DOGTOWN RESIDENT EXPLORES NEIGHBORHOOD'S LORE, LEGENDS

By Renee Stovsky
Photo by Sam Leone
St. Louis Post-Disptach
January 31, 2001

Bob Corbett, a professor who recently retired from Webster University, is doing research on Dogtown and has received information on the St. Louis neighborhood from people all over the world.

The tale of dog-eating tribespeople is "pure romanticism," says retired professor Bob Corbett.

Bob Corbett would like, first of all, to set the record straight.

The area known as Dogtown, on the western edge of St. Louis, does not owe its moniker to the Igorots, that colorful head-hunting, dog-eating Filipino tribe that was among the most popular attractions at the 1904 World's Fair.

It is utter urban legend, believes Corbett, 62, a recently retired professor of philosophy at Webster University, that the neighborhood was so named because hungry Igorots, who were living near the current site of Wydown Middle School in Clayton, came to Dogtown, the closest inhabited area, to poach pups whenever a feeding frenzy was upon them.

"Pure romanticism," he says. "Can you imagine a scantily clad aborigine prowling about undetected in a rough miner's community, looking for stray dogs? Any Igorots who ventured there alone would soon have been dead Igorots."

Dogtown - the area roughly bounded by Macklind Avenue on the east, McCausland Avenue on the west, Oakland Avenue on the north and Manchester Avenue on the south - most probably got its name instead about 1876, when St. Louis officially obtained the acreage that now makes up Forest Park.

Irish miners, who had been living close to a coal mine there, were uprooted by the city. They settled near what is now Seamus McDaniel's, a tavern at 1208 Tamm Avenue, to continue working in the area's clay mines and brick factories. Uneasy about leaving their families without protection from hoboes who wandered about the area, many of them obtained watchdogs to guard their properties - hence the name Dogtown, says Corbett.

Of course, there are still those who hold fast to the Igorot story, hotly contesting Corbett's theory. And they are more than welcome to publicly do so at www.corbettland.com, his extensive Dogtown Web site. In fact, Corbett invites such discussions eagerly, along with personal reminiscences of growing up in St. James the Greater Parish, living in the shadows of Laclede Brick Factory or dancing at The White House on Saturday nights.

Corbett grew up in Dogtown, as did his father; his grandparents moved to the area from Kerry Patch in 1915. After a 30-year hiatus in Webster Groves, he moved back in 1993 to help care for his ailing parents. In an effort to weave himself back into the fabric of the neighborhood, he began researching its roots.

"There were lots of stories and myths - none particularly accurate - circulating about Dogtown then. I started nosing around, asking lots of questions. People seemed fascinated that someone cared," says Corbett.

Before long, his scholarly bent kicked in.

"I tracked down a reputed local historian, Louis Schmidt, who had written a number of essays on the area, though he had chosen not to document his research," says Corbett. "Before he retired to Branson, I copied his computer discs and an enormous number of his papers. It was a gold mine of information."

That's when Corbett began delving into Dogtown's past in a major way, interviewing residents, tracking down pictures and finding legitimate historical sources - all while continuing his teaching career, including stints at Webster University's campus in Vienna, Austria.

"I'm a pretty compulsive person," admits Corbett. "You might say this quest took over my life."

About two years ago, he began building the Web site based on his research files. It offers essays on facets of Dogtown history from the Forest Park Highlands to the St. Patrick's Day parades; photos of almost every St. James School graduating class dating from 1904; and a continuing discussion group that now boasts 120 members from Australia to Alaska - all avid Dogtown aficionados.

And though many of them are former residents who simply want to connect with classmates from various schools (Gratiot, Roe and Dewey public elementary schools as well as St. James) or trade neighborhood gossip from Franz Park or Hi-Pointe, Corbett finds their chatter to be "highly personalized oral histories, full of fascinating nostalgia" that provides him with new avenues to research.

"My own interest is to try to excite people about Dogtown's history in a larger sense - the origins of the neighborhood, its phases and development," he says.

To that end, Corbett offers the following thumbnail sketch:

• Dogtown's first settler, Charles Gratiot, received a Spanish land grant for the area from Kingshighway to Big Bend and mid-Forest Park to Pernod Avenue and built a wooden summer house on a plateau there in 1810. A two-hour buggy ride from downtown St. Louis, the area, a beautiful part of the River Des Peres valley, was a wildlife haven and country refuge.
• In the 1840s, Bill Sublette, a colorful mountain man, Indian guide, rake and adventurer, built a stone mansion where the Holiday Inn at Hampton Avenue and Interstate 44 now stands. When he died, his widow married his brother and they sank the first commercial mineshaft on the property.
• In 1853, Etienne Cabet, a communist leader in France under the reign of Louis Philippe, arrived in the Cheltenham area of Dogtown with 200 followers to establish a colony he called the Icarians. Cabet died in 1856, and his communist movement dissolved shortly thereafter because of financial woes and mosquito infestations from the River Des Peres.
• On Sept. 29, 1864, Confederate soldiers staged a raid on the post office, run by August Muegge, along Manchester Avenue near the eastern section of Dale Avenue. Union soldiers pursued them as far as Old Watson Road.
• When Irish miners arrived in 1876 and settled near Graham's Well (now the 1300 block of Graham Avenue), Dogtown, which sits atop high-quality yellow Cheltenham fire clay, began to grow. At one time, it was home to 27 mines and 15 brick factories.
• The World's Fair had a huge effect on Dogtown. Beginning in 1899, when it was clear that the exposition was going to be in Forest Park, construction workers flocked to the area and lived in boarding houses and bungalows - some of which still stand along the 6400 block of Nashville - while they built the fair. A railroad to ship goods was built from Manchester to the fairgrounds, and streetcars brought the crowds to see the attractions. That public transportation eventually transformed Dogtown into a bedroom community for downtown workers.
• Dogtown's mining industry declined dramatically through the 1920s and was nearly dead by the '30s. Originally an Irish-Catholic neighborhood, the area began to diversify with German Jews, Italians and blacks moving into small sections of town. Though Deaconess Hospital (now Forest Park Hospital) overshadowed much of the other development, the neighborhood teemed with small shops, ice-cream parlors, confectioneries and "thousands of pubs," says Corbett.
• A dramatic period of decline began after World War II and lasted To about 1975. Returning GIs who grew up in Dogtown found no housing available in the area and began a mass exodus to the Ferguson-Florissant area. Elderly residents predominated, businesses closed, and the housing stock became rundown.
• In the late 1970s, young urban professionals were attracted to Dogtown's affordability, proximity to Forest Park, midtown and downtown, and relative safety. They flocked to the area, upgraded the housing and began to breathe new life into an old neighborhood. Today Dogtown remains a mixture of newcomers and old-timers, some of whom are starting to take a serious look at preserving neighborhood history.

There is talk of beginning a Dogtown Historical Society, for instance, and the first meeting of Corbett's e-mail discussion group recently took place at a union hall on Tamm Avenue. Corbett has led some informal walking tours of the area; he is now compiling lists of century homes and attempting to collect bricks from the different factories that once operated in Dogtown. He has fielded inquiries about publishing a book on Dogtown but says he remains philosophically opposed to the idea.

"I don't like the idea of selling intellectual property; I prefer the free exchange of ideas on my Web site," he says. "I have other goals. Right now, I'd love to be able to distribute used computers to some of the elderly residents of Dogtown. They probably have fabulous stories to contribute."

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The article was accompanied by photos.

Caption:
(1) Color photo by SAM LEONE/POST-DISPATCH - Bob Corbett, a recently retired professor from Webster University, is doing research on Dogtown and has received information on the St. Louis neighborhood from people all over the world.
(2) Color map by the Post-Dispatch - DogtownPHOTO, MAP