11/11/2023
Spies, stage and despair in one stretch of sidewalk. The edges of the Ozarks end in tendrils within St. Louis, Missouri. Some ask us why St. Louis is even included, and the answer is straight-forward but not necessarily easy. Yes, geography takes us into the metropolitan area literally, but border areas are much more than a line on a map, but not nearly as defined. Sometimes a place ties disparate stories and people together, and yes, ties knots with the land beyond an arbitrary line. We often overlook this fact, especially when the walls have been knocked down and replaced, with some finality; when living memory no longer encompasses the façade, and footsteps on the floors are but disembodied echoes in another place, replacing that which was before.
Olive, Locust and Fourth Streets are all stretches I have walked, cement beneath the soles of my shoes, and I have turned my eyes upward to take in the vista of the architecture that reminds us that we have vanquished the darkness of the past. As you walk Fourth between Olive and Locust, you will pass one such place. The former Everett House, which from the 1840s to the turn of the 20th Century served as a way-station for people, and witnessed a few noir tales.
In the early days of the Civil War, the Everett House was host to Anna Ella Carroll, who was from a prominent Maryland family, and who wrote and delivered to the Lincoln administration, the plan that ultimately resulted in the Western theater campaigns in Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. Her time at the Everett House involved espionage and while watching troops from Iowa marching below her windiw to Benton Barracks, sparked literary inspiration. Her time in St. Louis resulted in pamphlets used by the War Department to illustrate the importance of the war effort. In 1865, the Everett House was witness to the telling of an up close observation of the impact of a large meteor which had been observed throughout the northern Ozarks. James Lumley, a veteran mountain man watched the meteor streak cross the sky at Cadotte Pass and hit the side of a mountain. Lumley described the meteor as the astronomical event it was, except for one detail. That one of the large pieces of rock had hieroglyphs carved onto it. A mere two years later, The Everett House was consumed by fire. The fine hotel was remodeled and lived on. Also that year, an unexplained episode occurred, leaving one guest and employees at a loss to explain, but witnesses vouched for the truthfulness of the claim. A bride reported a watch and filigree chain missing from beneath her pillow. The management was in the course of investigating, when the bride and groom returned to the hotel after touring the city to discover the watch and chain in her boot she had been wearing while walking the sidewalks which I have walked.
While suicides are not uncommon in hotels, at the Everett House, there was a pattern of interrupted suicides. In 1881, a young bride from Little Rock, Arkansas discovered her husband was a bigamist while staying at the hotel. A strong odor of laudanum was observed near her door, and employees forced the door and were able to administer treatment and saved the unconscious woman. Another young woman, a successful actress was staying at the Everett House while performing at the Theater Comique. During a performance, she suffered severe burns from theatrical explosives. During her recovery, it became obvious that her face would be permanently disfigured. Hopelessness drove her to taking a large dose of morphine, said to be enough to kill two men. Once again, employees intervened and the woman survived.
By 1904, the building was sold off on the courthouse steps due to disagreements between the owners. The Everett House may be gone, but its echoes have reverberated far beyond the block on Fourth between Olive and Locust, as well as beyond its tenure.
Β© Dark Ozarks, 2022, 2023
Sources:
Missouri History Museum http://images.mohistory.org/image/4E880DB2-7F71-0026-2A01-E26A72899FF5/original.jpg; http://collections.mohistory.org/resource/146686
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa&cc=moa&view=text&rgn=main&idno=ADG8880.0001.001
https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/umsl/islandora/object/umsl%3A259156
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Everett_House_Hotel._East_side_of_Fourth_Street_between_Olive_Street_and_Locust_Street._VM90-000414.jpg
Jonesboro Weekly Gazette (Jonesboro, Illinois) Sep 3, 1859
Daily Missouri Republican, Nov. 14, 1867
St. Louis Globe Democrat, July 14, 1890
The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 11, 1925
