University of Missouri, St. Louis IRL @ UMSL Theses UMSL Graduate Works 7-10-2014 Transformation or Revival: St. Louis Culture Before and After the Great Fire of 1849 Daron Patrick Dierkes University of Missouri-St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://irl.umsl.edu/thesis Recommended Citation Dierkes, Daron Patrick, "Transformation or Revival: St. Louis Culture Before and After the Great Fire of 1849" (2014). Theses. 180. https://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/180 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the UMSL Graduate Works at IRL @ UMSL. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of IRL @ UMSL. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Transformation or Revival: St. Louis Culture Before and After the Great Fire of 1849 Daron Dierkes B.A., History, University of Missouri—St. Louis, 2006 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School at the University of Missouri—St. Louis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in History April, 2014 Advisory Committee Minsoo Kang, Ph.D. Chairperson Louis S. Gerteis, Ph.D. Steven W. Rowan, Ph.D. Copyright, Daron Dierkes, 2014 Abstract It is commonly accepted that Antebellum St. Louis was reborn in the wake of fire and disease. A boom in cultural activities during the 1850s has allowed the Great Fire of 1849 to serve as a historical landmark separating an older fur trading town from a new cosmopolitan city. This study examines that transformation hypothesis from a broader frame of reference and concludes that the Great Fire merely coincided with the end of a temporary lull in cultural activities that had begun much earlier in the 1830s.