Venue

Mercantile Library Hall

510 Locust Street (corner of Broadway)

Library originally established: 1846 at Pine and Main Streets

This building: 1854

Seating: 2,000

Demolished: 1887

Replaced: 1889 by a six story building on the same site but without the Grand Hall

Accommodation

The New Southern Hotel *

Corner Of Walnut And Fourth Streets, St. Louis, MO

Built: 1877—81

Opened: 1881

Wilde's parlor: No. 70

Closed: 1912

Demolished: 1933

* The original Southern Hotel was built in 1857 on the same site. Owing to the intervention of the Civil War it did not open until 1865. It was destroyed by fire on April 11, 1877.

The Original Southern Hotel

Wilde's hotel in St. Louis—The New Southern Hotel

Clipping above and top banner image of hotel lobby from:
St. Louis, Historical and interesting places Idress Head, 1909, 117.

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Lecture Tour of America 1882

Writing and Research on Oscar Wilde

St. Louis

Missouri

Verification

Newspaper reports

The New York Herald, Feb 25, 1882

Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb 26, 1882, 3

Wilde spent the next day, February 26 (a Sunday) in St. Louis with a visit to the botanical gardens.