum produced its own television show, ‘‘Operation Explore,”
which aired on the public television station. The program’s ‘‘star’’ was
Donn Brazier, Education Supervisor.

From 1959 to 1964, over 111,700 children took part in the school
visit program. The other programs enjoyed similar popularity. One very
successful program, ‘‘Outdoorland,”’ started in 1964. Outdoorland in-
troduced urban youngsters to Missouri natural history and helped them
learn about conservation. The Education Department performed another
laudable education service during the first five years: teachers and
docents frequently visited hospitals to give lectures and to demonstrate
artifacts to sick and handicapped children.

The Academy’s collections grew in their new home. Major acquisi-
tions included the Hall collection of 379 sets of eggs, the Schwartz col-
lection of nocturnal moths, a collection of waterfowl decoys, a collec-
tion consisting of 340 prehistoric artifacts from Arabia, the Prokes col-
lection of gems, a large collection of famous diamond replicas, the Kin-
ner collection of Kachina dolls, a collection of exquisite miniatures
donated by J. Lionberger Davis, the Roland Grimm collection of carved
elephants, and the Morton collection of lamps and lighting apparatus.

In 1961 James G. Houser joined the staff, replacing Sally Orchard
as Curator. Houser continued the task of cataloging collections,
upgrading storage space, and developing exhibits.

Other staff changes took place as well. Director Murl Deusing
resigned in 1961 to pursue a career in educational film production.’
Don Brazier took over as Acting Director and was soon made Direc-
tor. Museum Teacher William Groth subsequently became the head of
the Education Department.

Although its constituents were not members of the staff, one group
of individuals played a vital role in the life of the museum. The Women’s
Division was reorganized in 1959 to coordinate volunteer and fund-
raising work. The Women’s Division ran the Museum gift shop and
organized such activities as ‘‘Coffee Break for Science’ and film
premieres to raise funds. Furthermore, the Women’s Division planned

57

and provided labor for Museum receptions and parties and organized
‘family nights’’ for members. It also undertook membership drives,
which proved extremely successful. In 1960 the Academy’s member-
ship soared to over 1,000. Other volunteer groups worked with the
Women’s Division in support of the Museum, including the Girl Scouts,
the Junior League, the Greater St. Louis Shell Club, the Herb Society,
and the Chi Omega and Gamma Phi Beta Sororities’ alumnae.

While the Academy welcomed the help it received from the com-
munity and enjoyed the progress of its new Museum, problems remained.
One issue that continued to plague the organization was what to do with
the Academy’s library materials, which consisted of over 70,000 pieces.*®
When the Academy sold the Lindell building in 1956, the library went
into storage at St. Louis University’s Pope Pius Library. Three years
later, when the Academy obtained the housés in Oak Knoll, the university
informed the Academy that it wished to place the books and periodicals
on its shelves. But it would do so only if the Academy gave it sole title
to the collection.

The issue of giving the library to St. Louis University was an emo-
tional one. Some members totally rejected the idea of parting with a
dominant symbol of the Academy’s 103-year-old history, while others
were willing to consider doing so under certain conditions.° In the end,
these conditions were agreed to by the university, and in 1961 the library
became the property of the Pope Pius XII Library.

The ostensible reason the Academy gave for the donation was that
the materials would be accessible to the public at the university’s library.
Other important considerations, however, included the lack of space
for books at Oak Knoll Park and the university’s willingness to re-bind
the books and make other costly repairs. !°

Although it gave up its library in 1961, the Academy continued
collecting the publications of other science societies. However, it ceased
the regular publication of the Transactions.'! There appeared to be
several good reasons for this, but the main one was that the organiza-
tion simply needed all the money it could find to run the Museum of
Science and Natural History.

All of the Museum’s operations and programs—from building
maintenance to polished exhibits—required significant sums. In the 1960s
these requirements were met by a variety of sources, including gifts
from corporations, organizations and individuals; grants from founda-
tions; proceeds from membership dues and fund-raising events; and
money raised when the Academy joined a coalition for the promotion
of cultural activities in the St. Louis area.

In the first five years, cash donations to the Museum of Science
and Natural History came from various sources in support of different

58

activities. For example, in 1959 and 1960, the Stix, Baer and Fuller
Company gave a total of $30,000 to help pay for the school visit pro-
gram and for ‘‘Operation Explore.’’ In 1961 Famous Barr, Morton May,
and the Beaumont Foundation gave $40,000 for an exhibit. The next
year General Motors gave $2,000 to the museum. Among the dona-
tions for 1963 was a $1,000 gift from the St. Louis Rotary Club, which
helped pay for visits made by museum staff and volunteers to hospitals.
In the following year the St. Louis Dental Society presented the Academy
with $2,000 for an exhibit on teeth. !2

Grants from foundations made up another major percentage of the
Academy’s revenues. The most significant grants came from the Albert
P. Greensfelder Trust, which awarded $45,000 in 1959 to help found
the museum and $55,000 in 1962 to maintain it.'? The next year the
Beaumont Foundation awarded a $25,000 challenge grant which Strat-
ford Lee Morton matched. The money was used to pay for the ‘Hall
of Evolution,’’ which was dedicated to the memory of Morton’s son
who died in World War II. One of the Academy’s most consistent sources
of grant money was the National Science Foundation, which awarded
major grants to the Academy in support of science education throughout
the 1960s.

Additional money came to the Museum from a small admission
charge, membership dues, gift shop sales, fund-raising events, and from
yearly fund-raising campaigns coordinated by the Greater St. Louis Area
Arts Council.!4 The Arts Council was formed in 1963 to promote cultural
activities in St. Louis. The Council consisted of twenty-eight members
in three categories, but only ten institutions were Fund Members. Each
year after 1963 the Council conducted a massive fund-raising drive to
provide the Fund Members with money for operating expenses. By join-
ing the Arts Council as a Fund Member in 1963, the Museum of Science
and Natural History became eligible for $55,200 for its operating budget.
Funds for exhibits, acquisitions, and equipment still had to be raised
through other means, however.'*

The Academy seemed destined to meet the financial challenges of
running its museum. For the first two years it managed to come in under
budget. In the next three, however, it ran a deficit of $34,000.'° The
Academy’s financial situation was summarized in 1964 by Donn Brazier,
who explained that the coming year would be “a sustaining rather than
an expanding one because of our uncertain financial position.’’!7

The Academy and its Museum remained on a shaky financial
ground for the rest of the decade. Nevertheless, the staff persevered
in developing new exhibits, the collections grew, education programs
prospered, and the Women’s Division continued to actively support the
Museum.

59

Donn
Brazier

The first new permanent exhibit to open after 1964 was the Hall
of Evolution. Conceived, designed, and fabricated by Museum staff,
this exhibit opened in 1966 after over two years of planning. It featured
fossils, specimens, reproductions, and models in a format that presented
a synopsis of the process of evolution. Other permanent exhibits that
opened or were developed before 1971 included an outdoor diorama
with steel-and-fiberglass life-sized models of Tyrannosaurus rex and
Triceratops; the Davis Hall of Miniatures, which featured pieces from
the J. Lionberger Davis Collection; and the Egyptian Hall, which gave
Museum visitors a chance to study ancient artifacts, a reproduction of
an Egyptian tomb interior, and an Eighteenth Dynasty mummy bor-
rowed from Washington University.

In addition to these permanent exhibits, the Museum developed
or contracted for numerous temporary and traveling exhibits such as
‘X-rays of Sea Shells,’’ ‘Handicrafts of the Southwest Indians,”’ *‘Our
Polluted Environment,”” and ‘‘Moon Rocks.’’!® The Museum also
developed small exhibits for display in bank lobbies and shopping
centers.

Artifacts and specimens from the collections were used in both
temporary and permanent exhibits and new acquisitions were constant-
ly being sought and accepted. Among these were a large collection of
60

antique radios; a casting of the bust ‘‘Victory’’ by Auguste Saint-
Gaudens; a 22-1/2 foot Columbian dugout canoe; and numerous fossil,
geological, and zoological specimens, including a gorilla skeleton from
the St. Louis Zoo, which was used in the Hall of Evolution.!9

Exhibits and collections were an integral part of the Education
Department’s programs, including the school visit program, enrichment
classes, science career program, and visits to hospitals. At the end of
the decade and in 1970, several new programs were added, including
a lapidary class and an informal summer variety program, which con-
sisted of special displays, movies, and talks that focused on objects in
the collections, crafts, and topics in science and nature. This special
project was coordinated by Claudia Mink, Assistant Curator, and Cynthia
McConnell of the Education Department. Both women were recent ad-
ditions to the staff, which had grown marginally in the late 1960s but
had remained fundamentally the same in terms of positions and the people
who held them since 1964.

Another constant during this time was the support given to the
Museum by the Women’s Division, which sustained family night pro-
grams, gift bazaars, and the gift shop. After the life-sized dinosaur
models came to Oak Knoll in 1969, the Women’s Division started an
event of truly colossal proportions. Gatherings called ‘“‘Dance-O-Saurus’’
were held outdoors in the park where party-goers ate, danced, and
socialized under the stars and the watchful gaze of Tyrannosaurus rex
and Triceratops. Proceeds from the dance and dinner (in 1970 the cost
per couple was $35) went to support the museum.”°

Although the Academy considered Dance-O-Saurus a fund-raising
success and older sources of income remained more or less reliable,
supporting the Museum lingered and grew as a monolithic challenge.
The fact that other St. Louis cultural and education institutions found
themselves in similar financial straights seemed to offer little comfort.
But it was this shared fiscal malady that spawned an apparent solution
to the Academy’s financial conundrums.

de t of the Zoological Board of Control, outlined his plan
for a proposed cultural district, which he hoped might be presented to
‘the voters of St. Louis City and County. This cultural district would
include the Zoo, the Art Museum, and the Museum of Science and —
Natural History. Income for these institutions would come from a pro- ©
perty tax levied on owners in the city and county. —
After Baer’s presentation, the Academy Board voted to support
his plan and committed itself to the formidable task of establishing the
cultural district, even though the formation of such a district would —_
that the Academy would have to relinquish ownership of its museum.
61

” it jin wht tied, t, which got u ae di

way in earnest in 1970, was to receive approval for an election from
the state legislature. In May, legislation that would have allowed the

voters to decide the issue in St. Louis was perfected by the represen-
tatives after long debate. The measure was later defeated by a narrow
margin, however, leaving those in favor of the district downhearted.22
The defeat of what became known as the ‘‘cultural bill’’ did not stop
the campaign, though, and an identical piece of legislation passed in
a special session in June.?3 —

The bill sanctioned the creation of the district, set minimum tax
rates, and provided for the voters to have the final say as to whether
‘the district should take over the three institutions. If approved by voters,

pe ae Coe Bat

Vie(ropolltan

Tax District,’”” would be established with each of the three institutions
as a separate subdistrict. The district would be headed by an eight-
member board, and the tax rate would not exceed nine cents per $100
of valuation. The issue required only a simple majority to pass.

Later in 1970 advocates of the district mounted a petition drive
in order to secure the signatures needed to put the question on the April
1971 ballot. Despite some opposition, the drive was a success and the
proposed district became a distinct possibility.

Opposition to the proposed district came mostly from St. Louis
County residents, who resented paying taxes in support of what they
considered mainly ‘‘city’’ institutions. James T. Eagan, Mayor of the
suburb of Florissant, formed an opposition committee comprised primari-
ly of other county suburban mayors. Eagan summarized their stance
on the district when he suggested that ‘‘. . . the answer to the problem
[of support for the institutions] is not another taxing district, but the
charging of admission to the facilities. Let those who benefit pay?

Although vociferous, the number of people actively opposed to
the creation of the district was relatively small; an opinion poll taken
early in 1971 indicated a general favorable interest in the institutions
and a willingness to support them through a tax. Nevertheless, those
who wanted to see the proposition passed increased their efforts to per-
suade the voters as the election neared. They organized a speakers’
bureau and produced a film that helped explain the plight of the zoo
and museums. In addition, they launched a gaily painted bus that
traveled—with a live llama from the Zoo on board—to campuses, schools
and shopping centers.2° The supporters also paid for a media campaign,
which included numerous newspaper advertisements.

Most of the newspapers were quite sympathetic. The area’s two
most influential journals, the Globe-Democrat and the Post-Dispatch,
both ran favorable editorials. They also printed articles indicating that

62

the institutions might be forced to curtail services, or even close, if voters
rejected the district.?7

Support for the district came from politicians as well, including
County Supervisor Lawrence K. Roos, Senators Stuart Symington and
Thomas Eagleton, and the mayors of the cities of Clayton, Kirkwood,
Ferguson, and University City.?8

With so much backing it appeared that the Zoo-Museum District
was a certainty. And when the votes were counted in April, it became
apparent that the issue had indeed won the overwhelming support of
city voters. But it barely ‘‘squeaked through to victory’’ in St. Louis
County. In fact, the Art Museum won with a county majority of fewer
than 2,000 votes. Support for the Museum of Science and Natu

County ere for the [Academy’s] museum because it is in the
county and because it only asked for a tax limit of 1 cent per $100 valua-
tion, compared to 4 cents each for the Zoo and Art Museum.

iplishnmen

th Meneame’ f Scienc 1 History’s income.*° However, the
creation of the district also meant that the Academy had to give up the
Museum, including staff, exhibits, and collections. Nevertheless, the

ent Jules D. Campbell met with the
and Natural History Subdistrict’s

ar

Academy’s Board, would operate as ‘‘Friends of Museum.’’?! |

The 1960s was a time of many changes for the Academy. The most
important was the establishment of the Museum of Science and Natural
History, which was more ambitious than any of the Academy’s other
three museums. The care and feeding of its museum became the
organization’s primary concern and other activities, such as publishing
and maintaining a library, faded in importance. The Museum s educa-
tional goals were very much in keeping with national science educa-
tion objectives. This was the decade after Sputnik, when science educa-
tion at all levels became a priority in the United States. And within this
63

Jules D. Campbell (cutting cake), 1969

national context, the Museum of Science and Natural History was a
success as the number of young people it reached demonstrated.
Although the years between 1959 and 1971 witnessed some of the

64

of its most productive workers and leaders—Harold A. Burger, Fred
Hume, and Stratford Lee Morton.

Fred Hume was an outstanding member of the Academy. Hume
had been both Chief Engineer and Board Member for the International
Shoe Company. He supervised the remodelling of the Oak Knoll
buildings for the Museum.

Harold Aten Bulger died in 1966 at the age of 74. He joined the
Academy in 1930 and remained active until his death. A physician,
Bulger received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1920. He
joined the faculty of Washington University five years later and spent
the rest of his professional life there before retiring in 1955. During
his tenure he was on the staff of Barnes Hospital; he also served as
Director of Medical Services at Homer J. Phillips Hospital. He special-
ized in metabolic disorders.

Bulger had many other interests in addition to medicine, including
natural history and the history of the American West. His preoccupa-
tion with the West found many outlets. For example, he became con-
vinced that James White, whose story of passing through the Grand
Canyon was discredited by John Wesley Powell, had been the first
European-American to see that magnificent place. He researched the
subject exhaustively and wrote several articles in which he defended
White’s claim.

Bulger’s love of natural history was expressed in numerous ways.
He was an active member of the rather select St. Louis Naturalist Club
to which he often lectured on subjects such as ‘‘Barbs and Barbules
of Bird Feathers.’’ He usually illustrated his talks with striking
photographs he shot himself. -

During his lifetime Bulger served the Academy in several capacities,
acting at various times as its librarian, a curator, and as a member of
its program committee. Besides his activity in the Academy, he took
part in many other professional and amateur science and historical groups
such as the Astronomical Society, the Audubon Society, and the
Historical Association of Greater St. Louis. Furthermore, Bulger founded
the St. Louis Westerners, a group devoted to the study of Western history
and lore.32

Dr. Harold A. Bulger was an exceptionally intelligent and en-
thusiastic individual whose energy and interests knew no bounds; he
was a ‘Renaissance Man’ in the tradition of Academy founders George
Engelmann and Friedreich Wislizenus.

Stratford Lee Morton had more in common with businessman Pierre
Chouteau, perhaps, than he did with Engelmann or the other founders
of the Academy. Like Chouteau, Morton was a successful entrepreneur
and an avid collector. Morton shared with all the founders a deep-seated

65

commitment to the Academy, and in many ways exceeded those energetic
scientific men of the nineteenth century. Morton’s contributions of ser-
vice, money, and collections in some ways outstripped even those of
George Engelmann. For example, Morton served as president for twenty-
one years whereas Engelmann held the position for eight.

Morton, an extremely successful and wealthy insurance executive,
joined the Academy in 1939 and was elected president and Chairman
of the Board seven years later. He held that position—with a four-year
illness-related hiatus (1948-52)— until his death in 1970. One of Mor-
ton’s projects was an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the Faust House
for the Academy. Although the Faust project failed, Morton never gave
up; he persisted in “‘planning and pushing to give St. Louis the kind
of Science Museum he dreamed of, the kind of museum of which St.
Louis could be proud.’’*?

It was Morton, more than any other individual, who steered the
Academy on the course that led to the establishment of the Museum
of Science and Natural History in Oak Knoll Park. Moreover, it was
Morton who managed to raise a large percentage of the money that kept
the Museum afloat in the 1960s.

When Stratford Lee Morton died in 1970 he was remembered as
‘a man of the present looking forward to a better future.’’34 Ironical-
ly, he died a little more than a year before the creation of the Zoo-
Museum Tax District—something Morton regarded as a very large and
important part of a better future for the Museum he helped create.
Although the Academy knew it had lost one of its greatest champions
with the passing of Morton, the talented, dedicated members who suc-
ceeded him would lead the Academy into a new period of bolstering
tradition and forging ahead in the 1970s and 1980s.

66

After 1971 the Academy oversaw the transfer of the Museum of
Science and Natural History to the St. Louis Metropolitan Zoo-Museum
District, which took control in 1973. Although no longer officially
responsible for the governance of the Museum, the Academy remained
active in its affairs. However, it also undertook many projects unrelated
to the Museum’s operations and programs.

One long-standing tradition the Academy maintained after 1973
was the presentation of films and lectures. The films had compelling
themes such as ‘‘Indians and deer’’ and ‘‘Indians and the river,’’ and
the lectures covered exciting subjects in science and were given by engag-
ing and knowledgeable individuals, including anthropologist William
White Howells, NASA science consultant Richard Underwood,
geophysicist Otto W. Nuttli, and nature artist Roger Tory Peterson.
The Academy also paid for programs on public television and produced
a videotape entitled ‘“The Sun: In Our Power’’ for distribution to public
schools in the St. Louis area.?

Other projects included the excavation of the only dinosaur fossils
found in Missouri; research on the mastodon bone beds near Imperial,
Missouri; and the development of programs for high school students
at the Mark Twain Summer Institute in St. Louis. In 1986, the Academy
sponsored a year-long survey of collections of natural history specimens
in Missouri. The survey provided substantive, quantitative data on the
location, supervision, holdings, and curation of collections that were
published in a report compiled by James H. Hunt, Michael Arduser,
John E. Averett, and Bruce Stinchcomb.

Although some of its projects were independent from the programs
and operations of the Museum of Science and Natural History, the
Academy continued to play a key role in the life of that institution. Each
year income from its endowment was awarded for science projects such
as distribution programs for bird seed and tree seedlings; a science career
program; and the publication of a directory of St. Louis science and
technical organizations and clubs and an issue of its Transactions that
described the Whelpley Collection of Indian artifacts. ° In 1980, the
Academy began paying 50% of the cost of publishing Discovery, the
Museum’s new quarterly magazine.

One of the most direct links between the Academy and the Museum
after 1973 was the work done by the Friends of the Science Museum,
formerly the Academy’s Women’s Division. Operating under the
auspices of the Academy until 1985, this group ran the Museum’s gift

67

shop, directed membership drives, sponsored field trips and tours, gave
parties for the membership, coordinated docents, and oversaw fund-
raising events such as “‘Dance-O-Saurus.’’4

In 1981 the Friends dedicated a 25-foot stainless steel sculpture
in the memory of Marguerite D. Yates. The sculpture, christened
‘*Primogenesis,’’ was installed in the center of a small pond located
in the southeast corner of Oak Knoll Park.’ Marguerite Yates died in
1980 at the age of 66. She joined the Museum staff as a secretary to
the director in 1959 and became an extremely valuable employee. She
was named Administrative Assistant in 1962 and Assistant Director in
1975. The Museum paid tribute to Mrs. Yates’ more than twenty years
of service by renaming its temporary exhibits space the Marguerite D.
Yates Hall. At the time of her death, Mrs. Yates was secretary-treasurer
to the Museum’s Board of Commissioners and served in a similar capa-
city for the Academy of Science.

Like Marguerite Yates, Academy president Jules Campbell and
other Academy officers, such as Lee Schnure, served on the Academy’s
Board and on the Museum’s Board of Commissioners. Some years, they
worked as commissioners. In others, they served on the Advisory Com-
mittee. In either capacity, Academy leaders continued to help direct
the activities of the Museum, including long-range planning.

‘By the mid-1970s, it was clear that the Museum had outgrown the
buildings in Oak Knoll Park. Director Brazier noted that “‘every part
of these houses has been utilized. We have storerooms full of items
that there is no room to display.’’® Furthermore, it became ever more
difficult, as the number of visitors rose, to accommodate them and their
vehicles at Oak Knoll.

‘In 1% , following the determination that a major expansion at Oak
Knoll was impractical, the Museum retained the services of a profes-
sional architectural firm to conduct a site selection survey for a new
structure.” The commissioners, with the aid of this firm, identified three
broad areas: 1) the Riverfront-Downtown-Union Station area, 2) the
Forest Park area, and 3) an area in St. Louis County. The second loca-
tion was eventually deemed most suitable.®

Moving the Museum to Forest Park, the Commissioners reasoned,
could mean a joining of the Museum with the city’s planetarium, which
was experiencing severe financial difficulties. A St. Louis ‘‘science
center’ could thus be created. The Museum developed a plan to show
what form this merger might take. The plan called for the construction
of a 100,000-square-foot museum building adjacent to the existing
planetarium structure. This museum building would be partially
underground, and its location would, the planners contended, ‘‘enhance
the architectural beauty of the planetarium without disturbing the natural
68

beauty of its surroundings.’’?

Throughout the late 1970s, the Museum pushed its expansion plan
and the proposed move to Forest Park. The notion of another building
in the Park met with considerable opposition, however, from environ-
mentalists and others who believed that new construction there
represented an untenable encroachment.!° In 1979, the Missouri
Legislature banned the construction of the underground building.!!

14980 the Commissioners, staff, Friends of the Museum, and
the Academy continued planning the expansion despite the setbacks of
the previous years. A design concept was completed for a
100,000-square-foot facility at Oak Knoll Park—a facility comparable
in size to what had been proposed for Forest Park in the 1970s. However,
the construction cost estimate for a project of that size had more than
doubled by 1980. This caused the planners to re-evaluate the expan-
sion scheme. They decided to develop a phased program, starting on
a smaller scale of 40,000 to 50,000 square feet with further growth to
take place as a second phase at a later time.'?

1 June 1981 a great deal of the responsibility for planning the new
science center came to Dwight S. Crandell, formerly of the Indianapolis
Children’s Museum, who joined the Museum staff in the new position
of Director of Development. Almost immediately, Crandell helped begin
the development of a long-range plan for future facilities, concepts, pro-
grams, staff, finances, and exhibits. !?

In the spring of the next year, Crandell reported that the Museum’s
statement of purpose had been revised, that future staffing and space
requirements had been detailed, and future exhibits outlined. Crandell
also noted that although plans were underway, the site for the new science
center had yet to be determined. Moreover, he informed the public that
the Commissioners had endorsed a new sales tax to fund the Metropolitan
Zoo-Museum Tax District. This concept was embodied in a proposal,
jointly sponsored by St. Louis Mayor Vincent Schoemehl and County
Executive Gene McNary, which called for the replacement Uk the pro-
perty tax with a sales tax as the basis for funding the Museum’s opera-

i 1
ite A »1982, this proposal was defeated and alternate schemes
for increasing funding for future operations were explored. Also in 1982,
Director Donn Brazier retired and Dwight Crandell was named Executive
Director of the Museum of Science and Natural History. That same
year, the Academy Board approved the release to the museum of .
previously held in an escrow fund in the names of the Academy we
the Museum. In return, the Museum —— agreed “oer
Academy office space in any future museum building.
tes next re was an extremely busy and eventful one. The
69

IC id

Museum announced plans to merge with the McDonnell Planetarium.
And, after much discussion, the Commissioners proposed to acquire
property at 5050 Oakland Avenue across Highway 40 from the
planetarium building in Forest Park. This property included the former
headquarters building of the Falstaff Company, which would be
transformed into the new St. Louis Science Center. The two facilities
would be connected in a way to create, in the words of the planners,
**a strong synergism.’’ Moreover, the marriage of the two would ‘‘im-
prove attendance at both . . . allow for joint management, and... .
offer cooperative programs and projects.’’!> Funding for the operations
of this new science center came in 1983 when the people of the City and
County of St. Louis voted an increase in support from 1 cent per $100
to 4 cents per $100 of assessed valuation of their property.

The Academy’s involvement in supporting the Museum of Science
and Natural History’s plans and programs demonstrated the Academy’s
continuing commitment to helping such institutions. In1984 Dr. Peter
Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and an honorary
member of the Academy Board, helped design an Academy-sponsored
fellowship program. The goals of the ‘‘Founding Fellows’’ program
are to serve as a binding force for science organizations in St. Louis;
to recognize professional accomplishment; and to promote public in-
terest and understanding of science and technology, especially as they
relate to the public welfare. '6

Also in 1984, the Museum of Science and Natural History adopted
a new name—the ‘‘St. Louis Science Center.’? The McDonnell
Planetarium was acquired from the city, and the renovation and reopen-
ing of the planetarium building as the first phase of the expansion became
a high priority. The buildings at Oak Knoll Park remained open,
however.

1 +.

In 1985, the y ium building reopened as the new
St. Louis Science Center featuring a renovated Star Theater, many par-
ticipatory exhibits, and new education programs.

During the next two years, The Academy of Science supported
several Science Center programs and activities, including a science
teacher intern program and a chemistry demonstration show. It also
subsidized a new permanent exhibit on earthquakes and a temporary
exhibit on genetic engineering. These activities represented a partial,
but substantial, manifestation of the roles the Academy outlined for itself
in 1984.

1 1986 the first stage for the second phase of the Science Center
expansion—the development of the rest of the institution on the
designated expansion site at 5050 Oakland Avenue—was completed when
that property was purchased. At the end of the year, the buildings at

70

Oak Knoll closed to the public.

Also in 1986, Dr. Dennis M. Wint was hired as President of the
Science Center. He came to plan, develop, and coordinate future growth.
Later in the year, the Commissioners approved Wint’s master planning
schedule and program. And in November 1987, the master planning
process was completed. The master plan included a refined mission state-
ment, goals and objectives, plans for programs and a new building,
strategies for a capital campaign, and guidelines for the cultivation of
current and new friends of the Science Center.!”

The Academy of Science of St. Louis, as the oldest and most loyal
friend of the re-christened institution, will have its office in the new
Science Center building when it is completed in the early 1990s. From
this new location, only a few miles from where the founders of the
Academy held their first meeting in 1856, the Academy of Science of
St. Louis will direct new projects and meet new challenges. In the new
Science Center—which will house technologies and where scientific prin-
ciples and theories will be interpreted the likes of which the founders
never dreamed—the members of the Academy will go on in the tradi-
tion of George Engelmann, William Trelease, Charles Henry Turner,
James B. Macelwane, Harold Bulger, and Stratford Lee Morton.
Furthermore, they will forge ahead, making the path clearer for those
who wish to embark on expeditions of discovery for the sake of en-
hancing human power and knowledge.

Part IX. Notes
Notes To Part |

1. Perhaps the most infamous duel fought on ‘‘Bloody Island’’ occurred
in 1817, when Thomas Hart Benton killed Charles Lucas on the notorious sand-
bar. In 1831, another sensational duel took place on the island that resulted
in the deaths of both participants—director of the St. Louis branch of the Bank
of America, Thomas Biddle, and congressman, Spencer Pettis. St. Louis’ con-
siderable reputation for violence was based on such duels, the frontier and
riverboat mystique, and on the despicable ‘McIntosh affair.’’ Francis McIn-
tosh was a free mulatto steamboat steward arrested for a minor offense in St.
Louis in 1836. When McIntosh asked what would likely happen to him, he
was told he would probably be hanged. Upon hearing this, McIntosh panicked
and tried to escape, killing one man and wounding another. He was captured
and placed in jail, but a mob took him, tied him to a tree on the corner of
Tenth and Market streets and slowly roasted him to death. News of this hor-
rendous act shocked the nation. See James Neal Primm, Lion of the Valley:
St. Louis (Boulder, 1981), 181-188.

2. ‘‘Memorial of the Western Academy of Natural Sciences, at St.
Louis,’’ 26 Congress, Ist Sess., S. Doc., no. 71, 13 January 1840.

3. Act of Incorporation, Constitution and By-Laws of the Western
Academy of Natural Sciences (St. Louis, 1837).

4. Anzeiger des Westens, 4 February, 1937.

5. After returning from the Northwest in 1805, William Clark settled
in St. Louis as territorial governor and Indian agent. He assembled an im-
pressive collection of natural history specimens and Indian artifacts he had
collected on the Lewis and Clark expedition, augmenting it with later acquisi-
tions. These items could be seen in a little museum Clark opened in rooms
in his home. Just how much of Clark’s collection was given to the Western
Academy is unknown. See Walter B. Hendrickson, ‘‘The Western Academy
of Natural Sciences of St. Louis,’’ Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 16
(January, 1960): 126.

6. Ibid

7. Ibid.: 127-128.
8. ‘‘Memorial of the Western Academy, at St. Louis.”’
9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Walter B. Hendrickson, ‘‘The Western Academy of Natural Sciences
of St. Louis’’: 238.

12. Quoted in Walter B. Hendrickson, ‘‘Natural Science and Urban
Culture in the Nineteenth Century Middle West,’’ Transactions of the
Academy of Science of St. Louis (hereafter cited as **TAS’’) 31 (1958):
128-129.

13. Missouri Saturday News, 10 February 1838.

14. Engelmann was the first person to point out that American grapes
72

were immune to the phylloxera that ravaged European vineyards, for exam-
ple. He hoped to inspire German immigration to America through his exten-
sive writings in a publication, entitled Das Westland, which was edited in
St. Louis but printed in Heidelberg at Joseph Engelmann’s publishing house.
See, William G. Bek, ‘‘George Engelmann: Man of Science, Part I,’’ Misso'
Historical Review 23 (January, 1929): 172.

Notes To Part Il

1. Minutes of Meeting, 8 February 1856, Academy of Science of St.
Louis Manuscript Council Book (hereafter cited as ‘‘MCB’’
1856-1872, 1.

2. Ibid.

3. Minutes of Meeting, 3 March 1856, MCB 1856-1872, 1.

4. Fora good overview of the American tradition of natural history, see:
George F. Frick, ‘‘The Anglo- American Natural History Circle In the Eigh-
teenth Century,’’ T Academy of Science 6 (1975):

5. ‘‘Constitution of the Academy of Science of St. Louis,’’ The Archives
of the Academy of Science of St. Louis, St. Louis Science Center (hereafter
cited as ‘‘AAS’’)

6. Ibid.

7. ‘‘By-Laws,’’ TAS 1 (1856-1860): 11-14.

8. : Mary J. Klem, ‘‘The History of Science in St.
Louis,’’ TAS 23 (1914-1920): 100-101.

9. Frederick Starr, “‘The Academy of Science of St. Louis,”” Appleton’s
Popular Science Monthly (March, 1898): 10

10. For a detailed discussion of Engelmann’s role in the development
of the Missouri Botanical Garden, see William B. Faherty, Henry Shaw, His
Life and Legacies (Columbia, 1987).

11. Enno Sander, ‘‘George Engelmann,”’ TAS 4 (1878-1886): 18.

12. Robert E. ern ‘Frederick Adolphus Wislizenus,’’ ISIS 76
(February, 1938): 3

a. eis. Ein Ausflug nach den Felsen-Geibergen in Jahre
1839 an Louis, 1840
4. Quoted in Mary J. Klem, ‘‘The History of Science in St.
Lou Le Memoir of a Tour To Northern Mexico In Con-
nection With the Expedition Of Colonel Doniphan in 1846 and 1847
(Washington, 1848).

16. See, James Neal Primm,
161-164.

7 oo ue of the Academy of Science of St. Louis,’’ AAS.

19. ‘‘Journal of Proceedings,’’ TAS | ( 1856-1860).

Lion of the Valley: St. Louis,

73

20. Ibid.

21. C. Donald Deggendorf, A Short History of the Academy of Science
of St. Louis (Bank of St. Louis: St. Louis, 1960), 6

22. ‘‘Journal of Proceedings, January 12, 1857,’’ TAS 1 (1856-1860):
33. Paul Heroult and Charles Martin Hall independently developed practical,
relatively inexpensive processes for extracting aluminum from alumina in 1886.

23. William Trelease, ‘‘The Academy of Science of St. Louis: A
Biography,’’ Popular Science Monthly 63 (December, 1903): 117.

24. Minutes of Meeting, 4 August 1856, MCB 1856-1872, 13-14.

25. ‘‘Journal of Proceedings, January 11, 1858,’’ TAS 1 and 2; ‘‘Minutes
of Meetings,’’ MCB 1856-1872, AAS.

26. ‘‘Journal of Proceddings, January 11, 1858,’’ TAS 1 and 2.

27. ‘‘Journal of Proceedings, January 11, 1858,’’ TAS 1 (1856. 1860):
aeo.

28. See, Minutes of Meeting, 3 January 1870, MCB 1856-1872, 385-386;
Trelease, ‘“The Academy of Science of St. Louis’’: 124; Minutes of Meeting,
4 January, 1869, MCB 1856-1872, 364-372; ‘‘Journal of Proceedings, January
11, 1858,’’ TAS 1 (1856-1860): 107; and Minutes of Meeting, 3 January 1881,
MCB 1873-1885, 365.

29. George Engelmann, ‘‘Fall of Rain (Including Melted Snow) in St.
Louis from 1839 to 1861,’’ TAS 1 (1856-1860): 660-662; ‘‘Elevation of St.
Louis Above the Gulf of Mexico,’’ TAS 1 (1856-1860): 663-667; ‘‘Stage of
the Mississippi River at St. Louis in 1861,’’ TAS 1 (1856-1860): 80-86. The
other articles mentioned can be seen in TAS 1 and 2.

30. Albert Koch, ‘‘Mastodon Remains in the State of Missouri,’’ TAS
1 (1856-1860): 61-64. See also John Francis McDermott, ‘‘Dr. Koch’s
Wonderful Fossils,’’ Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 4 (July, 1948):
233-256.

31. Koch: 61-62.

32. Ibid.: 62.

33. A. Wislizenus, ‘‘Was Man Contemporaneous With the Mastodon?”’
TAS 1 (1856-1860): 168-171.

34. “Journal of Proceedings, April 5, 1858,’’ TAS 1 (1856-1860):
115-117.

35. Mastodons migrated widely over Eurasia during the Miocene and
reached North America near the middle of the epoch via the Siberian-Alaskan
land bridge. The Pleistocene species may have been exterminated by humans
within the last several thousand years.

36. Holmes later became a strong believer in the theory of evolution.
See D.K. Greger, ‘‘Nathaniel Holmes,”’ Academy of Science of St. Louis
Bulletin 1 (April, 1935): 28.

37. See, for example, Hiram A. Prout, ‘Description of New Species
of zehner from Texas and New Mexico,”’ TAS 1 (1856-1860): 228-237.

38. C.C. Parry, ‘‘Ascent of Pike’s Peak, say 1, 1861,” TAS 2
(1861- 86): 120-125.
39.

C. Parry, ‘Account of the Passage Through the Grand Canyon

74

of the Colorado of the West,’’ TAS 2 (1861-1868): 499-503.

40. See, Harold A. Bulger, ‘‘First Man Through the Grand Canyon,”’
Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 17 (July, 1961): 324; and William H.
Goetzman, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and Scientist in the Win-
ning of the West (New York, 1966), 394-397.

41. G.C. Broadhead, ‘‘Missouri’s Geological Surveys,’’ TAS 4
(1878-1886): 611-624.

42. Minutes of Meeting, 10 January 1859, MCB 1856-1872, 109-110.

43. Minutes of Meeting, 6 January 1879, MCB 1873-1885, 319.

Notes To Part Ill

1. Minutes of Meeting, 3 January 1882, MCB, 1873-1885, 395.
2. Trelease, ‘‘The Academy of Science of St. Louis’’: 127.

3. ‘‘Constitution,’’ TAS 13 (1903): xiii-xvil.

4. Trelease, ‘‘The Academy of Science of St. Louis’’: 127.

5. ‘Article 5 - Constitution,’ TAS 13 (1903): xiii-xvil.

6. Trelease: 127.

7. Ibid.: 126.

8.

9.

Ibid.
Ibid.: 128.

10. The Academy’s constitution provided for the formation of special
topical ‘‘sections.’’ One section that was organized was the Archaeological
Section, which conducted several digs in the Mississippi River Valley in the
1870s. The pottery they unearthed on these expeditions came to the Academy.
For a description, see: W.B. Potter and Edward Evers, Contributions to the
Archaeology of Missouri by the Archaeology Section of the St. Louis
Academy of Science: Part I, Pottery (Salem, Mass., 1880).

11, :Trelease: 125:

12. Daniel J. Kelves, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Com-
munity in Modern America (New York, 1979), 26.

13. Hurter’s birds were eventually turned over to Washington Univer-
sity. Most of the collection, however, is now housed at the St. Louis Science
Center.

14. See Julius Hurter, ‘Catalog of Reptiles and Batrachians found in the
Vicinity of St. Louis,” TAS 6 (1892-1894): 251-262.

15. ‘‘Julius Hurter, Sr.,’’ St. Louis Natural History Museum Associa-
tion Bulletin 1 (November, 1918): 1-3.

16. Trelease: 128-129.

Notes To Part IV

St. Louis’: 129.
> TAS 16 (1906): xv-xcix.
908-1909): Ixiii-lxv. The

1. Trelease, ‘‘The Academy of Science of
2. ‘*Celebration of 50th Anniversary, Record,
3. ‘‘President’s Report, Record,’’ TAS 18 (1

75

endowment fund stood at $7,400 in 1909, and the Treasurer reported a surplus
in the general fund of over $200.

4. Ibid.

5. Minutes of Meeting #1067, 3 January 1916, Academy Meeting Book
(hereafter cited as ‘‘AMB’’) 1909-1936, 318-322

6. Minutes of Council Meeting #411, 15 — 1917, Council Book
(hereafter cited as ‘‘CB’’) 1909-1933, 328-330.

Minutes of Council Meeting #400, 204-306; #408, 320; and #414,
336-414: CB 1909-1933.

8. The Academy’s revenues for 1917 dropped to only $1,529. Of that
amount, only $363 came from receipt of member’s dues.

9. Minutes of Council Meeting #423, 23 February 1918, CB 1909-1933,
355-356.

10. See, ‘‘Record,’’ TAS 13 (1904): 22.

11. *‘William Trelease,’? Members of the Academy of Science of St.
Louis. Files, AAS.

12. Leonard W. Blake and James G. Houser, ‘‘The Whelpley Collec-
tion of Indian Artifacts,’” TAS 32 (1978): 1-2.

13. The curators of the —— s museum worked to catalogue
specimens and exhibit them in a way ‘“‘that every visitor . . . may gain all
the information the museum and library can afford.’ The library contained
about 50,000 volumes in 1918. ‘‘Record,’? TAS 16 (1906): cxxix.

14. Trelease: 128-129.

15. Minutes of Council Meeting #346, 21 April 1913, CB 1909-1933,
285-266.

16. Minutes of Council Meeting #391, 3 January 1916, CB 1906-1933,
285-286.

17. Kelves, The Physicists, 17.

18. Minutes of Council Meeting #281, 1 March 1909, CB 1906-1933, 16.

19. See, Minutes of Council Meeting #400, 11 March 1916, CB
1909-1933, 304-306

Notes to Part V

1. George T. Moore to Arthur Thacher, January 10 1929, ‘‘George T.
Moore,’’ Members of the Academy, AAS.
2. Ibid.

3. See TAS 24-25.

4. Charles Henry Turner, ‘‘Ecological Studies of the Entomostraca of
the St. Louis District,’” TAS 24 (1920-1923): 16-25.

5. TAS # Pcp 1-54.

6. Ibid.:

7. See, 6 He Pohlman, ‘‘The St. Louis Natural History Association:
Its Past, Present and Future,’’ Natural History Museum Association Bulletin
1 (January, 1921): 53-57.

76

. George T. Moore to Arthur Thacher, January 10 1929, ‘‘George T.
Moore,’’ Members of the Academy, AAS.

9. Minutes of Council Meeting, 17 January 1929, CB, 1909-1933, 387.

10. Minutes of Meeting, 20 February 1934, 453; 17 April 1934, 455;
and 14 November 1934, 459: AMB 1909-1936.

11. Minutes of Council Meeting, 4 October 1934, CB 1933-1940,
542-543.

12. See, Minutes of Council Meeting, 18 February 1930, 407-408; and
Minutes of Council Meeting, 8 April 1930, 414-415: CB 1909-1933.

13. H. A. Wheeler to A. F. Satterthwait, 5 April 1930, Box 6—Archives,
Administration; 1902-1920s: Correspondence, 1930-1937, AAS.

14. Minutes of Council Meeting, 8 November 1933, CB 1933-1940,
499-501.

15. This inventory can be seen in: Minutes of Council Meeting, 12 Octo-
ber 1932, CB 1909-1933, 479a-479f.

16. TAS 27 was entirely devoted to Gayle A. Pickwell, *‘The Prairie
Horned Lark,’’ which was a very detailed study of the natural history of
Octocoris alpensis. It was a very popular issue, and the Academy received
many requests for it after it was published from amateurs and scholars alike.

17. In the 1930s the Olive Street building suffered some abuse and neglect,
although the Academy did what it could to maintain it.

Minutes of Meeting, 12 January 1932, AMB 1909-1936, 399-406.

19. Minutes of Meeting, 10 January 1935, AMB 1909-1936, 436-437.

20. The Bulletin did not replace the Transactions, as it served another
purpose. The Bulletin was designed to reach a more popular audience.

21. ‘‘Constitution of the Academy of Science of St. Louis,” AAS.

22. See, Volumes I through VII of the Bulletin, AAS.

23. For a summary of the Junior Academy’s activities for a typical year
see, Bulletin IV (May, 1938): 29-32; and Bulletin IV (June, 1938): 35-37.

24. Robert McCormick Adams, ‘‘Archaeological Investigations In Jef-
ferson County, Missouri: 1939-1940,” TAS 30 (May, 1941): 151-221.

25. A good example is: Howard B. Graves, Jr.,‘‘The Pre-Cambrian
Structure of Missouri,’? TAS 29 (January, 1938): 11-164.

26. The library was placed on shelves in a room at Washington Univer-
sity. The W.P.A. furnished a staff of six to arrange the publications.

. See, Bulletin 1 (November, 1935): 52.
28. Bulletin 1 (February, 1935): 11.

29. Bulletin 3 (May, 1937): 17.

Bulletin 3 (April, 1937): 11-12.

31. Bulletin 6 (February, 1940): 3.

32. Ibid.: 4

—
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2

Notes To Part VI

1. George F. Brightman, * ‘Frontier Agriculture In Northern Minnesota,”
TAS 31 (May, 1942): 5-25; M. F. Day, ‘Report on the Mosquitoes Collected
77

In St. Louis County During 1942,’’ TAS 31 (September, 1943): 24-45; and
I. T. Bode, et. al., ““Science In Conservation During War Times,’’ TAS 31
(September, 1943) 49-70.

2. Minutes of Meeting, 20 January 1943, Board of Trustees Meeting Book
(hereafter caer ) May 20, 1937-May 12, 1945, 30-42.

3, Thid:. 32.

4. Minutes of Meeting, 10 April, 1944, BTMB May 20, 1937-May 12,
1945, 65-66.

5. Minutes of Meeting, 8 May 1944, BTMB May 20, 1937-May 12, 1945,
72-78.

6. Minutes of Meeting, 5 August 1944, BTMB May 20, 1937-May 12,
1945, 79-83.

7. Edward P. Meiners, et. al., ‘‘For Human Knowledge and Power: A
Centennial History of the Academy wie Science of St. Louis,’’ TAS 31 (1956):
17-18.

8. Minutes of Meeting, 31 June 1955, Board of Directors Meeting Book
(hereafter ‘‘BDMB’’) September 21, 1954-n.d.

M1

10. Other titles were: Winslow M. Walker and Robert McCormick
s, ‘Excavations at the Matthews Site, New Madrid County, Missouri,”’

TAS 31 (June, 1946): 74-120, and Walter B. Hendrickson, ‘‘Natural Science
and Urban Culture In the Nineteenth Century Middle West,’’ TAS 31 (1958):
232-248.

11. See, Minutes of Meeting, 31 June 1955, BDMB September 21,
1954-n.d., 643-645.

12. Edward P. Meiners, et. al., ‘For Human Knowledge and Power’’:
15.

13. Ibid.: 18.

14. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 20 February 1947.

15, cm Louis Globe-Democrat, 6 October 1946.

16. Elzey M. Roberts to Frank J. McDevitt, 23 September 1952, in
BDMB pee 28, 1949-July 10, 1954, 345-347.

17. Ibid.

18. The Academy’s hopes for a cultural center, funded by a bond issue,
were bolstered in 1955 when a bond issue that raised one million dollars for
a planetarium in Forest Park was successful.

19. See Arthur C. Compton to Chairman, Executive Committe eC,
Academy of Science of St. Louis, 14 February 1951, in BDMB April 28,
1949-July 20, 1954, 117.

20. Board of Alderman Board Bill No. 488, 29 January 1954, in BDMB
April 28, 1949-July 20, 1954, 475.

21. Minutes of Meeting, 17 March 1953, BDMB April 28, 1949-July
20, 1954, 402-403.

22. See, Minutes of Meeting, 16 October 1956, BDMB September 21,
1954-n.d.,

78

Notes To Part VIl

1. Minutes of Meeting, 17 December 1957, BDMB September 21,
1954-n.d., 818.

2. See, C. W. O’Key to Fred Hume, 29 January 1958, BDMB September
21, 1954-n.d., 829.

3. Minutes of Meeting, 21 October 1958, BDMB September 21,
1954-n.d., 861.

4. See , “Proposed Exhibit Program For the Museum of Science and
Natural Hiseory: Goldman House,’’ BDMB September 21, 1954, n.d.,
907-909.

5. Murl Deusing, ‘‘Deusing Talking,’’ Your Museum (September,
1959): 3

6. The e permanent exhibit galleries included ‘‘Hall of Man,”’ *‘Hall of
Space,’’ ‘‘Morton Hall of Lighting,’’ ‘‘Hall of Ecology,’’ ‘‘Man and Nature
of Matter,’’ ‘‘Teeth In Animals and Man,”’ and a ‘‘Transparent Woman’’
theater. Some traveling and temporary exhibits shown at the museum were:
‘“‘The Summary of Atomic Energy,’’ ‘‘You and the Atom,” “‘Atoms In Ac-
tion,’’ ‘‘The Beginnings of Flight,’’ ‘“The se hemetany of Calculators,’’ and

_ Sagtaphy From Five Years In Space.’

7. See, ‘‘Verbatim Transcript,’’ Minutes of Meeting, 22 February 1961,
BDMB 1953- 1976, Inc., n.p.

8. Your Museum (February, 1961): n

9. Minutes of Meeting, 8 September 1959, DMB 1953-1976, Inc., n.p.

10. In the late 1940s, Arthur Compton estimated that it would cost
$200,000 or more to put the library in good condition.

11. Since 1959, only two papers including this one have been published
by the Academy.

12. Other donors were J. Lionberger Davis, Mr. and Mrs.
Mahlon B. Wallace, Jr., and Joseph Desloge.

13. Albert P. Greensfelder died in 1955. During his lifetime he served
as a member of the Academy’s Board. The ‘‘Hall of Ecology’’ was named
the ‘‘Albert P. Greensfelder Hall’’ in his honor.

14. For an example of the pleas the Academy made to its membership,
see Your Museum (December, 1962).

15. Robert B. ie to Stratford Lee Morton, 12 February 1964, in
BDMB 1953-1976, Inc.,

16. ‘‘What Does It bia To Keep Your Museum Open?’’ The First Five
Years (Bound with Your Museum, 1959-1966, AAS.)

17. Minutes of Meeting, 15 December 1964 BDMB, 1953-1976, Inc.,
n.p.
18. For a complete description of permanent and temporary exhibits, see
James G. Houser, Record of Exhibits In Oak Knoll Museum Buildings at
Closing, December, 1986. Xerox copy, AAS.

19. The bones were those of ‘‘Phil,”’ a popular attraction at the St. Louis
Zoo until his demise from natural causes.

79

20. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8 June 1969.

21. Minutes of Meeting, 11 March 1969, BDMB 1953-1976, Inc., n.p.

22. ‘*Culture District Measure Defeated,’’ St. Louis Globe-Democrat,
15 May 1970.

23. *‘Cultural Bill Approved By Senate,’’ St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 11
June 1970. :

24. In 1970 both the Zoo and the Art Museum were partially supported
by a property tax from the city only.

25. Florissant Reporter, 11 February 1971.

26. ‘‘Zu-Mu Carries a Llama to Show District’s Glory,’’ St. Louis West
County Journal, 10 March 1971.

27. *‘Lack of Funds May Close Museum of Natural History,” St. Louis
Globe-Democrat, 22 March 1971.

28. ‘Four mayors Support Zoo District,’ St. Louis Globe-Democrat,
24 March 1971; ‘‘Roos Supports Zoo, Museum Tax,’’ St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, 1 February 1971; and ‘‘Five Missourians In Congress Support Zoo-
Museum District,’’ St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 2 March 1971.

29. ‘‘Zoo, Museum Measure OKd for Tax District,’’ St. Louis Globe-
Democrat, 14 April 1971.

30. James G. Houser, ‘‘Science Center Traces Origins To 1856,”
Discovery 6 (Fall, 1986): 12-13.

31. See, Minutes of Meeting, 8 June 1971, BDMB, 1953-1975, Inc., n.p.

32. See, James G. Houser, ‘‘The Bulger Acquisition,’ Discovery 4
(Summer, 1984): 4-6.

33. See, ‘‘Stratford Lee Morton,’’ Members, AAS.

34. Ibid.

Notes To Part VIII

1. For a description of Roger Tory Peterson’s show, see: Lois Miklas,
““Nature Artists: A Part of the American Tradition,’’ Discovery 1, (Spring,
1981): 4-6.

2. This film was produced for the Academy by Double Helix Corpora-
tion with technical assistance from Academy members Janey Symington and
J. Brian Berry.

3. Leonard W. Blake and James G. Houser, ‘‘The Whelpley Collection
of Indian Artifacts,’” TAS 32 (1978).

4. See, Jules D. Campbell and Susan S. Schepman, ‘“The Academy of
Science of St. Louis, 1856-1982,’’ unpublished manuscript, Box 10, Ad-
ministration and Histories, AAS.

. “‘Solar-Powered Sculpture Commissioned By Friends,’’ Discovery 1
(Fall, 1981): 12.

6. ‘‘Overcrowding Prompts Science Museum to Seek New Location,”’
St. Louis West County Journal, 23 January 1976.

7. The firm was Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, Inc.

80

8. St. Louis Museum of Science and Natural History, ‘‘A Community
Plan For a New Science Center Serving the Children, Youth and Adults of
St. Louis City and County,’ (1975): 9.

9. Ibid.

10. See, ‘“Great Debate — Trees or Bricks?’’ St. Louis Globe-Democrat,
14 June 1979.

11. ‘‘Science Museum tax Vote Advanced; Amendment Bars Forest Park
Site,’’ St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 May 1979.

12. ‘‘Report of the President and Director,’’ Museum of Science and
Natural History Annual Report: 1980. AAS.

13. See, ‘‘Director of Development Appointed for Science Museum Ex-
pansion Plan,’’ Discovery 1 (Summer, 1981): 10.

14. Dwight Crandell, ‘“The Museum Looks Forward,’’ Discovery 2
(Spring, aah ll.

15. ‘‘The St. Louis Science Center,’’ Discovery 3 (Spring, 1983): 8.

16. Minutes of Meeting, 18 June 1984, Board of Trustees Meeting
Minutes 1980-1986. AAS.

17. Dennis M. Wint, ‘‘Report of the President,”’ St. Louis Science Center
Annual Report: 1986: 3. AAS

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