Lemp Mansion

The story

The Lemp name in St. Louis begins with brewing. Adam Lemp founded the Western Brewery in 1840 and died on 23 August 1862. William J. Lemp Sr. enlarged the business from 1864, and in 1878 it installed what Wikipedia describes as the first refrigerating machine in an American brewery.

The family’s later history is a run of deaths. Frederick Lemp died of heart failure on 12 December 1901. On 13 February 1904 William J. Lemp Sr. died by suicide; The Tacoma Times of that day ran the headline “Millionaire Brewer W.J. Lemp Suicides While Despondent” (title as cited by Wikipedia; we have not seen the page). Elsa Lemp Wright died by suicide on 20 March 1920. In 1922 the brewery was sold to International Shoe for $588,000, and on 29 December 1922 William J. “Billy” Lemp Jr. died by suicide in his office, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as cited by Wikipedia. In 1949 Charles Lemp died by suicide in the house, and the family left it.

The house stands in the Benton Park neighborhood. In 1950 it became a boarding house, and Wikipedia says the decade that followed stripped away much of its decoration. Building Interstate 55 in the 1960s took a large part of the grounds and one carriage house. From the 1970s it has been a restaurant and inn. When it was built is unclear: Wikipedia’s page gives both 1868 and 1890, and St. Louis Public Radio says “early 1860s.” Wikipedia says the house was substantially renovated in 1911, when some space became offices for the brewery.

The legend

The spirits attributed to the house are those of the Lemps: William Sr., Elsa and Charles are the names that come up in tourist-oriented accounts. The oldest source we located is a book, Stephen P. Walker’s Lemp: The Haunting History (1990), which a research page lists as further reading; we did not read it. Legends of America (updated March 2026) says boarders heard knocks and footsteps after the house was sold, that workers on the renovation after 1975 reported apparitions, strange sounds and vanishing tools, and that later staff saw glasses fly, doors lock themselves, lights switch on and off and a piano play alone. It gives no dates and names no early witness. We found no dated witness account from before the restaurant opened, and no article describing a haunting before 1975. The link between the family’s suicides and the ghost stories is therefore, as far as we can see, a connection drawn afterward.

Treat the usual summary with care. St. Louis Public Radio, in September 2026, said three Lemps died by suicide in the house. We treat that as doubtful. Wikipedia says Elsa shot herself at her own home, a different house. It places Billy’s death in his office, and the Post-Dispatch headline it cites says brewery office, although its list of surviving features puts that office in the mansion. It does not say where William Sr. died. Only Charles’s death, in his bed, is clearly placed in the house.

On television, the Atlantic Paranormal Society investigated the mansion for Ghost Hunters, in an episode dated 29 September 2010, and the series Living for the Dead covered it in episode 8 of its 2023 run (Wikipedia). Neither is evidence of a haunting. The named witnesses we read are visitors in reader submissions from 2004 on.

What remains today

The mansion still stands in Benton Park, in St. Louis, Missouri. Wikipedia lists a few surviving features: the decorative iron gates of the open-air elevator, visible from the basement restaurant; an Italian marble mantel in an office that Wikipedia links to William Jr.’s death; a hand-painted parlor ceiling; carved mantels in African mahogany; a glass-enclosed shower that a Lemp brought back from an Italian hotel; and three vaults at the back of the house where the family kept its art. Much of the original detail has been replaced.

The current owners are a private family and we do not name them. St. Louis Public Radio reported in early September 2026 that the property had been put up for sale at $3.9 million and would keep hosting events through December 2027. We could not confirm whether the building is on the National Register of Historic Places; Wikipedia, as we read it, does not say.

Visiting

As of September 2026 the mansion operates as a restaurant, an inn with overnight stays and a venue for events, with ghost tours (St. Louis Public Radio, September 2026). Because the property is for sale, hours, bookings and tours can change, so check with the mansion directly before you plan a trip. It is a working business and a former family home, so keep to the areas open to guests. We give no street address.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Lemp Mansion — Wikimedia Commons
2. USGS 1:24000-scale Quadrangle for Cahokia, IL 1954 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1954 · Public domain (USGS)
3. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for St. Louis, IL 1888 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1888 · Public domain (USGS)
4. Lemp Mansion for sale (St. Louis Public Radio report) — St. Louis Public Radio, 2026-09
5. List of Ghost Hunters episodes — Wikipedia
6. The Haunted Lemp Mansion in St. Louis — Legends of America, 2026-03
7. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.