Table of Contents
Re-Opening the Case of the Lemp Mansion's Cave Connection
Preamble:
I can hear the collective sighs and eyerolling from all the armchair experts through the screen already. But here's the thing: If you have not physically chased this myth into the darkened corners of the earth wherein the subject of our interest may or may not exist, then you are severely underqualified to pronounce judgement as to whether this one is "Busted, Confirmed or Plausible". Anyone who claims to know, yet hasn't bothered traveling to the site to perform a thorough investigation is lacking the necessary credentials and is therefore cordially invited to quietly take a seat. The following paragraphs contain all of the available evidence which nearly two decades of research (occasionally at great personal risk) has unearthed. This evidence, which until now has been guarded with utmost discretion, is not shown on any of the maps nor documented anywhere else as far as I can tell. I welcome any and all public comments or private correspondence from any qualified persons to discuss this topic. But I won't be holding my breath waiting for that to happen because it's safe to say that you haven't gone as far as we have gone in this pursuit. See below.
Background Summary:
The Lemp mansion has long been rumored to have some means of access to the cave. Early on in our research, my colleagues and I came to the conclusion that the mansion > cave rumor was likely just another stupid urban legend which originated from the fact that the Lemp's didn't originally live in the "current" Lemp mansion (the present day mansion was originally built/owned by the Feickert's). Adam Lemp's widow Louise actually owned a house closer to the brewery, near the intersection of Cherokee and Demenil. The back yard of this house had a small building situated where the spiral staircase down to the theater is located. The spiral staircase is now destroyed and the only evidence on the surface is a manhole which has been welded shut. Back in the late 1800s to early 1900s, theater goers could, and presumably did, access the cave directly via this staircase at Louise Lemp's house and thus a rumor was born. Every single expert on this subject is quick to point to this detail and squash this myth, emphatically stating that there never was a connection from the current Lemp mansion to the cave. I am guilty of doing the same thing. It's easy to do because if you look at any map of the cave in relation to the (Feickert-)Lemp Mansion, you'll see that there's no logical justification for the connection. The portion of the cave beneath the mansion wasn't even accessible until Lee Hess excavated it in the 1940s(!), nearly 20 years after the Lemp brewery closed down. Seeing as how the existence of this other Lemp residence was not common knowledge, I was convinced that the modern retelling of the story is therefore just confused nonsense based on stories from the past and handed down via a game of telephone. Other authors have reached basically the same conclusion and everyone agreed.
But then we stumbled upon what can correctly be described as a mystery tunnel whose very existence where, and how, it is located has very strong implications as to the plausibility of this myth.
I will now present evidence which supports the following thesis:
A connection from the Feickert-Lemp Mansion to the original portion of Lemp's cave is at least PLAUSIBLE [via the Mystery Tunnel]
Full confirmation is prevented by the following two difficulties:
Difficulty #1. What I believe is most likely to be the entrance inside the mansion cannot be "opened up" without causing damage to their property.
Difficulty #2. What I believe is most likely to be the entrance inside the brewery cannot be "opened up" without causing damage to their property.
I am not in the business of destroying other's property, therefore my research has hit a dead end. But thanks to the work of my trusted comrades and I, this myth been un-squashed as the evidence which I present below will show. I will proceed to explain, in detail, how and why it could have actually existed while remaining hidden for so long. Keep in mind, I'm not saying that "I've CONFIRMED the connection". I'm simply saying that based on the combined physical evidence, this myth has been taken out of "BUSTED" status and squarely into "PLAUSIBLE" territoty. If you can manage to un-roll your eyeballs from the back of your head then read on, my cynical friends.
One last point before I begin: This (Mystery Tunnel) is the only possible route by which the present-day Lemp mansion could have ever connected to the cave. If the Mystery Tunnel is confirmed to be a dead end, then the theory dies with it. There is absolutely no other possible route they could have taken.
The evidence below is presented in no particular order.
Exhibit #1: The authors of the book "Lost Caves of Saint Louis", Hubert and Charlotte Rother, included an interesting photo along with a caption. The caption reads: "The spiral staircase that was beneath the street in front of the Lemp mansion leads to a part of the Lemp Brewery, found at the back end of Cherokee Cave". The authors were so sure that this existed, that they went to the effort of including a photo AND captioning it as they did. Furthermore, I have personally spoken to Charlotte Rother and she still maintains this to be true. Note that Hubert and Charlotte Rother explored all of the existing locations of interest from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, so it should be appreciated that, unlike many authors, the Rother's knowledge was first-hand. They were actually there in 1964. To say it never existed is to discredit the combined knowledge and experience of the Rothers. And that's just rude. Also, I have personally been "all over" the brewery and I have not yet found any spiral staircase which matches the one in their photo (with similar walls behind). And yes, I know the photo is upside-down in their book.
Exhibit #2: Photos of a mysterious tunnel, along with a brief explanation, came into the posession of my colleagues and I. The explanation provided with the photos was that in 1991, the tunnel was blocked off "so that people couldn't access the mansion from the other side". Of course, there's no way to prove whether the explanation is true. But the photos (of which we have several showing different perspectives) were analyzed/compared and verified by us as, 100% without a doubt, inside what I've been referring to as the Mystery Tunnel. And... the subjects are shown bricking off this very tunnel. And... there are two people visible in this photo: The other person is wearing the white hard hat barely visible on the other side of the wall they're constructing. Last but not least: the white hard hat person had to enter and exit said tunnel by another, different, route.
"Which tunnel is this?" you ask..
Exhibit #3: A mysterious hidden tunnel, which is not documented anywhere on any map yet which does exist and which does have direct access into the original lemp portion of the cave and, simultaneously, into the brewery above. If you stand inside this tunnel and take one step out of this tunnel, you will reach the cave floor. You probably wouldn't survive, but you'd at least die in the original Lemp cave. Investigating this tunnel, in person, does in fact require you to take your life into your own hands. Less so, if you are adequately prepared with appropriate gear as well as the physical ability to use it. We found this tunnel by accident. We were not looking for it. We were just exploring some of the more dangerous corners of the Lemp brewery. This right here is the critical point wherein safe scholarly research of documents and maps has reached the extent of its capabilities/usefulness, in terms of answering some of life's most adventurous mysteries. Maps and documents can only tell you so much. In this case, they tell the story of a cave which lies ~35' below the surface. Those maps would have no reason to include man-made features such as, for example, a tunnel which lies parallel to the cave but only ~10' below the surface. This tunnel is oriented such that from the shaft it runs directly toward the Lemp mansion. This tunnel otherwise serves no known purpose. This tunnel is 100% confirmed to be the same bricked off tunnel shown above in Exhibit #2. This tunnel is not readily visible* from the cave floor, despite being directly connected to it, which is one reason why it's never really discussed/documented by people who have explored the cave (*if you know where to look, with bright enough flashlights, you can sort of discern the outline of the tunnel but the height and angle make it almost completely hidden from sight). This tunnel is accessible via a square hatch. The big unanswered question which you should be asking yourself at this point is "Why would those people in the above photograph choose such a dangerous and inconvenient area to brick off this tunnel?" They had to rappel down into it to access this side of it. If this tunnel didn't go anywhere, they wouldn't need to brick it off. If this tunnel only accessed some basement window well, then they could have much more easily and safely bricked that off instead. By the way, twenty-nine people were involved in this project. And this is the same project in which the lid to the destroyed spiral staircase was welded shut. The purpose of their work was obviously to seal up the last remaining entrances. And the mystery tunnel was obviously an important part of that.
If you were one of the 29 people involved in the project to brick off the mystery tunnel, I would love to hear an explanation that sufficiently challenges the mansion > tunnel connection. What harm can possibly come from you stepping forward and challenging this theory and the evidence which points to it? Are you bound to silence by an NDA? Speak up and debunk this myth properly! Surely that project involved detailed documentation and additional photos showing the before/after. Documentation from that project is about the only thing which could adequately debunk the myth at this point. Unfortunately, my collagues and I have only ever seen a small handful of photos from it and they don't show the other side of the brick wall.
The very act of bricking off this tunnel is extremely suspect, in my professional opinion as someone with a very deep and intimate first-hand knowledge of the Lemp Brewery and Cave. The only possible route any tunnel could have taken from the mansion to the cave is this tunnel right here. If this tunnel has ever extended beyond/under the street, then this is almost without a doubt the Lemp Mansion > Cave Tunnel. On the other hand, if this tunnel has never extended beyond/under the street, then it's just a meaningless, yet unexplained side tunnel connecting to the shaft in the cave. In that case, the theory could finally be debunked properly. The theory, as it stands today, is therefore very much "Plausible".
Actual confirmation hinges upon discovery of the other end of a mystery tunnel inside the mansion and/or discovery of whatever is beyond the bricked off section of this Mystery Tunnel under the brewery.
Exhibit #4 (circumstantial evidence): The Demenil mansion has bricked off doorways in the basement. Tour guides will tell you that those doors led to a staircase down to the cave (obvoiously just repeating rumors they were told). Additionally, the Rothers reported (citing the St Louis Post Dispatch, [December 1 1963]) that "arrangements were made" for pipelines which would furnish hot and cold water, along with beer, from the brewery. Until around 2009, there was an ornate, decorative manhole on the sidewalk just outside the Demenil mansion. The design included lots of gaps you could clearly see through. Looking down into it was about as tantalizing a thing as you could dream of, as it very much appeared to be a lid to a tunnel beneath your feet along with the smell and cool air you'd expect of a tunnel. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon the opportunity to investigate beneath this manhole. At some point, it was opened up for some reason and a halfassed board and traffic cone were placed over it and this lasted long enough that I was able to find time late at night to pop in for a quick look. I didn't find a tunnel, nor a connection to the cave, but I did find details which I didn't appreciate until much later when re-investigating the tunnel mystery: the two rooms accessible beneath this manhole are those which lie beyond the bricked doors in Demenil's basement. They are two similar rooms of arched brick construction with limestone foundation approximately 10'x10' each (guesstimated). The construction of these rooms is, incidentally, identical to the method of construction for the tunnel in Exhibits 2 & 3. I also found remnants of a very old pipeline but cannot confirm their origin or purpose. These rooms, however, don't connect to the tunnel. Based on my research, however, I wouldn't expect them to. These were constructed for the Demenil mansion. By whom and when? We don't know but I would wager at the same time, and by the same people, as the mystery tunnel. This is admittedly merely circumstantial evidence (and some conjecture). But it is still worth noting since it pertains to the subject at hand and I suspect I am among very few persons who have ever seen what is down there.
This alone was likely the entire reason for the persistence of the mansion > tunnel myth from about 1911 until 2009 when this lid was replaced. And I can tell you from personal experience that it was very effective at doing so. The Louise Lemp property was just the part of the story that you find in books. This is the part of the story that you only find by getting your boots dirty. In order to solve a good mystery, someone's gotta get dirty and in this case it was we who answered the call. This lid has since been replaced by just another manhole lid on a sidewalk that you can't see through. Which is a shame because that old lid was cool as hell.
Exhibit #5: The Lemp Mansion has no confirmed tunnel or tunnel door in the basement (or any other areas) that any of us who have investigated have been able to locate. Many people have theorized that the door next to the basement bar leads to the tunnel (5a). And in their defense... yeah. The space beyond that door is actually rather interesting. I mean.. look at it. That screams "this is a tunnel". And what's with the ventilation pipe in the wall? Where does that go and what sort of void is it inhabiting? Until someone can prove what's on the other side, that room is going to have to be included in the list of possible tunnel entrances. I use the plural here because I've observed another one elsewhere, hiding in plain sight. It's the type of thing that wouldn't really stick out to anyone unless they already knew about (what I propose may be) the other end of the mystery tunnel (Exhibit #3). In the basement dining room, there's a very suspicious square wooden(?) hatch in the middle of the damn floor (5b). The bricks were cut off around it, too, indicating that there's likely a reason for its existence. Yet the bricks are plain and don't seem quite fancy enough to justify this away by saying it's purely decorative. Look at the little details throughout the rest of the mansion and how much less meticulous/fancy these bricks seem. Why is there a random square lid like this in the middle of the basement floor.. which happens to be a square hatch.. like the entrance to the other end of the mystery tunnel (Exhibit #3)?
Exhibit #6: The roads surrounding the brewery and the street on which the mansions stood were still sloppy dirt roads by the time Lemp was flush with cash and spending heavily on significant construction projects to his properties.. projects which nearly all involved the construction of tunnels. See any of the historic photos of the brewery and note the dirt roads. At around the same time, (starting in 1901) the south Saint Louis area began road improvements consisting of the paving of dirt roads (this information can be found in the Annual Reports of the Street Commissioner of Saint Louis from the early 1900s. But they are very tedious and difficult to navigate so I haven't yet found the precise date in which 13th street [now Demenil Pl] was paved). The overall street improvement project continued for several years until all dirt roads were a thing of the past. Recall the Rother's caption which said "The spiral staircase that was beneath the street in front of the Lemp mansion leads to a part of the Lemp Brewery, found at the back end of Cherokee Cave". And the mystery tunnel does, in fact, lead "to a part of the Lemp Brewery, found at the back end of Cherokee Cave". And building a tunnel under a dirt road directly in line with the brewery would be the place to do it. I therefore specifically began researching street improvement projects to see if there was anything to contradict any part of the theory, but they didn't contradict and instead all details I've uncovered only strengthen and support the mansion > tunnel theory.
Exhibit #7: The "Government Tunnel" was mostly destroyed in 1911 with the construction of the Bottling Department additions (Bottling/Shipping permanent headquarters and warehouse space). The termination of the Government Tunnel at the basement foundation is rather crude but the shaft and mystery tunnel were nicely finished off and fully preserved. The tunnel is just beneath the basement floor, which means they specifically avoided destroying it and instead they specifically built around it in 1911. Why would they do that if this tunnel didn't go anywhere and had simply formerly been a location for hoist equipment (as the only alternate theory suggests)? At the very least, 1911 is the date by which the mystery tunnel was fully completed. It may have been done prior to this, but we can definitively state that the mystery tunnel existed by 1911. Furthermore, The Government Tunnel was mostly destroyed by this construction, yet the Mystery Tunnel was spared. I find that fact to be mysterious. This brings up an additional mystery: The Government Tunnel was the main pipeline for the beer to travel from the fermenting tanks to the Bottling Department. Why, then, did they destroy it in 1911 and what route did the beer take in the subsequent, and final, decade in which they were still producing beer prior to prohibition? Regardless, the facts remain: There was some reason that the Mystery Tunnel was spared from destruction.
Exhibit #8: The Feickert/Lemp mansion became the official offices for the Lemp Brewery in ~1911 while the new buildings referenced above were constructed. Also of note around this time is the divorce of William Jr and Lillian. The divorce was a highly publicized spectacle. William Jr and other Lemp family members were being absolutely hounded by the press. Despite all the personal turmoil, William Jr seemed as determined as ever to make every improvement to the brewery with all of the new construction projects being undertaken during this time. Note that this time period directly coincides with all of the aforementioned bits of evidence, such as the construction of the Bottling Department additions and the street improvements, etc. William Jr was obscenely wealthy and being hounded by the press and lived on a dirt road just over 400 ft from the brewery. He very easily could have installed a tunnel to get to and from the brewery in complete privacy. They were already building tunnels all over the brewery grounds next door, after all. To summarize: William J Lemp Jr had the money, motivation, experience, equipment and manpower needed to make such a thing possible. Those are all facts. Whether he actually did, or not, is still unclear due to the two difficulties I listed in the beginning.
All of the evidence points to this time period as having been the most likely time for it to have happened. All of the evidence utterly fails to debunk the mansion > cave tunnel theory. It is this evidence which changed my own opinion on the myth from busted to plausible.
Exhibit #9 (circumstantial evidence): Just inside the basement of that new bottling department building, a mere couple of steps away from the mystery tunnel, is a unique feature which I've not seen anywhere else in the entire brewery complex: A large safe room with a safe door onto which the Lemp bar and shield logo was painted. The existence of this unique feature is admittedly circumstantial and not particularly significant, but taken with all the other evidence, it adds weight onto the mounting stack of evidence for the plausibility of this myth.
Defining what is plausible
The best (and only) explanation anyone has thus far given me as to why this mystery tunnel exists is summarized as follows: The prevailing assumption is that the side tunnel "may have" been used for hoists/equipment to be loaded in/out of the cave. For the record: there is zero evidence (that I know of) to support the hoist theory. The problem with this alternate theory, beside the fact that zero evidence exists to support it, is that the cave was obsoleted by the late 1870's. That leaves about three decades of commercial disuse for the cave between the time of commercial brewing usage and the construction of the bottling department headquarters directly above it in 1911. And in the intervening years they had already, long prior, installed a theater and pool features in the cave. Furthermore, the cave already had a convenient door which was conveniently accessible via the cellars by which they could move equipment as needed, thus further reducing any potential need or use for a hoist in a shaft. Not to mention the various elevators throughout the cellars, etc. The idea of this mystery tunnel being used for hoists/etc when zero evidence exists for it (that I know of) means that it has less merit and therefore is certainly no more plausible than any other theory for which zero evidence exists. In stark contrast, my research has uncovered a not-insignificant amount of evidence (above) which supports the existence of a tunnel from the Feickert/Lemp mansion to the brewery and I even have a definite end-date for its completion. When you compare all available theories, the most plausible theory, at this point in time, is that the present-day Lemp Mansion could absolutely have connected to the brewery via this mystery tunnel assuming this tunnel extends (or ever had extended in the past) beyond the mysteriously bricked off section beneath the street.
The theory, updated with our newly published evidence
This brings me to my working hypothesis which is based on all the above evidence which includes photographic evidence and obscure details uncovered after many years of reesarch in which I've personally sacrificed my own time and energy and accepted personal risks to engage in, much of this being first-hand, on-site, investigation. Even if my hypothesis below is wrong, it doesn't negate any of the evidence above. I'm simply adding it all together to see what it sounds like as a complete thought.
In piecing together all of the evidence, the below hypothesis has, through its own merits, been formed. Recall that I myself am a convert; I did not start out to prove its existence; I was convinced it was not true; but then we accidentally found a Mystery Tunnel whose existence obligated my team to do some serious investigative work.
The working theory is as follows: Lemp would have (theoretically) had this tunnel built some time around 1905-1910, to run beneath Thirteenth street (now called Demenil Place) as a means of privately going to and coming from the brewery without being swarmed by the press or the curious public. I theorize that the mansion entrance was via a spiral staircase in the basement which led to the tunnel beneath the street and this is what the Rother's documented in the book. The current shaft in the brewery, which has the Mystery Tunnel©® connected to it, could very well have once housed a spiral staircase. This shaft has direct access to both the brewery above and the cave below thereby matching up with the Rother's long discarded description. I further theorize that, as a "sorry for the construction" gift to his neighbor Demenil, Lemp may have installed the cold storage cellars seen beneath that tantalizing manhole lid and possibly even provided a tap into the pipeline to smooth things over, whether for beer or hot water or both (this part is conjecture, but it doesn't negate any of the evidence above). I am aware that Lemp and Demenil didn't particularly care for each other, but until and unless evidence emerges to refute any of this then what I have presented above consists of significantly more evidence than literally any other theory out there as to the purpose for the mystery tunnel. And this, then, becomes the most plausible of any competing theory as to the purpose/origin of the Mystery Tunnel.
Allow me to reiterate that I am not hailing this evidence as "proof" or "confirmation" that the Lemp mansion had a secret tunnel to the brewery. I have not confirmed that the mansion tunnel exists. I have merely shown that all available evidence points to the mansion tunnel's existence as very much "Plausible" by means of this unexplained, recently disovered* Mystery Tunnel.. For this is a mysterious tunnel which happens to be physically connected to both the Lemp brewery and the Lemp cave. *My team don't claim "discovery", just that we accidentally encountered it in 2007 while doing some intense/dangerous exploring.
I welcome any evidence to the contrary. And as I stated earlier "Documentation from that project (bricking off the Mystery Tunnel) is about the only thing which could adequately debunk the myth at this point." If you have anything of value to contribute, then please do challenge me on this. Comments are open on the main post.
