I recently purchased this oddly beautiful, early 1920’s Niederfeld Funeral Home advertising thermometer-- talk about cool! Back in the day, Niederfeld apparently provided East St. Louisans with mourning time sincerity and financial fairness, ambulance service, as well as a gold-trimmed gauge to determine the ever madcap, midwest temperature tantrums. After much online digging, I could only find one actual mention of this business listed anywhere on the world wide web, --and the name was even misspelled as "Siederfeld." Fancy that illustration of the foreboding funeral home though, as well as the old-time hearse parked 'round back. Google Street View provided zero evidence of the structure still existing, so I decided to just jump in my new-time car and make the 45 minute trek across the Mighty Mississippi into Illinois and see the location myself. Unfortunately, whatever corner the funeral home once occupied remains a mystery, as considering the 4 possible intersection area choices, only one was actually in current use (some kind of small business garage or something.) The other three corners were simply vacant lots, brutally bare, and overgrown with grass though still showing some traces of foundational elements, proving that something once stood there, there, annnnd over there. But which corner actually belonged to Niederfeld? It would of course be wonderful to find an old photo of that impressive Victorian facade, so if any of you have impeccable internet sleuthing skills, I am putting you to the test! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
5 comments:
Well, I didn't find anything in twenty minutes, either. Except, wow, E. St. Louis is a wild ghost town, and I wish I'd spent a little time driving around over there when I visited Missouri. Not that I'm that keen on so-called "slum tourism" (I wish there was a better term), but the glimpse into such a severe population decline and the overgrown historic vacancies dotting an otherwise barren landscape is certainly something to be contemplated. The Majestic Theater building is amazing looking.
I imagine there are a few angles of attack looking up something like this. I chose looking for vintage maps, and turned up very little. Well, I found an amazing panoramic map of the Missouri side of the city from the 1870's, but that didn't help. If I try some more later, I'll try searching newspapers instead.
If this building survived the race massacre in 1917, there ought to be pictures of it somewhere.
This is a super neat artifact, by the way. I'm so glad you turned it up.
I decided to take a different tack, since St Louis and East St Louis are so close together, I looked under "Niederfeld, East St Louis MO" figuring thet would have done business in both cities.
Under Google-
Based on historical records, Niederfeld Undertaking Co. (also referred to as Niederfeld's Parlors) was a funeral home operating in East St. Louis, Illinois, during the early 20th century, specifically active around the 1920s.
Context: The company handled funeral services, including prominent mentions in the East St. Louis Daily Journal in the 1920s.
I then searched Google maps and a 1921 map of St Louis, East St Louis from the St Louis Public Library Historical Digital Collections, to compare the changes made over a century (name changes, streets demolished to make room for the railroad and airport, etc.)
From the thermometer, the address Ninth street and Ohio, the only thing still standing on Ninth street is the Bethel Christian Worship Center 437 9th St East St Louis IL 62201.
I think the mention of East 404 was the phone number.
It seems like that funeral parlor, much like the brownstone houses and mansions, once so popular in in New York and Philadelphia, were demolished in the name of progress.
Thanks JMR! I don’t even remember seeing a worship center near that intersection, though I’m guessing it was further down at the far end of the block. And looking at the map I guess the building closer to the intersection (that I thought was some kind of business garage) is actually a school. Still hoping for a photo to turn up! Appreciate ya!
I'm glad to be of help.
One detail to consider, maybe they had more than one location, one in East St Louis and one in St Louis, a location to handle each city.
It still feels kind of strange to think of the 1920's as a century ago. For those of us who grew up in the 70's and 80's, the 1920's were the past but not the distant past, not the century ago past, especially if we had uncles, aunts and grandparents who were young adults back in the 20's and were still around as we were growing up.
That's the kind of house I always wanted to live in as a kid. I had a chance to buy one like that once, but was outbid (it needed a ton of work, so the bids were very low but a general contractor outbid me by a bit.) Would be interesting to know where my life would have been if I bought it, but those are the ravages of time.
"No charge for use of funeral home." That seems way to open-ended of an offer!
Post a Comment