Louis Kledus

Austrian-born architect and engineer, trained at the University of Vienna, who came to St. Louis in 1869 and served as the City's Commissioner of Public Buildings from 1884 to 1887. Defeated by H. William Kirchner in the 1882 election for School Board Architect, he later received modest Board commissions: the octagonal Blair School kindergarten (1891, built for $6,240 after the Board cut his $12,000 design), the Rock Springs kindergarten, and "colored" schools No. 8 and No. 11. He designed three fire houses (all razed) and additions to the Alexian Brothers Hospital; he was active in the Western Architects Association and the AIA. Almost nothing of his work survives except the Blair kindergarten.