This is my second post on 7401 Hazel. My material makes me think that I may get four posts out of this subject. If you somehow missed the first post. You can link to it here. This makes this easier for me so I don’t have to explain things twice.
Harper’s Pharmacy was a tenant in this building beginning in 1913 according to the excellent application for nomination to the National Register done in April 2005 by Matt Bivens. If you’re not familiar with one of those, you can link to this one here. Well, you used to be able to. I tried it and it just kept downloading the PDF. You can find the National Register nomination on the website of the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). Go to nominations by county, St. Louis, Cape, Dr. Leander W. buildings.
As mentioned in Part One, William Harper was the son-in-law of Dr. Cape who built this building. Business must have been good for in the mid-to-late 1920s, they partnered on a very fine building which still exists today called..what else?…The Cape-Harper building. But that’s another story.
According to Matt, “A second gap between published county directories (between 1909 and 1917) again makes identifying additional tenants difficult.” Hoping to shake loose some information on who the early tenants of the building were, I turned to Newspapers.com from which my readers and I have learned so much. Here’s what I found.
This rare ad from 1921 links Harper’s (Pharmacy) with the 7401 Hazel address. This is the only such link I found. When Harper advertised he almost never mentioned a street address preferring instead to say “next to the Maplewood Loop.”
Well, dang. Apparently ol’ E.W. was riding high in May but got shot down in December. Such is life.
Maintenance had been deferred on the Dr. Cape buildings for many years. Happily all of them have been restored as of this writing and are in excellent shape. But I have a few photographs I took prior to the restorations.
It was an architectural treasure, just sitting there for all of those years, waiting for the right folks to come along. They eventually did! Just look at her now.
What a treasure! And, oh yeah, one more thing…
Please folks, don’t paint brick buildings white. We’ve already done that. It doesn’t look good.
I hope you enjoyed this post. There are many more in the lineup. Be careful out there.
Merry Christmas Season to you all.
Doug Houser December 10, 2023
Much thanks to everyone for all of the nice things they’ve said. Blame HGTV and others for these white with black trim paint jobs. This is a fad that I hope has a very short life.
Doug, Gary here, I find a bit of irony in that a mayor named Martini would shut down a saloon.
Dear Doug, Last comment first: I’m actually outraged that the huge brick building on the corner of .Elm and Sutton has ALSO been painted AND white recently. This does irreparable damage to brick buildings and is an eyesore in our neighborhood! (Check out the south side second floor…new paint even splashed across the windows, too.) SO, I very much agree with you there!! DON’T paint our historic brick buildings in Maplewood!! ed! (Note folks at City Hall!!)
Second, Hopefully not off topic and I’m not that well read among your articles. But, just in case it helps, I used to go to the dentist as a kid to Dr. Ott (don’t know the first name) across the street upstairs in the Harper’s building (you mention here) where several offices were located (or at least it seemed to me to be more than just his). All four of we kids and our parents went to him. For some reason, I was the most lucky one! Maybe the dental reference is a connection for this building.
Thx for your research and sharing with us!! SO appreciated.
Pickett, I totally agree with you that painting historic brick buildings is an outrage. As you know, no permit is required (so planning and zoning never has a say) to paint a building. Here’s a worst case scenario: someone who owns a lot of commercial buildings in Maplewood decides to paint them all white. And Doug, fascinating research, and great photos, like always!
Nice article on that building. Good work on using the newspaper articles and ads to figure out the order of tenants. I always enjoy your articles. Thank you for your dedication to Maplewood’s history.
It is my pleasure, Cathy. Thank you for your kind words.