Louis Wollbrinck

Who was Louis Wollbrinck?

Louis Wollbrinck was a civil servant, entrepreneur and builder in St. Louis, Missouri during the Gilded Age.

Wollbrinck was born in St. Louis on Friday, Feb. 22, 1867, to a German carpenter and his wife. Friederich "Fred" Wollbrinck and Johannah Kottmeier had both come from Herford, in Westphalia. Louis Wollbrinck left school at twelve to become an errand boy for Woodward and Tiernan printing, then pressman, and stayed 5 years. He then worked as feeder and pressman for the Great Western Show Printing Co. until he was 24. Turning to real estate and building, he was the youngest builder in St. Louis, with 65 houses going up at once. The Historic American Buildings Survey documented the North side of the 4900 block of Page Avenue in 1986, when it was still covered in the moderately sized, modestly ornamented homes Wollbrinck built for a rising merchant-class.

Wollbrinck was nearly bankrupted in a downturn of the housing market, but under the name "Central Amusement Company" he ran "Old St. Louis" and another concession at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, after which he became a clerk in the Assessor's office.