I’d been doing some research lately on the old St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, which was completed around 1845 (the parish was founded in 1843 and closed in 1973), making it the third in St. Louis after the Old Cathedral and St. Mary of Victories, a German language parish. A familiar name came up, the Austrian-born Francis or Franz Saler, who is often listed as a builder or architect along with George I. Barnett, the latter of whom is considered the first classically trained architect in St. Louis. Barnett and Saler are listed as the architects of St. Mary of Victories and only Barnett for St. Vincent de Paul, but then only Saler is listed as the architect of St. Patrick’s.

So what was Saler exactly? Was he an architect or a builder? My suspicions are that he was a builder/contractor in the same vein as the Medieval master mason; he was not classically trained in a classroom like Barnett, but he was rather practically trained by others on the job site in Austria and was capable of building a wide range of different types of buildings, ranging from houses, breweries and churches. In fact, he belonged to a St. Louis house building association, and he built the Washington Brewery for our dear friend George Schneider, who I argued in 2020 was not the founder of the Bavarian Brewery.

So if you look at the composition of St. Patrick’s, built only a year or two after St. Mary of Victories, which all primary sources seem to point to as a collaboration with Barnett, I can’t help but notice that the former is more or less a copy of the latter. There is a simple, wooden cupola on St. Patrick’s (which was later destroyed by a tornado), but for the most part, the church is one that could have easily come from the hands of a master builder relying on standard designs or pattern books, which were widely available. He very well might have just worked off of or even modified the blueprints of St. Mary of Victories.

When he died he lived at 1246 S. 3rd in what surely was a rapidly industrializing Chouteau’s Landing, around the corner from St. Mary of Victories, where his will paid $100 for masses given for his soul. With his death date, it would have placed his prime building years of the three churches in his mid-forties.

Due to some circumstantial evidence, I also think I’ve found his family burial plot in Calvary Cemetery; it would be logical that he would have been Catholic. They are almost completely illegible, but thanks to a burial plot map provided by cemetery staff, I could identify which headstone was which.

There’s far more to learn about Saler, but this is just some preliminary research I’ve done. I would definitely like to find a photograph if possible. Stay tuned.