previously on this house all of this was put back together brick by brick piece by piece
when the building was moved hey everyone so in our last video about the old rock house we had
a major mishap with our information so i feel like i owe it to you to bring you the correct
information in the correct history about this building and the original old rock house so
today we're going to kind of remix the old video that we watched and set the record straight let's
go talk to one of the owners of the old rock house and then we'll start the house tour over
i'm standing here with tim right now and tim could you tell our audience a little bit about who you
are and your involvement with this property my name is tim weber i'm the managing partner here at
uh at old rock house and and have been since about 2010 uh so got a long history in in
the st louis music scene and excited to be excited to be here now so you've been around for
this building's almost its entire life can you tell us when this part was actually built
sure well the part we're standing in right now which is basically the dance floor and the stage
uh was was built as part of the rehab of the whole building and it was built in the 2005-2006
time frame uh the construction the the rehab of this building ended up
taking a while because there were there were some significant challenges the building was
was almost falling over uh when when my partner acquired it um during the construction process it
actually started to collapse in on itself adding a whole bunch of costs so we had to build sort of
a skeleton inside of it uh the good news in all of that is that it's now uh a building designed
to last for the next hundred years it's uh it's incredibly structurally sound that's amazing so
what was the decision-making process behind choosing the name the old rock house and
putting established 1818 outside was that to pay homage to the original old rock house
absolutely and it was um you know it was probably even a little bit more than just paying
homage to the original rock house it was kind of a love story to st louis right um you know if
for the folks that know about the original rock hops which was which was on what's now
the arch grounds um it was meant just like the old cathedral and the old courthouse to be one
of the pillars of st louis and when when we started branding this place we wanted to
bring that back right so so you've got the old courthouse the pillar of justice and law you've
got the old cathedral pillar of spirituality and religion what you were missing was that pillar of
commerce and that pillar of entertainment and that pillar of gathering and that's what we wanted to
bring back and show here and i think we have it's amazing that you've continued on that legacy here
and as we go through this building we're going to talk about not only the history of this space
in particular but also the history of the original old rock house for which this place has been based
on so tim i want to thank you so much for taking a moment to help us clarify some of these details
and for allowing us to film here well it's funny that the people have been i don't know maybe
getting a little bit confused um for a long time when i when i first started an artist and i can't
remember who it was but it was a fairly full house walked up on stage and announced to this crowd
man i just learned that mark twain used to own this building i have no idea where he got that
i don't know where that comes from um but but he went ahead and threw it out there there are
no known pieces of the original old rock house in this building there's not a single piece of it uh
we we tried to get some um but i'm assuming they knew that somewhere in the future they were going
to do this this museum uh so so they wouldn't wouldn't let us have any of it we did build
this this new section the facade is is built to try and replicate it as close as we could from the
pictures the original rock house it was so cool you know it's operating in the teens and twenties
and letting in black and white customers at a time when that was remarkably uncommon
so so it's a good thing to to pay a tribute to i think and and to let people know about it good
thing for saint louis so this was rose and pat pat and rose's uh tavern is what it had been most
recently and frankly i'm not sure when it closed like it wasn't operating when we bought it um
but yeah it had been an actual club from our understanding at some point that had been an
actual brothel there were actual bedrooms up there in this building not just in the original old rock
house so there's a lot of shared history between them yeah well you guys did a fantastic job so tim
thank you so much yeah thank you guys emanuel lisa a prominent fur trader built the old rock
house in 1818 in downtown st louis where the arch grounds are today in 1880 a saloon set up shop in
the building and quickly gained a reputation over the years it would have many additions added to it
including a mansard roof that you can see in this historic painting by robert dielman in an article
from the 1958 globe democrat the columnist wrote about the old rock house during the halcyon days
on the river it was known from minneapolis to new orleans as one of the liveliest spots along
the shores steamboat captains and millionaires shared drinks with mark twain and eugene field
the old rock house would go on to ignore gambling laws and would serve as a brothel and bar during
prohibition but i'll tell you more about that when we get to the basement being a staple of
the community this building heard many outcries from the public when the demolition of it was
planned ahead of the construction of the arch grounds the old rock house was dismantled with
its pieces being numbered and placed in boxes to be relocated but that would never happen
as the building would go on to be lost we've just walked in the front door and immediately
this brings us into the concession area so if we turn around and look we can see a fully stocked
bar with ornate woodwork surrounding it notice the curved details and the keystone in the center
now bringing our focus up further we can see the tin ceiling soaring around
and if we can see in the middle it's all supported by this cast iron post so let's follow that back
down to the floor where we can see a tile mosaic rug laid out in the space with small hexagon tiles
and another amazing attention to detail if we look at this booth right here
we can see that the tiles even continue up to the floor here
coming further into this building we arrive at what is set up as the dining area
we can see that there are tables and stools set up all over the place the tin ceiling continues
into here and is mirrored by the tile mosaic floors that we've been seeing in the first room
now as we look around there are braces which help to support the roof and the floors so let's just
take a moment to see some of these finer details and then we'll make it over to the venue space
continuing with the tradition of being a bar and venue the old rock house brings in major
musical artists and allows for the venue to be rented out for weddings and other events
you can find a link to more information about the venue in the video description below
now coming on down a couple of steps we're going to come out of the dining area
and into the actual venue space so this has a large stage set up it also has doors that go
out to the patio and we can now see that instead of having a tile mosaic it is a concrete floor
which will honestly stand up more to the test of time as people
dance and continue to enjoy the space as it's intended so let's take a moment to see some of
the details in the space and then we'll head on upstairs to check out a few more details
now let's go on upstairs and the way we get there is through that staircase right there so
you go on up there and i'll meet you at the top
all right so come on up the stairs and whenever you arrive up here let's go and start taking a
look around now if we look out this way we can see that it still has the original pine floors
which have a lovely patina to them as thousands of people have walked across them
now as we look further against the back wall there are windows in their original wooden encasements
so let's take a closer look at these as we see how they meet up with the wainscoting below
and in the center of the space is a large cupola
which has been filled in with glass blocks so we can take a closer look at this
now continuing through the space we're going to arrive at a balcony
which overlooks the stage area that we just saw
now coming back this way there's a large segmented bricked arch behind me and if you go up a couple
steps there's a lounge area and another bar so let's take a quick look at that and then
we're going to go see what is possibly the most interesting part of this building the basement
so to get to the basement we've just come down these stairs which we took to get to the upper
floor now we're going to pivot around and the stairs to the basement are just off to
this side so you guys go on down through these steps and i'll meet you down there once again
arriving at the bottom of the steps we're immediately greeted by a large brick wall
so let's continue forward a little bit so that we can see some more of these architectural details
here we get a really good glance at the three wides of brick that were required by fire code
as they barrel vault above us now the part that i've been dying to show you all the most
is this basement so let's turn around and see the cellar there are barrel vaulted ceilings
there are stone walls and we can imagine that the original old rock house probably had a very
similar looking basement back in the 1920s during prohibition in the original old rock house albina
paintanita simply known as mom rented out the building in 1928. she cleaned it up and made it an
attraction for nightlife the old rock house served as an underground nightclub that featured gambling
alcoholic beverages and a brothel but the true star of the show was vocalist rock house annie
whose unrivaled talent brought black entertainment to the forefront of st louis nightlife many black
musicians would play here every night bringing in crowds that spilled out onto the streets
the fun wouldn't last as persnickety residents would try to have it shut down in 1939 mom was
evicted from the building and so the party paused until the new old rock house opened its doors
thank you all for joining me on this tour i really hope that you enjoyed it
i just want to take another moment to reiterate how sorry i am that we did
end up spreading misinformation about this building and its history and i
want to thank you so much for giving us another chance to set the record straight
please make sure to like comment share and subscribe i'll see you next time on this house