Fort Union Trading Post Historic Structures Report (Part II) Historical Data Section

By any standard, the bourgeois' house at Fort Union was the most elaborate structure on the upper Missouri during the heyday of the fur trade. However, today's student, impressed with the elegant sketches of the building that Kurz drew in the early 1850's, finds it difficult to visualize the simpler structure that was the bourgeois' house prior to Kurz' time.

Denig wrote the most thorough description of the structure in 1843, before the modifications. This description provides the best starting point for developing the history of the building:

It is 78 feet front by 24 feet depth, and a story and a half high. The front has a very imposing appearance, being neatly weather boarded, and painted white, and with green window-shutters; it is roofed with shingle, painted red to preserve the wood. In the roof in front are four dormer windows, which serve to give light to the attic. The piazza in front adds much to the comfort and appearance, the posts are all turned, and painted white.

He continued:

The interior of this building is handsomely papered and ornamented with portraits and pictures, and portioned off in the following manner. Mr. Culbertson [the bourgeois] has the principal room, which is large, commodious, and well-furnished; from it he has a view of all that passed within the fort. Next to this is the office, which is devoted exclusively to the business of the Company. . . . These two rooms occupy about one-half of the building. In the middle is a hall eight feet wide, which separates these rooms from the other part. In this is the mess-room, which is nearly equal in size to that of Mr. Culbertson. Here the bourgeois, taking his seat at the head of the table . . . serves out the luxuries. . . to his visitors and clerks, who are seated in their proper order and rank. The mechanics of the fort eat at the second table. Adjoining this room is the residence of Mr. Denig (the author and chief clerk].

In one of the upstairs rooms at this time Audubon and his party had their beds:

In the room next to this is always kept a selection of saddlery and harness, in readiness for rides of pleasure. . . . The next apartment is the tailor's shop, so placed as to be out of the way of the Indian visitors as much as possible, who. . . would steal. . . . So much for the principal house.

Maximilian (1833) was the first to put down his impressions of the building, "the house of the commandant; it is one story high, and has four handsome glass windows on each side of the door. The roof is spacious, and contains a large, light loft. This house is very commodious and, like all the buildings. . . constructed of poplar wood." Bodmer's sketch of this same period also indicates clearly that the house is still 1-1/2 stories high. Taken literally, Maximilian said the upstairs was still one large loft and not yet divided into the three rooms that Denig listed (above).

In the fall of 1833, when he returned from a visit to Fort McKenzie, Maximilian wrote again that "Hamilton allowed my chests to be opened in the very light spacious loft of the governor's house, in order completely to dry my things." While not specifically placing it in this house, he also said that "a well-lighted and pleasant apartment likewise enabled us to continue our employments during our. . . stay." Also, the prince mentioned enjoying a seat by the fireplace in the evenings.

Bodmer, that autumn, had "a good clear room" in which to paint. However, as will be noted later, this may have been a separate structure (HS 17) and not a room in the bourgeois' house. Finally, Maximilian recorded that the fence around the house had been damaged by a horse chewing on it, even though the fence had been painted reddish-brown.

Clerk Larpenteur's 1835 diary includes a few references to the house. Again, when tearing down the old store range, the retail stores were moved into "the Northwest end room of Mr. McKenzie's Dwelling house." This is apparently the room that was Denig's quarters by 1843. The kitchen building (HS 8) was to the north of the bourgeois' house, and Larpenteur reported that three men were "splighting the fire wood small and piling it between the kitchen and the Dwelling house." Also, during that busy summer of 1835, "Holmes commenced building the inside of the office with rocks to the weather boarding between studing in order to be plaistered over."

There is a possibility that in 1837 part of the attic served as a library. When the smallpox hit that year, Larpenteur's diary noted that "Doctor Thorns Medical Book was brought down from the Library and the Treatment of small Pox vanination noculation was read over and over." Larpenteur's memoirs recalled the dining room the first time he saw it, "On entering the eating hall, I found a very white tablecloth, and two waiters, one a negro. Mr. McKenzie was sitting at the head of the table. . . . [Larpenteur's seat ] would come very near the end of the table for it appeared to go by grade."

On one occasion, in 1835, the house became a fortification, according to Larpenteur. Too many Indians had come into the fort proper, and Bourgeois Hamilton became quite concerned lest they attack. He ordered Larpenteur "to bring eight or ten muskets out of the bastion and put them on the men's table in the dining room; also to put one of the smallest cannon in a passage of the main quarters (the downstairs hallway?]." Then "the window blinds [shutters?] of the dining room were opened," and the cannon was pulled through the hall so as to make a great deal of noise. These activities succeeded in quieting the Indians, and Hamilton sent Larpenteur to the cellar to get a bottle of Madeira. Remnants of this cellar are to be found today.

While Denig wrote his description for Audubon (1843), the latter kept a journal of his own in which he made references to the bourgeois' house. The Audubon party was first given a small, dark, dirty room "with only one window, on the west side." Audubon found it difficult to believe that Prince Maximilian had stayed in this same room for two months in 1833. This description suggests that the room was in or near the dwelling range (HS 9) to the west of the bourgeois' house. However, there are two additional factors to be considered. During the evening, the Audubon party was disturbed by a drunk in a room above theirs. Later that night a dance in the dining room interrupted the visitors rest. According to Harris, their room adjoined the ballroom and was 12 by 14 feet. This implies that Denig's quarters in the west part of the house were divided into at least two rooms and that Audubon and friends occupied one of them.

At any rate, the visitors gathered up their robe beds and moved to a cleaner, quieter room upstairs the next day. Sprague's sketches of the fort from the south bank of the Missouri, done at this time, also show the roof-top of the house. It still appears to be a 1-1/2 story structure.

When Kurz arrived at Fort Union in 1851, Denig was then the bourgeois and had undoubtedly moved himself into the appropriate quarters. It is possible that Kurz inherited Denig's old quarters in the west end of the building. He said that "the room in which I am now writing was put in order for me and furnished with bedstead, two chairs, and a large table. Here I am alone." Later he wrote, "Engagees are giving a dance at their own expense in the dining room, which is near me." His quarters had problems however: "Rain. . . penetrated through the roof and ceiling into my room in such quantities that I was forced to the constant occupation of placing water basin and empty paint pots beneath the leaks."

Four years before Kurz, Father Nicholas Point stopped at Fort Union on his last journey from the missions of the Pacific Northwest to civilization. While waiting for the steamboat, he took time to do two sketches of Fort Union. His rendition of the interior of the fort shows the bourgeois' house to be still the 1-1/2 story structure described above--although Father Point's sense of proportion is not what it could be. Besides the four dormer windows, the roof line extends outward with a change in pitch to form a porch. Audubon wrote of sleeping on this porch.

Kurz found a greatly changed building. The long porch had been removed. The space between the two chimneys had been enlarged to a full second story. Only the two outside of the original four dormer windows remained. In front now stood a handsome two-story porch. Kurz, one of the best artists ever at Fort Union, did three handsome sketches of the house, 1851-52, recording these changes in fine detail. Strangely nothing has yet been found in Bourgeois Denig's correspondence discussing the remodeling.

One of Kurz' first jobs on arriving at Fort Union in the fall of 1851, was to paint the outside of the house. It is quite possible that the reason for this assignment was that the carpentry work had just been finished. In his most detailed diary, Kurz described his progress:

I am to paint. . . the front of the house, and then I am to decorate the reception room with pictures.

This entire day I have been painting, with the assistance of two clerks. . . the balcony and reception room.

Last week I. . . painted the pickets in front of the house.

Mr. Denig expressed the wish that I paint also a sideboard in the mess hall.

Had to paint, from a medal, the portrait of Pierre Chouteau, Jr., in a gable over the house gallery. All day long I had to work in a most uncomfortable position on an unsafe scaffold.

In an excellent sketch of the front of the house, dated September 18, 1851, Kurz showed the various colors he used. The fence, that Maximilian had described as reddish brown, was now white; however, the fence posts, four hitching posts, and the railings around both the upper and lower porches were now red. The eight pillars around both porch levels were now painted blue (in 1843 the pillars were white). A new gallery on the top of the roof had blue posts, white pickets, and red railings. A circle indicated the painting of Chouteau on the gable over the second-floor porch. The weather-boarding on the front of the house was white. The roof, in contrast to the red described by Denig in 1843, now appears to be unpainted. Another change, from green to red, is to be noted for the shutters.

Other details of the remodeled house that may be noted in Kurz' sketches and his journal include: two large stones set as steps to a door in the west end of the building, a gable window in the west end, a large staff on the roof gallery (this may have been intended as a lightning rod, as requested at an earlier time), a wide walkway running along the front of the house, and a narrow board walkway leading from the front door to the main gate. Kurz sketched a meeting between Denig and some Indians in the office east of the main hall. The details include a wooden floor, a rather elegant chair, a bench, Kurz' life-sized portrait of Denig, and one of the large eagle flags that Kurz painted for trading purposes.

When appointed to clerk, Kurz noted that he was responsible for everything everywhere, including the attic and the cellar. Besides the fireplaces, this house was equipped with at least one iron stove, at which Denig liked to warm himself. Kurz, on one occasion, made reference to a garret "that serves as storage room for drugs, paints, and crackers."

One year after Kurz left Fort Union, in 1853, John Frise Stanley sketched the fort from outside its walls. The roof of the bourgeois' house appears, people are standing on the roof-tap gallery and a large flag is waving from the staff.

In 1864, Larpenteur, now the bourgeois, had a flight of stairs added to the outside front of the house. Access to the upper story was then possible without going inside the building. Although he did not say why he built the stairway, he may have been influenced by the newly-arrived Army officers who took over nearly all of the house temporarily, leaving Larpenteur only his own room. Later, he was able to bring the cook in from the kitchen building to do his cooking in the dining room during the winter months. Within a short time, however, the officers had their own temporary quarters constructed. Larpenteur then had a series of small repairs made: repairing window blinds, painting the palings in front, painting the doors and chair boards.

Despite Larpenteur's efforts, the bourgeois' house decayed rapidly in the 1860's. It was now some thirty years old. About the time the Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and Company sold Fort Union, a deserter from the Civil War army, taking refuge from his colonel, sketched the fort. His details of the house show little change from Kurz' time except that the date 1851 under Chouteau's portrait was replaced by branches of leaves.

One of the last known views of the house was a photograph taken in 1866. Besides Larpenteur's new outside stairs, signs of neglect are obvious. A stovepipe sticks out of the roof; panes of glass are missing; the porch pillars are sagging, the building is askew. Within a year, the once-elegant structure was torn down.