Missouri Life September 2023

workday for its employees while maintaining pay grades. Previously, female employees worked nine hours a day; male employees worked ten hours. When his father died in 1918, William J. Kinsella Jr. assumed the president’s chair and operations were moved to Choteau Avenue. The company moved again in 1933 to a three-story building on the corner of Tower Grove and Vandeventer Avenues. In 1939, the company was sued by Chicago-based Swanson Brothers, who alleged that Hanley & Kinsella owed it more than $8,000 for green coffee and that the company had incurred “indebtedness more than the value of its tangible property.” In a statement to the newspaper, William Kinsella Jr. said he was surprised at the filing and that the company “is getting along all right,” adding that the suit would be resisted. Hanley & Kinsella was sold in 1940, and the company was dissolved a year later. ON TOP OF THE GLOBE Of all the coffee kings in St. Louis, perhaps there was no bigger powerhouse than Cyrus F. Blanke. He was a savvy entrepreneur who understood the importance of diversi fying. Blanke was a masterful marketer who recognized the right moments to position his brand and gave it his all. Blanke was also a civic visionary. Born in October 1862, in Marine, Illinois—30 miles northeast of St. Louis—Blanke attended business school and worked as a clerk. By the time he turned 20, he was working for the Steinwender-Stoffregen Coffee Company in St. Louis. He moved into sales, married Eugenia Frowein in 1889, and left the company in 1890 to start his own coffee and tea business. His premiere brand was Faust coffee, and before the turn of the century, it was the coffee served at Tony Faust’s celebrated St. Louis restaurant and on the Wabash Railroad. He’d later spin off other companies including St. Louis Tin and Sheet Metal, which enabled him to make coffee cans for his company. When it was time for the Louisiana Purchase Expedition, better known as the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Blanke had positioned his company to make a big splash. Blanke joined fellow coffee kings William J. Kinsella and Julius Schotten on the fair’s board of directors. Now his company was in the spotlight. His Faust coffee brand was served at the biggest restaurant on the Pike, Luchow Faust World’s Fair Restaurant, which had capacity for 3,000 guests at a time. But Blanke was just warming up. He had a talent for folding civic pride into his marketing plans. In 1903, he bought the historic log cabin known as Hardscrabble—built in 1856 by Ulysses S. Grant—from another St. Louis businessman for $8,000. Blanke moved the cabin to the Forest Park fairgrounds near the Palace of Fine Arts and opened it for tours (ticket price: 10 cents), knowing tourists would have lunch or coffee inside the pavilion next to the cabin. Blanke’s Thoroughbred horse, Village Boy, was used in various public relations campaigns, including appearing

Cyrus Blanke

with Frederick Dent Grant, President Grant’s son, in the fair’s dedication parade. Blanke also commissioned a 45-passenger vehicle, an innovation for the time, to trans port fairgoers from his factory to the fairgrounds, where they would find as many as 10 concessions, not to mention an elaborate display in the Palace of Agriculture. But his greatest idea wasn’t realized. In 1901, Blanke formed a company to build a 700-foot aerial globe attrac tion on a 5.65-acre tract between Clayton and Oakland Avenues. This all-steel structure—taller than today’s Gateway Arch—would have accommodated up to 30,000 people at a time. Plans for the tiered attraction included spaces for gardens, a music hall, coliseum, and cafe. Although the city approved the plan and granted the per mits, Blanke couldn’t raise the public funds. “Blanke’s Folly” would remain a grand idea in the coffee king’s head. Blanke Tea and Coffee Company was in business for 52 years, closing in 1942 after its founder’s death. Second Crack: Snap a photo of the C.F. Blanke Building, 1310 Papin Street, the former Blanke Tea and Coffee Company headquarters. The building today offers leased office space. Grant’s cabin is now part of the popular Grant’s Farm family attraction; beer baron August Busch Sr. bought the cabin from Blanke in 1907, and he relocated it to his family estate in south St. Louis County. A NAME SPELLED BACKWARD Brothers John P. and James J. O’Connor probably didn’t go to the St. Louis World’s Fair looking for a new busi ness idea, but that’s what they found. After watching a demonstration of a gas-powered coffee roaster, they soon set up Ronnoco Coffee Company. The company’s name is O’Connor spelled backward because, according to legend, the roastery was in the Italian section of St. Louis and they didn’t think anyone would buy coffee from Irish boys. James left in 1910 to start O’Connor Coffee Company. John sold Ronnoco Coffee in 1919 to Frank Guyol Sr., whose family operated the company for about 90 years. In the 1950s, O’Connor Coffee showcased St. Louis hotels in a series of television ads. Brief histories of the properties were shared while cutting in shots of dining

From far left, Workers in the 1950s attend to an Old Judge assembly line. In 1914, a Hanley & Kinsella Coffee & Spice Company executive, thought to be William Kinsella Jr., works in his office. Cyrus Blanke, photographed in 1900, was a master of diversification who operated Blanke Tea and Coffee Company among other businesses.

MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY, ST. LOUIS

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