Down But Not Out
A St. Louis Company Leaves Its Mark
By Robert R. Archibald, President, Missouri History Museum
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| John Scullin. Photograph by Evans, 1903. Missouri History Museum. | |
The St. Louis company Scullin Steel went out of business in 1981 after more than 80 years as a respected and successful manufacturing company, a casualty of that all-too-familiar pattern of boom followed by bust.
News about longtime successful businesses going under is sadly prevalent in the daily media. Any newspaper, radio broadcast, or television coverage will give you more than enough detail on the current economic plight. One of the few—perhaps the only—bright spots in such an occurrence is the opportunity to recall some of the past and give voice to those stories.
In 1899, John Scullin established the Scullin-Gallagher Iron and Steel Company, built its huge foundry and rolling mill near St. Louis’s southwestern city limits, and started producing steel for the railroad industry. During World War II, defense contracts and the subsequent increased production called for plant expansion, and in the 1960s, Scullin was one of the suppliers for St. Louis’s Gateway Arch. Long before then, the company had simplified the name to Scullin Steel Company. That’s the name that went on the arched overhead sign that is now in the collections of the Missouri History Museum and on display in our permanent Seeking St. Louis exhibition.
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| Scullin Steel overhead sign in the Reflections gallery at the Missouri History Museum. Photograph, 2009. Missouri History Museum. | ||||
In the gallery, a woman was standing under the sign, looking (I might even say “gawking”) at the lacy ironwork and large plain lettering. She caught me glancing at her as I passed by and smiled. “I think my grandfather was killed just about here, under this sign,” she said. That was enough to stop me, and I asked for her story.
Will Davis was an electrician for Scullin Steel, she told me, and he’d been such a valuable employee that Scullin kept him on even though he was several years past retirement age. “At least that’s what my uncle told me,” the woman admitted.
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| Scullin Steel Company sign and plant at its former location in south St. Louis. Photograph, 1990. Missouri History Museum. | |
On what may have been a snowy or perhaps a foggy afternoon in the winter of 1946, he was crossing the Missouri Pacific railroad tracks at the entrance to Scullin Steel. “Grandpa was decidedly vain,” she said, “and wouldn’t admit to a bit of a hearing loss.” He probably didn’t hear the train, and the engineer couldn’t see him and couldn’t have stopped in time anyway. Her grandfather died instantly. She gestured to one of the exhibit’s photographs that pictured both the railroad tracks and the Scullin employees’ entrance. “Right about there,” she said.
“Right about there” is now in the parking lot of the sadly sparse St. Louis Marketplace. (A friend of mine, a fourth-generation St. Louisan, insists on calling this strip mall the Scullin Marketplace.) From this spot you can look across Manchester Avenue and see the Copying Concepts office. The building, circa 1944, still proclaims at the top of its granite façade in art deco letters “Scullin Steel Co.” It’s a memory place, preserved by a company that was barely five years old when Scullin closed down and let all its employees go. It’s history on the streets, a perfectly appropriate place for history to be.
Turning to the opposite direction, you can just see a part of Ivanhoe Avenue on the other side of Interstate 44. Will Davis lived on Ivanhoe, though the Davis family home is long gone, the woman in the gallery told me.
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| Employees working in the Scullin Steel foundry. Photograph by W. C. Persons, 1914–1919. Missouri History Museum. | ||||
“My uncle had some stories about his dad often being called in the middle of the night to come down and fix a problem with some machine or electric line. As the oldest boy, my uncle would have to go along in case Grandpa needed a go-fer.” She smiled. “I guess there’s no way of checking some of those stories, but they are part of my family story.” And therefore, I added silently, part of your history, documented or not.
In addition to the employees’ entrance sign, the "Workers" section of the museum gallery includes objects that tell other pieces of the Scullin Steel story:
• the Scullin time clock from about 1900, its pendulum in place but immobile;
• a worker’s badge, her apron and ID badges, and an audio of her daughter speaking about her mother’s life and work;
• a souvenir ashtray with Scullin’s pre–World War II emblem—interlocking S’s that bore an ugly but accidental resemblance to the Nazi swastika; the revised pattern of vertically intertwined S’s is nearby, on stationery and in an advertisement;
• a selection of photos showing primarily the company’s activities during World War II, when Scullin supplied the U.S. fighting forces with tanks, bomb casings, anchors, and other goods and was awarded the Army/Navy E for Excellence in War Production.
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| Denim shop apron and ID badges of Margaret Kuhnert, former Scullin Steel employee, ca. 1946. Photograph, 1998. Missouri History Museum. | |
And there’s more. In our collections we have various railroad passes issued to John Scullin and his family, machinery parts notebooks, storehouse receipt books, flyers, tributes, correspondence, and reports. We know a lot about this company and could find out more. We might look up descendants of John Scullin and ask for their memories of the founding family. We could seek out more former employees and learn about the work they did—the company history from the manufacturing floor as well as the executive offices. We can visit that Scullin office building on Manchester and listen for stories about its renovation and preservation.
But we will never get a closer connection with the place, the time, and the story than this woman gazing up at an artifact that was something very personal to her. And as we watch scenes across America in which workers from a failed or ruined company pack up their belongings and leave their workplaces forever, we know that they, too, are taking with them stories that in some way belong to all of us.