Oral History Interview
Howard F. Baer
Interviewed by Bob Moore, Historian, JEFF
October 11, 1994
MOORE: This is an oral history interview with Howard Baer, conducted by Bob Moore, (historian at Jefferson National Expansion Memorial), on October 11, 1994 [at Mr. Baer's office in St. Louis].
1 First of all, Mr. Baer, I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about the creation of, the naming of Luther Ely Smith Park?
BAER: Well, I have a high regard for Mr. Luther Ely Smith, whom I think is largely responsible for the Arch itself. I had met him before that [the Arch project], because I had a wonderful mother-in-law in St. Louis named Edith Aloe, who wanted a memorial to her husband, and it exists now across from the Union Station, and it's called — it's the Carl Milles
2 fountain called ["The Meeting of the Waters"] down there, [called] "Aloe Plaza." Now Mr. Moore, [Mr. Smith] was a friend of Mrs. Aloe's. How they got to be friends, I don't know. They were about of the same age, and it may have been socially. At any rate, she was determined [to erect a memorial to her husband]. Mr. Aloe, who had been president of the Board of Aldermen and was rather prominent in political as well as business circles, had, in response to a bond issue, widened Market Street and eliminated a good deal of the slum territory. And when he died in 1929, I was newly in St. Louis as a son-in-law. She was determined to have a decent memorial for Louis P. Aloe. Mr. Smith was invaluably helpful to her — an invaluable help to her, and it was because he was very friendly with people like Mayor Dickmann and the city officials. So, without his help, I don't think she could really have put that thing over, that fountain down there, which is really a handsome thing in St. Louis.
3 I always said that I thought that he was just in training with the help he gave her, he was in training for his big job, which was the Arch. And it happened that it — and I made a comment on that, which I've got in front of me right now.
Some years later, after the Arch was built (I'll come back to that), I had been passing that park spot, that empty block in front of the Arch which is called Luther Ely Smith Park after him, but it had no name on there, it wasn't any good.
4 So I talked to Jerry Schober,
5 who was the federal guy in charge of the park, and suggested that we ought to have a decent memorial, and he was in favor of it too, so we got HOK, that is, Mr. Chip Reay of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassebaum, to design a little monument. It's gilt; gold on black marble. We put that together. And I remember the dedication, I have some of it in front of me here.
6 I spoke at that, and I said — I kind of liked this thing, I said that he was a little bit like Moses, Luther Ely Smith was, in that Moses, I think, led the Children of Israel for 40 years and then found Canaan, the place for them, but he didn't live to take them there. And that was the same thing with Mr. Smith. Both he and the architect, [Eero] Saarinen, did not live to see the finished product. But, as to the memorial [in Luther Ely Smith Square], (when I made this little talk down there), I said that he was also like, in some respects like St. Paul's Cathedral in London, which has a plaque on it. It was the product of the great architect, Wren.
7 And the plaque says, in Latin, "Si Monumentum Requiris Circumspice." Which translated means: "If you seek his monument, look about you." And we'll translate that, I say to the Arch, we'll say with Luther Ely Smith, "Si Monumentum Requiris Superspice — "look above you." And his daughter, Addie Boyd — I'm looking at this here, I'll give this to you.
8 This is really nice, but it doesn't have all that much to do with the Arch, which is what you're interested in.
What I — actually, I was too young to be influential in the Arch, but I had made a friend of Mr. Smith.
9 And of course, you know his effort here, including the struggles he had with Congress. He was an Amherst graduate. I don't think Luther Smith was a big lawyer in St. Louis, you know, like one of the big firms here today. But he was highly respected, and he had good friends, even on the Supreme Court, from his Amherst days.
10 So his — and he needed a little money, and I remember that Buster May of the May Company was always willing to help him when he needed some.
11 But he kept at it, and, of course, you've got the figures on when he first got the approval of Congress and the President to make this a National Park,
12 and at the time of his — and then of course, he went on to the competition.
13 And he hired this terrific guy, George — I've got it here, he —
MOORE: George Howe?
BAER: George Howe, who wrote a beautiful competition [booklet of rules and regulations]. I remember the occasion. Bill MacDonald, who was newly here in town to run the First National Bank was the toastmaster at the dinner, and Mrs. Baer and I had a little party after the dinner broke up, about ten o'clock.
14 The prize dinner. And we had the judges at our house. That was when Saarinen got it. Of course, he was a great architect, and it's a great piece of sculpture. I can't say that I was in any way influential, except that I was a youngster in town that had a great respect for Luther Smith, and I think without him we certainly would not have this wonderful thing.
MOORE: Would you be able to tell us a little about your memories about Luther Smith, the kind of person you remember him as, what his personality was like, that type of thing?
BAER: Well, he was a guy — Luther Ely Smith was, in the first place, he was a gentleman. He was a great friend of the family. And I remember that when — the only law business, strictly, that I had with him was when Mrs. Baer and I had adopted a — we had no children, and we were adopting a baby daughter, and he did the legal work for us and was very pleasant about the whole thing. He made the occasion even more joyous that it usually would be. He was a lovely guy. And of course he has a lovely daughter here now, too — I'm just looking at a note from her, that I'm going to give you, on the occasion of that little ceremony, we had about that business, comparing him with Christopher Wren, you know. I can't tell you too much about his personal affairs, or anything of that sort. His one daughter married Ingram Boyd, and as far as I know is still here, and still active.
MOORE: I heard that he was a rather mild-mannered person, that he was —
BAER: Loud-mannered?
MOORE: No, mild-mannered.
BAER: Very mild. Very mild. But very effective. I mean, in his quiet way he charmed people, and they knew that his ideas were good. But the main thing was that, when a guy has a message that he believes in, that's quite a job to get that damn thing done down there. Because you know, I'm sure you know better than I do what held it up so long, the railroad business, are you familiar with that?
MOORE: Yes, but anything that you could tell us about the railroad would be interesting, too.
BAER: Well, in front of where the Arch is, right along the river down by, I guess it would be [Wharf] Street, there was a trestle, and it was the property of the Terminal Railroad Association. Practically everything in and out of the station, the Terminal Railroad, went across that trestle. Well, obviously that wouldn't do with that Arch in back of it as a thing for that. And in fact, my recollection is that the Secretary of the Interior in the Roosevelt administration at that time was Ickes.
15 And he was not going to have that Arch thing approved with that railroad thing in front of it. And he said you've got to get rid of that thing first. And it was another tricky thing to do. I have a feeling, I might be wrong, that Rich Coburn, the attorney, had something to do with that, too.
16 Do you know him?
MOORE: No.
BAER: Well, he's the same age I am, which is pretty damned old. But I don't know that you need to talk with him about it. But at any rate, when Smith just wouldn't let up on that thing, and when this thing was finally settled, and the Terminal Railroad finally agreed to remove that trestle, then, of course, the thing was approved.
17 So it was just one delay after another. But look at what we've got there now.
MOORE: It's beautiful.
BAER: It is. It's wonderful, there isn't anything like it in the country, it's a beautiful piece of sculpture, and it's a shame that both Saarinen and Smith couldn't see it, but of course, that's true with all of us. I don't think there's much more I can tell you about —
MOORE: Well, maybe there's a couple of questions I could ask you that might bring some things to mind.
BAER: Alright.
MOORE: I wondered, first of all, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, when you were born, and where you went to school, and that kind of thing, just so we have that for our records —
BAER: You really want that?
MOORE: Well, just for our —
BAER: I'm a West Virginian.
MOORE: Oh, really?
BAER: Yes, Charleston, West Virginia, I was born and raised there, but I went...away to a boarding school where my mother, I don't know how she had the imagination to do it, because we were certainly not rich people, we were what you might call medium lower — not lower — medium class, and everything she did was for her children, and at that time there was only two of us, but it was something of a sacrifice. Anyway, she sent me to a school up in New England called the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. And I was there five years. And it was a wonderful experience for me. I'm still close to the school. And then she wanted me to go to Princeton, and I went there. And there I began to learn a little something about architecture, and that sort of thing. I've always been an architectural fan, just a layman, I don't know anything about it. And then at Princeton a college romance flowered with Mrs. Baer, who was at Smith. She was Isabel Aloe. There's her picture right there. Anyway, she was certainly the first St. Louisan I had ever met. And it was a college romance. And a year after graduation, we were married, and expected to live in West Virginia. My uncle had a bank and I was going to work for him, and did, but about six months later, Mr. Aloe, her father, who was president of the A.S. Aloe Company here, a surgical supply company, asked us to come home. He had a couple of nephews that he was disappointed in, and [they] didn't work out [in the business]. So he offered me a job — $500 a month, and that was a lot of money. And damn it, he wasn't paying it — or he was paying it, but he charged half of it to his own account, because he didn't want to upset the salary. When he died a couple of years later, I didn't like that, but he was right.
18 So, I ran that company for oh, over thirty years, except for three years when I was in the service in World War Two. I had been asked by the Medical Department to take a reserve commission — I think the Medical Department of the army saw that war coming better than a lot of others. Because they had asked three or four other guys, too, who I met later [in the service]. So, when Pearl Harbor came along, fifteen minutes later I remember I said to myself, "Hey, you, look out, you're in the service." Well it took me — I asked [the army] why haven't you called me, and they said, "Just sit there, because we haven't got the right thing we want you to do yet." So, about six months later they did, and I was [put] in charge of specifications of all medical materiél for the armed forces — not the armed forces, the army. A part of the Surgeon General's office of the army. And I had three years of that, and it was a very satisfying experience. I have a little memorial there, I got decorated for that — the one on the left.
19
MOORE: Were you in Washington? Is that where you were stationed?
BAER: No, New York, but I was in Washington an awful lot. We were back and forth. The office that we had was the armed — we were the purchasing agent for materiél for the medical department, and for the — you see, the air force didn't have a separate medical department then.
[Telephone rings. Break].
BAER: — of course the job was. Don't misunderstand me, I didn't know that much about everything we were buying. I didn't know anything about pharmacuticals or anything of that sort. But I did know a good deal about instruments and equipment. And, of course, we had other guys in there too. It was a pretty good office. But like everything else in my life, I found myself having to do other things beside that job, it always happened to me. We ran into an interesting situation where Avid Laboratories, unable to do any advertising at that point, it wasn't needed, and everybody quit that. They wanted to contribute to the Army Medical Department a fund for painting, in fine arts, the history of the medical department during the war. And it happened that they approached me, through, as far as I know, the other guy with the same name as mine, he was a painter named Howard Baer. And I'd heard about him, and I wanted to meet him. His stuff was in
Esquire, and he was a cartoonist, too, and all that. And I didn't know whether we'd be interested in doing that or not, and I went to my commanding officer and I said, "We've got this offer, and do you want to do it?" [He said] "Yes." Anybody in the regular army, anything like that that they can get, they — So, we had a while getting it approved, and then I said to him, "Who the hell is going to handle this?" And they said, "Well, you are." And I said "Well, that is not — " And they said "Come on, you can do that." So, it was pretty good fun. We sent these guys all over the [world] — well, China, Burma and India, and one thing or another. But I had mostly — the first year in that job in the army was hard work. I mean, they weren't shooting any bullets in New York, but I worked 364 days out of the first year, and everybody else in the office was doing it too, because we were short [staffed]. It was a good experience.
MOORE: Yes, I can't imagine the organization that had to go into that... the organization to put all that together for — The army had been really small, and suddenly when the war came, the army got really big —
BAER: That was the point, and they didn't know where to go, and they didn't know how to do it. The fact that I was in the industry was — for instance, I remember — does the firm Beck and Dickinson mean anything to you? You've seen BD products, very big. And they would call me up and say — in the army — you see, I went in as a major. And they would say, "Look, we've got a bid and the navy wants us to issue a permit, is that all right?" In other words, how did the army feel about the navy doing it. And so the fact that I had been in the industry, and there were some other guys like me, was a great help to them. The navy never paid a damn bit of attention to any rules, they just went on and did whatever they pleased. But they fought a pretty good war, too.
And when the war was over, I don't know if you'll be interested in all this, Governor Lehman was picked as a man to see what he could do to help restore Europe. And he sent a guy up and he said [to me], "Look, we've got all these medical supplies in France and Germany, all over the place now, nobody knows what the hell they are, or where they are, but the stuff is needed very badly over there now, the Germans have raped the whole continent. If you went over there, you know what the stuff is, and would you be willing to do it?" And I said, "Hell no, I've been here three years, and I've got a business at home to go back to. And it would be fun, I agree, over there, [but I can't go]." I remember that another guy was in the navy that I'd met doing some of the work going on. He was a Captain, a regular navy doctor, but he had never been overseas. And if you're in the regular...army or navy, and you're a West Pointer, or any — and if you haven't been overseas with a war on, you're in trouble, you'll never go anyplace. So he called me up and he said, "Hey, Baer, I've got me a hospital ship now, and we're going to the Pacific, and it just so happens that I need an army man on this, come on, go with me." I said, "That's wonderful, I know you're going to have a lot of fun, but I'm not going to do that, I'm going to just get out of this place." So, yes, it was a good experience.
MOORE: So you could have gone in a lot of different directions after the war.
BAER: Well, you could, but I was — see, I was 40 years old, about, when I went in, and that's pretty young in business, and it was time to go home and do something with it. Oh, yes, I had a good experience, no question about it. And New York was wonderful during the war. The theater was good; things got a little bit easier later on. I mean,
Oklahoma was — Rodgers and Hammerstein,
20 and all that kind of thing. And Mrs. Baer would try to be there a month and then home a month, and we had children. I don't know, this is way off the subject.
MOORE: That's O.K.
BAER: I wonder whether you'd be interested — this is my file, which I really don't need to keep, on Luther Smith. And it has a letter there from —
MOORE: Well, we could also make photocopies of this, and then get the originals back to you.
BAER: I've got a secretary here that I've had for 38 years, and she likes to keep everything. Fortunately, when a guy like you comes along, she just reaches in there and gets that kind of thing.
MOORE: Well, this will be great. What we'll have to do is send a form to you in the mail, we'll send a thing that lists what you gave us. You can just sign it, and we'll put an envelope in there, and you can mail it back to us.
BAER: That's alright, sure. But you can let me keep this here?
MOORE: Oh, yes, you can keep those. Those are for you.
21
BAER: Oh, yes, that's great.
MOORE: I wanted to ask you; you were the chairman of the selection committee for the Arch, or you had something to do with the committee that selected the Arch?
BAER: There was only one chairman, and that was Luther Smith.
MOORE: Oh.
BAER: Sure, he had to name somebody, and he did.
22 You've probably got that in your files someplace, that program — wasn't there a program at that dinner? That selection dinner?
MOORE: Yes, we have a copy of that.
BAER: Well, that's — But I wasn't really, no.
MOORE: You were in charge of the dinner, is that it?
BAER: Well, yes.
23 See, what happened the next day, after Saarinen's plan was selected, he [Luther Ely Smith] said to me, "What do we do next?" And I said, "The first thing you do, Mr. Smith, is to get a model made of it." Well, he said, "How do you do that?" And I said, "It's easy enough, just call the architects, we'll get that made, the plans are here." It cost about $600, something like that, and it was about the size of this table. I said, "You haven't got this thing, now, you've got to build it, and you've got to have something for people to look at, and it is much better than plans if you can show them a model." So he said, "Well you go and get it done." Fine, we did, and, of course, it took them how many years after that [to complete the memorial] — well, you've got it better than I have.
MOORE: We have the model and everything, still.
BAER: What?
MOORE: We still have that model.
BAER: Have you got that? I'll be damned. Is it still in good shape?
MOORE: Yes. Yes it is.
BAER: Is it — it's not as big as this table?
MOORE: Well, we have two models, and one of them is at least as big as this table; the other one is a little bit smaller that the table, but almost that size.
24
BAER: My memory — we're going back a long way now!
MOORE: Yes, it shows the grounds, and it shows the Old Courthouse, and all the trees. Well, were you involved in the process at all, with the selection committee, did you know any of the architects, or —
BAER: No. There was only one local architect who submitted a design, Harris Armstrong. And I can remember them saying that night, one of the jury, saying that, "Well, that was pretty good for Harris, but he's not in a class with this thing here [the Saarinen design]." See, they didn't know the names until afterwards, because they were submitted without names.
MOORE: So they just had a number on them?
BAER: Yes.
MOORE: I remember, I talked with Dan Kiley, who was the landscape architect for the project, and worked with Saarinen on designing the Arch, and he said that everybody was really excited when the competition came up, because it was the first big architectural competition after the war. So everybody was really excited —
BAER: Saarinen never entered a competition that he didn't win. That was a shame — he died with a brain tumor I think, he was too young.
MOORE: He wasn't very old at all when he died.
25
BAER: Oh, no, very young.
MOORE: Let me see if I had any other questions to ask you.
BAER: What's your background?
[Break; Mr. Moore described to Mr. Baer his functions as historian at JEFF].
MOORE: Well, I don't know, I think we'll have a whole collection of these little [oral history] stories from different people, and when you put them all together they can make one big history, so —
BAER: I've got some history here. Do you know who this guy was? Moberg?
MOORE: No.
BAER: He was a baseball player. He was a catcher most of the time for the Boston Red Sox. He was a year ahead of me at Princeton. But he also spoke about eight languages, and he was a spy for the Secret Service during the war. And this guy that wrote this book about him, I did know him a little bit, but not intimately, but he called me before he wrote this book, and about a hundred another people, too, and I'm saving this book for Bob Wright of the
Post-Dispatch, he thinks I'm a great expert on Moberg, but I'm not. Kind of peculiar. Yes, I've been around long enough to see a lot of things, and know a lot of people.
MOORE: Do you have any memories of that dinner, of the awards dinner at all?BAER: The dinner at home?
MOORE: Well, even the official one at the hotel, and then the one at home.
BAER: My memory of that is not very good. I don't remember it very well, no. I should be able to, but I really don't. All I remember is —
MOORE: Well, it was only one day, so —
BAER: I remember that after the dinner, Mrs. Baer — we lived over on Pershing Avenue, just two blocks from here now, then we had a house over there. And we had four or five of the judges, I'm trying to think who they were. Bill Wurster had been head of the school of architecture at [M.I.T.], and then he moved out to the west coast. And we knew him through this, and we hired him in our company to build a thing for us up in Seattle, a branch. And then there was a very famous architect, Neary — no, not Neary. Do you have a list of them?
MOORE: I have a list, yes. There was Roland Wank.
BAER: Yes, go ahead.
MOORE: Neutra.
BAER: Neutra. Is that Richard Neutra? He was a very famous architect, and he was at that time in Los Angeles, and we became friends with him. In fact, he did some work for us. We had a big branch in Los Angeles and he remodeled that place for us. But when we went out there, and Mrs. Baer was with me one time, and we spent the evening with him and his wife. He was really kind of a world-famous architect. Then there's a guy who was the head of the art museum in Philadelphia. Fiske Kimball, you've got him?
MOORE: Yes, Fiske Kimball. Yes.
BAER: Who else have you got there?
MOORE: Charles Nagel.
BAER: Well, Charles Nagel, that was St. Louis. Charles Nagel was a friend of ours, too. He died only recently.
MOORE: And Louis LaBeaume?
BAER: Louis LaBeaume, yes. Well, he was a local, he was the only local architect here. I guess he was good, I don't know.
MOORE: And Herbert Hare.
BAER: Herbert who?
MOORE: Hare. H-A-R-E.
BAER: I don't remember him.
MOORE: And then the other one was George Howe.
BAER: Yes. Now, how the hell Smith knew to employ a guy like George Howe I don't know. Because he certainly had one of the best men in the country.
MOORE: Because he got everything done.
BAER: George Howe, I think, had been a partner of the French architect Lescares, a partner of Lescares, and they were world-famous, no question about it. But I think, now I haven't read this [the competition program for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial] since then [1948], but I thought it was wonderful.
MOORE: Oh, it's great. It lays everything out and really, you can still trace everything that is on the grounds now, and all the ideas back to that book.
BAER: Oh, everything about that thing is first-rate. Everything about it.
MOORE: Yes, I don't think people would be coming here to see it from all over the world if it wasn't first-rate.
BAER: I think, and you know this better than I, I think for a while there it drew more people than the Washington Monument.
MOORE: Yes, we still — I think we may still. More people than the Washington Monument.
BAER: Well, my friend, that's about it!
MOORE: Well, that's good. I thank you, very much for sitting down and talking with us today.
BAER: It's one of the experiences that I value very highly.
MOORE: Having been involved with the Arch project?
BAER: Well, it's one of the great things in St. Louis, as you know. And the other one, of course, was the Aloe fountain itself. Because the sculptor became a friend.
MOORE: Carl Milles?
BAER: Yes, Carl Milles. And he had a wife named Olivette, and she and Mrs. Aloe became good friends. Mrs. Aloe had been educated as a girl in Europe, and she went to Sweden, too.
MOORE: You might be able to tell me a little bit — Dan Kiley, when I spoke with him, the landscape architect —
BAER: The what?
MOORE: When I was speaking with Dan Kiley, who the landscape architect who worked with Saarinen, he said that in the really early stages, when Saarinen was planning out the Arch, he had it as a trapezoid; you know, it was a square.
BAER: He had a what?
MOORE: The cross-section of the Arch was a square or a trapezoid. And he was at a dinner with Carl Milles, and Milles is the one who told him to make it a triangle.
26
BAER: No, [I hadn't heard that]. That's interesting.
MOORE: He said that as a sculpture, it will be much more beautiful if it's a triangle, instead of a —
BAER: Milles was a wonderful guy, and we treated him so badly. You see, I'm in trouble right now. There's going to be something, [some kind of] celebration on the hundredth anniversary of the Union Station, and somebody called me and I said in a weak moment "yes." They want to honor me and some other guy on account of the fountain across the street. Well, I did know more about that, because as I say, that was my mother-in-law that did that thing. And Milles became sort of a close friend. That damned fountain, I think it had 18 or 19 figures in there. The contract was $60,000. You couldn't get one of them cast for that now. And I think — and he [Milles] paid for the castings.
MOORE: Really?
BAER: Now how the hell he could do all that now, for that — When he was an old man, he called me up, and he said — well, he wasn't young, even then. But he called me up a few years later, and he said that, "I want my plaster casts back, where are they?" Well, an artist is always entitled to his casts, you know. Well, there was a woman named Virginia Bumgard who was the head of the park commission, a very decent gal. She'd come out, volunteer work. I called her up and she said, "I don't think I have any right to — I've got them in storage over here, but I don't think I've any right to give them out. You'd better talk to the city council." Well, the city lawyer at that time was a guy that I knew very well. And he said, "Well, I don't know anything. Let me look at the contract." So he called back and he said, "Those things are our [property], they belong to us [the city], and I have no power at all to release those things." Well, if I had been a little older, or been around more — but it didn't really make much difference, because he did die after a couple of years, Milles did. And then she called me again, and said, "What am I going to do with these things?" Virginia Bumgard. I sent Bill Iseminger, who at that time was under Charles Nagle at the museum, a very knowledgeable guy, he went over and examined them — they were in the park — she wanted the building for something else, in the park. And he said, "Look, those damn things are falling apart, and not only that, but Milles' reputation has gone down. Destroy them." So, we did. As a matter of fact, Milles' reputation has gotten very big since then. The [Missouri Botanical] Garden has got some new Milles [sculptures] —
MOORE: They are beautiful. Beautiful.
BAER: You've seen them out there?
MOORE: Yes.
BAER: Well, the only thing that I don't like about them, and I'm a great fan of the garden, I've been on that board for 35 years or something — you always think of Milles' work in connection with moving water. He's a fountain man. Merrick Rogers, who at that time was the head of the museum, said that he's the best man since the 16th century on the use of sculpture with water. And the garden, they can't use any moving water there [in the spot where the statues are on display]. You've seen those things.
MOORE: By where they have the lily pads.
BAER: Yes, they can't do it. And they look nice, but as I say, you always think of his stuff in connection with moving water. But they are nice over there.
MOORE: Yes, I really like them. I like that whole area where they have different sculptures.
BAER: Oh, the gardens are a wonderful thing.
MOORE: We go over there and just sit on a bench a lot of times, and just watch the trees and the birds.
BAER: We were fortunate enough, after Mrs. Baer died, which is about four years ago, we have a small memorial garden in there. It was Chip Reay, the same guy down at HOK that I talked about, he designed it. I said to Raven — Peter Raven, head of the garden — "How would it be if we had Chip Reay design this little garden for Isabel?" "Oh," he said, "Sure, because he's great." And it's nice to see. Wait a minute — there it is there.
27 That picture. Now, this is mostly personal stuff. It looks much better now, because it has some growth on it.
MOORE: Oh! We were just looking at that the other day. It's a fountain and everything, an upright fountain. That's really nice. That's beautiful.
BAER: In 1924, when I was a senior at college, a guy came in in May, a friend of mine, and he said "Hey, the Aloe girls are in the
New York Times today." Why were they in the
New York Times? Because it was the Roto[gravure] section, in those days. Because they did a series on twins at Smith, I think there were five sets of twins there at Smith College. And that's Mrs. Baer and her twin sister, and there they are about 50 years later.
28
MOORE: That's amazing.
BAER: All of this is just personal stuff.
MOORE: That's a beautiful picture.
BAER: Isn't that nice? Well, that's 1924, this is 1994, 70 years later. Well, the rest of the stuff is newspaper cartoons and stuff, you know?
MOORE: Well, I thank you once more, for spending so much time.
BAER: Well, not at all. What [else] does an old man do?
[1] Howard F. Baer was born in 1902 in Charleston, West Virginia, and was schooled at the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut and at Princeton University, graduating in 1924. His first job was in the Charleston (West Virginia) National Bank. He married Isabel Aloe of St. Louis. He moved to St. Louis at the invitation of his father-in-law, Louis P. Aloe, in 1927, and headed the A.S. Aloe surgical supply business after the death of Mr. Aloe. Baer was chief of specifications for the Army Medical Department during World War II. The Aloe Company merged with the Brunswick Corporation after the war. Mr. Baer was a civic activist, serving as president of the St. Louis Zoo board for ten years. He started the City-County Zoo Museum District. Baer was board chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, the Blue Cross, a member of the Airport Commission, and a board member for the Missouri Botanical Garden. He was the author of Saint Louis to Me, a book of personal memories, published in 1978.
[2] The sculptor Carl Milles (1875-1955) was born in Sweden, and worked in both Paris and Sweden in the early 1900s, where he developed a friendship with Auguste Rodin. He emigrated to the United States, where among his many projects he executed "The Meeting of the Waters" in front of Union Station, St. Louis (1938-40).
[3] Aloe Plaza was dedicated in 1931 in memory of Louis P. Aloe. The Carl Milles fountain entitled "The Meeting of the Waters" was designed in 1939 and dedicated in 1940.
[4] Luther Ely Smith Square was dedicated on June 11, 1970, but no plaque or marker designated the area as a memorial to Smith.
[5] Jerry Schober was Superintendent of Jefferson National Expansion Memorial from 1979-1991.
[6] The dedication was held on April 12, 1985. Letters, papers, and the dedication program for the monument to Luther Ely Smith may be found in the Howard Baer Papers, a small collection in the JNEM Archives.
[7] Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was one of Britain's most important architects. His many building projects helped rebuild the City of London after the disastrous fire of 1666.
[8] Mr. Baer refers to a letter from Luther Ely Smith's daughter, Addie Boyd, thanking him for commissioning and erecting the monument to her father in Luther Ely Smith Square. The letter is now in the Howard Baer Papers, JNEM Archives.
[9] Mr. Baer describes his involvement in the Arch project in his book, Saint Louis to Me, pp. 32-36.
[10] Luther Ely Smith was born on June 11, 1873 at Downer's Grove, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He was graduated from Williston Academy, Easthampton, Massachusetts in 1890. He received his A.B. degree from Amherst College in 1894. Later Chief Justice of the United States Harlan F. Stone was his classmate. Smith also befriended Calvin Coolidge and Dwight W. Morrow at Amherst; they were a class behind him. Smith continued to serve as the secretary of his class from graduation until his death in 1951, publishing a semi-annual newsletter.
[11] Morton "Buster" May was the president of the May Company, which ran the Famous-Barr department stores. Mr. May was known for his philanthropic interests and his assistance in the revitalization of downtown St. Louis, including the completion of the Gateway Arch project.
[12] Jefferson National Expansion Memorial was created on December 21, 1935 through the efforts and persistence of Luther Ely Smith, Bernard Dickmann, and other prominent St. Louisans.
[13] Mr. Baer is referring to the architectural competition for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Held in two stages, the competition began in 1947; the winner, Eero Saarinen and Associates, was announced in 1948.
[14] The dinner to acknowledge the winners of the architectural competition was held on February 18, 1948.
[15] Harold L. Ickes was Secretary of the Interior for FDR.
[16] Richmond C. Coburn was the lawyer for the Terminal Railroad Association.
[17] The Terminal Railroad Association refused to remove their railroad trestle in front of Jefferson National Expansion Memorial between 1935 and 1957. Despite many plans which were sometimes approved by both sides, only a compromise solution worked out by Mayor Raymond R. Tucker in 1957 allowed the construction of the series of short tunnels and railroad cuts which enabled the construction of the Gateway Arch.
[18] Upon the death of Louis P. Aloe, Howard Baer took over as the C.E.O. of the A.S. Aloe Company.
[19] Mr. Baer refers to a decoration framed on the wall behind his desk.
[20] The Rogers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma was the most popular Broadway show of the mid-1940s.
[21] Mr. Moore brought copies of the 1947 Competition Program for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and an article by Sharon A. Brown about the 1947 competition to Mr. Baer.
[22] Mr. Baer served as chairman of the competition committee for JNEMA, but explained in his book Saint Louis to Me (p. 34) that "the title meant little for [Smith] alone did what was to be done, from the raising of the prize money to the selection of the speakers at the awards banquet." Mr. Baer did not serve on the jury of architects.
[23] Mr. Baer was in charge of the committee which planned the formal dinner for the award of the competition prizes on February 18, 1948.
[24] Actually, JEFF has three models of the Arch and grounds. The first is the 1948 model described by Mr. Baer, which is quite a bit larger than the desk Mr. Baer was using for reference during the interview. The second model was made about 1957, the third, smaller model about 1966.
[25] Eero Saarinen was just 51 years old when he died in 1961.
[26] See page 18 of the transcript of the Dan Kiley interview in this series.
[27] Mr. Baer again refers to a photograph hanging on the wall behind his desk.
[28] Mr. Baer points to a copy of the original New York Times page, and a black and white, framed photograph of the sisters taken in 1979.
