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Missouri
Mercantile Library Hall
Saturday, February 25, 1882
The Decorative Arts
Newspaper reports
The New York Herald, Feb 25, 1882
Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb 26, 1882, 3
Wilde spent the next day, February 26 (a Sunday) in St. Louis with a visit to the botanical gardens.
Mercantile Library Hall
510 Locust Street (corner of Broadway)
Library originally established: 1846 at Pine and Main Streets
This building: 1854
Seating: 2,000
Demolished: 1887
Replaced: 1889 by a six story building on the same site but without the Grand Hall
The New Southern Hotel *
Corner Of Walnut And Fourth Streets, St. Louis, MO
Built: 1877—81
Opened: 1881
Wilde's parlor: No. 70
Closed: 1912
Demolished: 1933
* The original Southern Hotel was built in 1857 on the same site. Owing to the intervention of the Civil War it did not open until 1865. It was destroyed by fire on April 11, 1877.
The Original Southern Hotel
Wilde's hotel in St. Louis—The New Southern Hotel
Clipping above and top banner image of hotel lobby from:
St. Louis, Historical and interesting places Idress Head, 1909, 117.
Oscar Wilde In America | © John Cooper, 2025
