Lewis's Bittersweet Return to University City

Ninety-nine years ago--April 1, 1913--the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a story about E. G. Lewis's return to University City. Though our flamboyant founder—publisher, social reformer, urban visionary, banker, educator--continues to loom large in U. City, this is a little-known incident.

Lewis had left University City two years before, pursued by creditors and (never-proven) charges of mail fraud. He had settled in California, and was founding a new model community, Atascadero. But he was still nominally mayor of University City, and apparently it still held first place in his affections.

At the Park Hotel on Melville Avenue (now an apartment building owned by Washington University), Lewis met the press. Puffing on a big cigar, he sketched a golden future for U. City. Atascadero was only the start--he was building an empire in the West and South. But his new communities would be mere "colonies." The capital would be University City, the great Midwest metropolis of which St. Louis would be only a suburb.

It's only fair to say that in 1913, imperialism still had a good name. It wasn't odious to talk of empires and colonies. And Lewis was speaking not of conquest but of commercialism. St. Louis would be the business and distribution hub of a Western hinterland, just as Chicago already was of much of the Midwest. Even with all that said, the article still makes Lewis look bad. It has a sarcastic undertone; the reporter writes that Lewis's ambitions of a Western empire are even grander than Aaron Burr's, leaving the reader to recall that Burr ended up on trial for treason.

Perhaps Lewis had returned to a place where he had already overstayed his welcome. A few days before, at a rally for mayoral candidate August Heman, he’d felt he had to remind the audience of all he had done to establish U. City, and defend himself against old enemies with familiar grievances. Another mayoral candidate, Charles J. Cornwell, took the podium to complain about an old debt. "E.G. Lewis is the greatest promiser the world ever knew," he concluded.

At least one purpose of Lewis's return visit was achieved. He endorsed Heman, saying, "I dreamed University City, and now it is time for a good contractor like August Heman to take hold in my place." Heman won the election and, according to historian Nikki Harris, did what Lewis hoped he would do. He straightened out the city's finances, expanded its borders, and in general, set the city up for a successful first century. He has a street and park named for him, but his is not a name to conjure with, as Lewis’s is. That may tell us something about the relative positions of dreamers and contractors.