Carol Porter

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More About the Spiering Brothers, Louis and Theodore
Noted for Contributions in Architecture and Music

Featured in Meeting Louis at the Fair by Carol S. Porter

| Louis Spiering  | Theodore Spiering |

Louis Clemens Spiering (1874-1912)

LOUIS SPIERING -- traditionalist or modernist in the making?

Louis Clemens Spiering (1874-1912) was a St. Louis-born architect who spent fifteen months on the design staff of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Recruited by design director Emmanuel Masqueray, Spiering worked on elements of the fairgrounds: lagoons, bridges and elaborate plaster ornamentation. He also accepted independent assignments to design several of the smaller structures, and acted as supervising architect for the French and Austrian pavilions. Though Spiering was fluent in the Beaux-Arts architectural vocabulary of the St. Louis World's Fair, his work on the lesser-known "little buildings" reveals a sympathy for the Secessionist movement that infiltrated the perimeters of the fairgrounds. The Austrian Pavilion was not a popular success-but Spiering was one of the few who Got It.

Louis Spiering's early family life and his later experiences gave him the flexibility to move easily between old and new worlds, classical and avant-garde. He grew up on Chambers Street in Old North St. Louis, in the compound of the spirited, intellectual Bernays family, who were influential in St. Louis journalism, politics, literature, music and medicine throughout the latter nineteenth century. Head of the household was Louis' maternal grandfather, Forty-Eighter Charles Louis Bernays (1815-1879), who led a colorful life on two continents-first as a German revolutionary, next as a merchant and beer brewer in Highland, Illinois, finally as the editor of Anzeiger des Westens in St. Louis. At the age of 14, Louis Spiering accompanied his widowed mother and his brother, Theodore Spiering, to Berlin, where he attended a gymnasium and then the Royal Institute of Technology, matriculating in architecture. He later studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, obtaining his diploma in 1902.

Louis Spiering departed Paris and came directly to the St. Louis fairgrounds in Forest Park. From his earliest days here through the closing of the fair, Spiering recorded its architecture in a series of snapshots, which he collected in an album titled "A History of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition-St. Louis, Missouri, 1902-1904." Spiering left no written commentary on LPE architecture. His uncaptioned album, however, is far from mute. It is a valuable record of his own challenging commissions-providing the only known view of his tiny and beleaguered Express Office-and a testimony to his interest in the Secessionist Austrian Pavilion. Spiering shoots it from nearly every angle, making it his most photographed structure after his Palais du Costume on the Pike.

In the brief years remaining to Spiering after the fair, he rarely designed in the "Beaux-Arts style." Many of his residences can be characterized as Arts and Crafts, as can his clubhouse for the St. Louis Artists' Guild (1908) in St. Louis. Spiering's 1912 Sheldon Memorial, a home for the Ethical Society of St. Louis, was his final and master work. Louis Spiering died of intestinal cancer seven months before the completion of the Classical Revival structure. The auditorium of the Sheldon is prized even today as an acoustical treasure.

This paper will introduce Spiering, and consider his work at the St. Louis World's Fair, from the traditional rococo splendors of the Main Picture to his delightfully enigmatic DeForest Wireless Telelgraph Tower.

From the abstract, BLUE WALLS AT THE WHITE CITY - The Secessionist Sympathies of Louis Clemens Spiering, St. Louis World's Fair Architect,
a paper presented at the 25th annual Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference, March 11-13, 2004. -- By Carol S. Porter ©2004 All rights reserved.
For more information about this paper, please contact the author.

Theodore Bernays Spiering (1871-1925)

THEODORE SPIERING -- Violinist and Conductor Distinguished on Two Continents

Theodore Bernays Spiering (1871-1925), Louis Spiering's older brother, began playing violin recitals on St. Louis stages at the age of 7. Eventually he achieved international recognition as a concert violinist and symphony conductor. Yet Theodore, arguably the finest classical instrumental musician St. Louis has produced, is virtually forgotten there today.

Theodore Spiering, born and reared in old North St. Louis, lived in the Bernays/Spiering family compound on Chambers Street until the age of 16. After studying in Berlin under Joseph Joachim, Spiering lived and worked in Chicago from 1893 to 1905, where he made significant contributions to the music world. A letter from Joachim to Theodore Thomas helped Spiering secure a position with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where he often appeared as a soloist under Thomas. He organized the Spiering Quartet,which toured the U.S. during its 12 years of existence, playing more than 400 concerts in tiny as well as major halls. Theodore Spiering founded and directed the Spiering Violin School in Chicago, and was a director of the Chicago Musical College, where he also served as violin instructor.

The pinnacle of Spiering’s career occurred in February,1911, as he was serving as concertmaster for the New York Philharmonic under Gustav Mahler. Theodore Spiering took over the baton for the ailing Mahler and finished out the season, conducting 17 concerts to widely enthusiastic reviews. Many observers here and abroad thought Spiering was the heir apparent to Mahler, who died shortly thereafter; but Spiering was passed over for Czech-born Josef Stransky, in keeping with the prevailing preference for imported conductors.

In 1921, Spiering actively competed for the conductorship of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Again he was unsuccessful. Named to the position was Rudolf Ganz, a Swiss-born concert pianist and music educator.

In 1925, Spiering finally won the permanent position he had sought so long, as conductor of the Portland (Oregon) Symphony Orchestra. His health was failing, however, and he died of cancer in August 1925, a month or so before the fall season began. Spiering was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery.

In addition to his conducting activities in the U.S. and abroad, Theodore Spiering was a widely respected soloist. He traveled across the U.S. numerous times, introducing the joys of classical music to small-town audiences. He was devoted to bringing new music to the attention of the public, and in 1905 was named an Officier d’Academie, an honor conferred by the French government in recognition of his work in introducing French music, especially chamber music, in the United States.

Spiering also made significant contributions to musical pedagogy. He taught violin throughout his career, and was an author of the eight-volume International Library of Music for Violinists.

Theodore Spiering, though unrecognized in St. Louis, is the subject of an exhibit at the Schubert Club Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota, entitled The Spiering Papers: A German-American Life in Music. The exhibit runs through January 2005.

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