A rubble-stone fur trading warehouse built by Manuel Lisa in 1818 on the St. Louis levee. When the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial was established in 1935, it was the oldest standing building in St. Louis — a rare survivor of the city's earliest era as a frontier trading post and river port.
Built by fur trader and entrepreneur Manuel Lisa, a founding partner of the Missouri Fur Company, the Old Rock House stood on the waterfront below the original Laclede's Landing settlement. Its thick limestone rubble walls reflected the practical demands of the frontier fur trade. Sold to James Clemens Jr. in 1828, the building passed through several lives: a sail loft manufacturing canvas wagon covers for westering pioneers, an ironworks store, a produce commission house. By 1880 it had been converted to a saloon; by the 1930s it operated as a jazz nightclub where Ann Richardson — known as "Rock House Annie" — drew suburban crowds to hear Black musicians perform. When the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial was established in 1935, the Old Rock House was the oldest standing building in St. Louis. Though the 37-block demolition of 1939–42 cleared everything around it, the building was initially spared — the National Park Service obtained a Works Progress Administration grant to restore it as a museum of the St. Louis fur trade. But plans in the 1950s to route the elevated railroad along the riverfront made it impossible to relocate the structure, which sat on a limestone outcropping. It was carefully disassembled in 1959 with the hope of eventual reconstruction. By 1965, most of the stones were missing and presumed lost. The name survives in an event venue on the Arch grounds, but none of the original masonry was used in its construction.
