The St. Louis giant of Mallinckrodt Chemical began as a farm on the North Side, near the present day intersection of North Broadway and Salisbury Street. Emil Mallinckrodt, a native of Dortmund, and his wife Emily Vallmau owned a farm along the road that was then known as Bellefontaine Road, with their three sons Gustav, Edward and Otto. Their grandfather, Arnold, worked with Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, during the latter’s brief tenure as the King of Westphalia in western Germany. Emil’s land holdings would leave a permanent mark on the early town of Bremen, which would later become the neighborhood of Hyde Park.

As can be seen in the map above, Emil’s farm, with his house showing in the northwest corner of his property, sat along the river with other landowners such as Salisbury, Destrehan (spelled phonetically here), Angelrodt and Buchanan.

When the town of Bremen was platted no later than 1844, as you can see above, those landowners’ slender pieces of property would acquire streets with their names.

After the Civil War, Edward, born in 1845, and his brother Otto traveled to Wiesbaden to learn agricultural chemistry in 1866, part of the scientific revolution occurring throughout Germany in the Nineteenth Century. He then worked with the famous German chemist, Carl Johann Eugen de Haën. The three brothers then founded the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works on their father’s farm; while originally it was a partnership, the deaths of his two brothers left Edward in full control of his family’s new company.

The interest in agricultural chemistry soon transitioned into medical chemistry, and Mallinckrodt is supposedly the first major company west of the Mississippi to engage in the production of medicine. Supposedly, due to a lack of markets to the west, the company turned east. However, I don’t find that believable, as the immense success of Anheuser-Busch and Lemp revolved around their ability to ship their beer to the west, where there were few competitors. I don’t see why Mallinckrodt wasn’t also doing the same.

One of their early successes revolved around the safe and effective large scale production of ether, which was used as an anesthetic in the Nineteenth Century. Ether was far from perfect, was flammable and caused severe nausea, but it was effective. Mallinckrodt produced it in large quantities, and foreshadows an important chapter in the company’s story in the 1940s…

The Whipple Fire Insurance Maps capture Mallinckrodt in the first full decade of its operation, and provide a window into what products it was producing.

Interestingly, there are two sets for the chemical plant.

Besides ether, there is a noticeable and small production facility for ammonia. For those versed in early refrigeration, ammonia is a critical component in early refrigeration in the late 1870s for the Anheuser-Busch and Lemp breweries. I suspect that those two breweries might very well have purchased their ammonia from Mallinckrodt. All parties involved were German American and the delivery of the ammonia would have been easy–just a short ride down Broadway. Later Mallinckrodt would found a separate ammonia production company that would be purchased by DuPont, another major chemical company in the United States.

Thanks to the Nineteenth Century habit of placing one’s factory on letterhead, we have an idea of what Mallinckrodt looked like in the 1880s.

It was growing rapidly, and its shared German heritage allowed the company to easily communicate with the latest advances in the homeland. Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. would continue in his father’s footsteps, training as a chemist.

Edward Sr. was an avid art collector, and like many St. Louis businessmen, invested in other ventures in St. Louis, such as the Union Trust, Laclede Gas and First National Bank. He owned a house off Price Road as well as another in the Adirondacks.

The Nineteenth Century was a period of rapid growth, and Mallinckrodt was well-placed to continue to expand into the Twentieth Century as Edward Jr. took the reins of the company, rising from Vice-President to President.