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Description

An Early St. Louis Rarity

Rare Map and View of the Great 1849 Saint Louis Fire.  

In 1849,  St. Louis was a city of 63,000 and quickly becoming the gateway to the west.  1849 was also the year of two great tragedies in St. Louis, a devastating outbreak of cholera that killed nearly 10% of the population and the so called Great Fire.

The fire began on the night of May 17, when a burning mattress ignited the steamboat White Cloud, which in turn set the nearby steamboat Bates afire.

The Bates burned free of its mooring on what is today’s Laclede’s Landing and drifted downriver, spreading fire. Crews on boats without steam cut their lines and tried to escape in the current, but wind pushed them back into the gathering inferno. In 30 minutes, 23 steamboats were ablaze along the riverfront.

Embers fell on hemp, tobacco, wood and other freight stacked upon the landing, which then was made of limestone blocks. Fire jumped Front Street onto shanties along Locust and Vine streets. It spread south and west into the business district, where lawyers and bankers frantically retrieved books and papers. Another fire south of Market Street, sparked by burning boats, roared through wooden homes.

Firefighters and residents retreated while still battling with bucket brigades and weak streams from hoses fed with river water. The fire skipped a few all-brick buildings but consumed almost everything on nine blocks north of Market Street. It moved toward the (Old) Cathedral at Walnut and Third streets.

Firefighters saved the cathedral block with a firebreak by blowing up buildings along Market. A premature blast at Phillips Music Store, Market and Second, killed fire Capt. Thomas Targee. Firefighters protected the Market Building, the city hall at Market and Front, by kicking embers off the roof.” (St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 15, 1911)

The fire would ultimately destroy more than 400 buildings, 23 steamboats, and numerous other vessels.  These disasters would also become the impetus for a modern water and sewage system  and a new building code.

The Gast/Hutawa Map and View

Published by St. Louis' first significant local lithographer and publisher Julius Hutawa, this is one of Hutawa's earliest surviving historical broadsides. Based on the June 1849 copyright date, Hutawa must have rushed the print into production within days or weeks of the event.

Drawn by a young Leopold Gast, who would go on to become one of Hutawa's primary competitors, the image provides a perspective view of the burning downtown, as seen from a vessel on the Mississippi across the river from the Market Square. The shore is lined with blazing steamboats (including the Bates, whose name can with effort be made out on its sidewheel). Along the shore, the sceneshows a mass of residents seeking safety, while firemen pump water on the Town Hall and extinguish embers as they fall on its roof.

Hutaawa includes a large-scale plan of downtown St. Louis, with gray shading indicating the areas damaged in the fire. With the riverbank (East) at the bottom, the area covered extends west to Fourth Street and from Cherry Street in the north as far south as Almond. The street and block plan are shown, as are landmarks such as the Market Square with the Town Hall, the Catholic Church, the hospital, theater and several hotels. The largest area of fire damage is that between the river, Locust, Second and Market Streets. The shading along Market Street at Block 34 indicates the several buildings blown up to create a firebreak, which halted the progress of the conflagration.

Julius Hutawa

Lithographer and publisher Julius Hutawa was a German émigré who arrived in St. Louis in 1833 and established the city’s first lithographic firm. He specialized in maps and city views of western subjects. Artist Leopold Gast and his brother August had trained as lithographers in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1848. They lived first in Brooklyn then Pittsburgh, before arriving in St. Louis in 1852 where they opened their lithographic press. Leopold sold out to his brother in 1866, but the firm prospered until 1880, when it was destroyed by yet another fire. Given the timing of their move to St. Louis—in 1852, some three years after the fire depicted in this print—Leopold must have drawn this view either from accounts in the press or perhaps while on a scouting visit to St. Louis.

Rarity

This print is extraordinarily rare, with examples known in the Missouri History Museum and St. Louis Mercantile Library.  

The map is owned in partnership with Boston Rare Maps. This description is excerpted from the Boston Rare Maps on-line description.