What Happened To the Biggest Gilded Age Mansion In St. Louis? | William K. Bixby Mansions

The largest Gilded Age mansion ever built in the city of St. Louis boasted 45 rooms overlooking Forest Park, and yet that was only one of William K. Bixby's mansions in the neighborhood. From a French-inspired chateau on a private street to a Victorian fortress occupying an entire city block, we have some really gorgeous mansions to uncover today. Hi everyone, Ken here, hit that subscribe button, and let's explore this house! In 1857, William K. Bigsby was born in Adrian, Michigan to a humble family. His formal education ended with high school, after which the ambitious 16-year-old headed to Texas with little more than grit and a letter of introduction. He landed a job as a night watchman and baggage handler for the International and Great Northern Railroad in Palestine, Texas, earning a mere $50 per month. He proved himself quickly. Within a year, the railroad's president, H.M. Hoxie, noticed Bixby's good service and promoted him to a better position in San Antonio. By his early 20s, Bixby's talents had caught the attention of major railroad tycoons, which soon led him to move to St. Louis to join Jay Gould's Missouri Pacific Railroad Network in the 1880s. There, he served as a printing and stationery agent for the Vascold system, learning the ins and outs of the rail industry from the ground up. He soon transitioned to the Missouri Car and Foundry Company of St. Louis, a manufacturer of railroad cars, where his ascent only accelerated. By 1888, at the remarkably young age of 31, he had been named vice president and general manager of Missouri Car and Foundry. It was a meteoric rise for someone who a decade earlier was checking bags in rural Texas, but Bixby was just getting started. The late 19th century was an era of consolidation in the railroad industry and Bixby was at the forefront of these developments. He played a key role in the mergers and acquisitions that transformed Missouri Car and Foundry into a new giant, the American Car and Foundry Company. In 1899, Bixby helped spearhead the merger of 18 railcar manufacturers into ACF, creating one of the nation's largest rolling stock companies. With Bixby as president, ACF thrived by supplying railcars to America's booming railroads. He proved to be a shrewd businessman, increasing the company's stock value and guiding strategic growth. By the early 1900s, William had become exceptionally wealthy, a bona fide railroad baron and one of St. Louis' most important industrialists. In 1905, at 48 years old, he astonished colleagues by retiring from active business life while still in his prime. With the same energy he'd once devoted to railroads, Bixby now indulged in his lifelong Lifelong passions for art, rare books, and historical manuscripts. He had the means to acquire treasures, and he soon amassed a legendary collection that included priceless letters by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, original manuscripts by literary greats, and even a double elephant folio of Audubon's Birds of America. He served as president of the City Art Museum, which is known today as the St. Louis Art Museum, and even became president of Washington University for a period. He twice held the presidency of the Missouri very historical society and was a trustee of the St. Louis Public Library. In 1904, he chaired the Fine Arts Commission of the Great Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also known as the 1904 World's Fair, helping inspire the creation of a permanent art museum in St. Louis. By mid-life, William K. Bixby was both immensely wealthy and highly respected. He was the very picture of a Gilded Age gentleman, a rags-to-riches, self-made industrialist turned patron whose name could be found tied to countless institutions. Backing up a bit, in the late 1880s, as Bixby's career took off, he and his family resided in a comfortable home at 3029 Glasgow Place in North St. Louis. This earlier residence, while sizable, was fairly typical of its era for the prosperous. By 1892, flushed with success, Bixby set his sights on the city's newest enclave of wealth, the private streets of the Central West End. One of those exclusive new enclaves was Portland Place, a gated private street bordering Forest Park. In 1892, Bixby commissioned architect William Albert Swayze to design a showplace home at Number 13 Portland Place, and the result was nothing short of breathtaking. The mansion, completed in 1893, was built in the exuberant French Renaissance Revival style, often termed Chateauesque. In fact, Bixby's Portland Place residence is noted as the first house in St. Louis to embody the new Chateauesque style, at a time when most contemporary neighboring homes were in the more traditional Queen Anne or Richardsonian Romanesque modes. The house's exterior featured pale buff brick and stone trim dotted with ornate dormer windows and chimneys. Inside, 13 Portland Place was equally lavish. Bixby filled his new mansion with fine art, antique furnishings, and books indulging the cultural passions he had inherited from his upbringing. One of the home's highlights was a magnificent private library where Bixby housed his growing collection of rare books and manuscripts. Yet for all its pomp and European elegance, the Portland Place house was also a comfortable family home for Bixby, his wife Lillian, and their children. If the Portland Place mansion announced Bixby's arrival into high society, his next residence elevated him to a whole new level of grandeur. In 1904, as he was preparing to retire from business, Bixby and his wife made a bold real estate move. They purchased an entire city block at the northeast corner of Lindell Boulevard and Kings Highway, overlooking Forest Park, and the 45-room mansion that stood on it. This property was the J.W. Kaufman Estate, a Gilded Age mega-mansion built in the late 1880s by millionaire grain merchant John W. Kaufman. By acquiring it, Bixby became the master of what was widely regarded as the most magnificent private home Home in St. Louis. The mansion at Lindell and Kings Highway was nothing less than a baronial palace on an urban estate. Built between 1886 and 1889, it had been designed by the architectural firm James Stewart and Company in a high Victorian eclectic style. Its massive red brick and stone structure sprawled out with myriad wings, gables, and turrets bearing elements of Romanesque arches, cylindrical turrets with conical roofs, and a prominent dome gazebo-like corner porch. The roof was a sea of terracotta tiles and steep peaks, and the facade featured bay windows and arched loggias displaying a mix of stylistic influences from Renaissance to Romanesque. Every aspect of the design emphasized scale. This house was built to impress through sheer size and complexity, befitting the over-the-top taste of the 1880s. It was reported to have around 40 to 45 rooms in total including multiple parlors, a grand dining hall, a ballroom, and more. A true labyrinth of luxury. Living in this palatial residence, William Bixby truly embodied the role of a Gilded Age tycoon. It wasn't just the home's size that impressed, it was also a center of social activity and cultural refinement. Bixby continued to expand his art and book collections in the ample space that the mansion provided. It is easy to imagine distinguished guests arriving and being led through a marble vestibule into high-ceilinged rooms with oil paintings, rare books, Persian rugs and sculptures. For several years in the early 20th century, this mansion was the seat of the Bixby family's life. They were living at this address during the 1904 World's Fair right across from the festivities in Forest Park, likely hosting lavish parties and entertaining dignitaries. It's fascinating to note that while many wealthy St. Louisans built their mansions on private streets or quieter roads, Bixby embraced the most prominent high-traffic location, almost as if putting himself on display. Still, for the time that William K. Bixby called it home, the great mansion at Lindell and Kings Highway was the pinnacle of domestic splendor in St. Louis. As the 1920s dawned, Bixby continued to donate parts of his priceless collections to institutions. He published limited edition volumes of historical documents at his own expense to share knowledge with libraries nationwide. In essence, he viewed his wealth as a means to enrich communities around the country and preserve history. Around 1922, Bixby sold off the King's Highway estate to a developer, a move that would bring big changes for that corner. After selling the estate, Bixby did something rather poignant. He moved back to Portland Place, the private street where he had first built his dream home decades earlier. This time, he took up residence at 26 Portland Place, another fine mansion on the same street, possibly seeking a quieter and more manageable abode for his final years. Finally, in 1931, he passed away at the age of 74. Bixby's funeral was a grand civic event. The City Art Museum closed its doors at noon, and the Missouri Historical Society likewise shut down to honor him. No fewer than 180 honorary pallbearers participated in the funeral, including titans of local industry and public life. Yet as respected as he was in life, time can be unkind to gilded monuments, and William Bixby's magnificent residences were no exception. 3029 Glasgow Place did not survive long, being lost to what some call the March of Progress but what others might call abandonment. Unlike the Glasgow House, Bixby's Portland Place Chateau was a prominent part of St. Louis' architectural heritage, one that continues to stand to this day as a private residence. The fate of Bixby's largest mansion was intertwined with the growth of St. Louis itself. As mentioned, Bixby sold the King's Highway estate around 1922 to developers, recognizing that the land had become extremely valuable commercially. The idea of high-end hotels and apartments in the central west end was in the air and that busy corner facing Forest Park was prime real estate. Today, the Cheese Park Plaza Hotel still stands at the northeast corner of Lindell and Kings Highway, a successful and iconic development, but one that came at the expense of Bixby's Mansion. And with that, I'll turn it over to you. Which of these mansions did you like the most? Let me know down below in the comments section. I'd also like to say a very special thank you to our channel members for making videos videos like this one possible. If you'd like to support my research and the production of these videos, consider joining the membership program today. As always, thank you all for watching and I'll see you next time on this house.