Tag Archives: 50-cent piece

Monday Update » 3.26.12

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Andy Hahn with his unusu­al­ly shy Leo before our urban explor­ing field trip to the St. Louis Tran­sit Com­pa­ny Sub­sta­tion on Locust this morning.

Hap­py Mon­day, everyone!

We had a busy week­end, due in part to the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight mad­ness hap­pen­ing at the Dome. While our week­end man­ag­er takes a well-deserved break, here are some newsy bits and a few things we’ve got cook­ing over the next two weeks:

Camp­bell House Archi­tects Featured
Camp­bell House research vol­un­teer Tom Gron­ski’s arti­cle on the Camp­bell House archi­tects (Joseph C. Edgar and Thomas Waryng Walsh) earned top-billing in the Mis­souri Val­ley Chap­ter of Archi­tec­tur­al His­to­ri­an’s newslet­ter. Read all about it (and some oth­er beau­ti­ful local build­ings) here.  Way to go, Tom!

Field Trip to the St. Louis Tran­sit Com­pa­ny Substation
A long-vacant build­ing up Locust was built to house a big, giant bat­tery sys­tem for street­cars. It was con­struct­ed right before the 1904 World’s Fair because the city antic­i­pat­ed sub­stan­tial­ly more street­car traf­fic due to the influx of vis­i­tors. We’ll have a post about our vis­it to the old build­ing com­plete with pic­tures for you next week.

New Civ­il War Exhibit
Lind­sey’s plug­ging away on research, writ­ing, and find­ing objects for her new exhib­it on the Camp­bells dur­ing the Civ­il War. Shar­ing new research on Robert’s polit­i­cal lean­ings, slav­ery, and the impact of the war on the fam­i­ly and their friends, the exhib­it will open in the third floor gal­leries in ear­ly April. You won’t want to miss it!

A Few Good Interns
We have more intern inter­views booked, but we’d love to hear from you or some­one you know needs a sum­mer intern­ship. We’re not picky about your course of study because it takes all kinds to oper­ate a muse­um. Non­prof­it Man­age­ment? Muse­um Stud­ies? PR/Marketing? His­to­ry? Art? Come talk to us. Camp­bell House is a small place, so every­one — staff, vol­un­teers and interns — wear many hats. You’ll get to see all sides of how we run the busi­ness, and we promise you’ll have an awe­some expe­ri­ence here. Con­tact Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Andy Hahn at andy [at] camp­bell­house­mu­se­um [dot] org if you want to talk; we’d love to hear from you!

Upcom­ing Events
We’re work­ing on putting togeth­er two spec­tac­u­lar events that you won’t want to miss. In just a cou­ple of weeks, we’ll again be host­ing the Mag­i­cal Spring Thing at the Mahler Ball­room, which will fea­ture St. Louis Bal­let, Union Avenue Opera, the St. Louis Rag­timers, the Ball­room Acad­e­my of St. Louis. It’s going to be an unfor­get­table evening, so click here for more infor­ma­tion. On Moth­er’s Day (May 13th), we’re pleased to part­ner with Union Avenue Opera to bring you (and your mom!) Arias in the After­noon: A Vic­to­ri­an Gar­den Par­ty. While you enjoy scones, tarts and tea from the Lon­don Tea Room, Union Avenue Opera artists will ser­e­nade you with a spe­cial Moth­er’s Day pro­gram. For details, read all about it here.

50-cent piece appear­ances last week: 0

Mystery!

Some of our loot.

Put on your think­ing caps, because zoinks, we’ve got a mys­tery on our hands.

We’ve been Tweet­ing and Face­book­ing about it as it has been hap­pen­ing, but we’re going to lay the series of events out for you right here. We want to know what you think.

About 6 weeks ago, Direc­tor Andy found a 50-cent piece on the front steps of the house, just out­side our out­er doors. The 50-cent piece was paint­ed gold. A week or so passed, and he found anoth­er one with a pen­ny next to it. Soon, we start­ed find­ing 50-cent pieces every cou­ple of days, either on the front step or on a table inside our gar­den that can be reached through the fence fac­ing 15th street.

This past Sun­day (12/18/11), Week­end Man­ag­er Lind­sey found one on the front steps when she opened, anoth­er one on the steps lat­er in the day, and a third on the table in the gar­den when she locked up. Today, we found one at the front door at noon (it was­n’t there when we opened at 10:00) and one more when we closed for the day.

We’re stumped.

15th and Locust is a busy inter­sec­tion dur­ing the day. The neigh­bor­hood is teem­ing with high school stu­dents from Con­flu­ence Acad­e­my across the street and res­i­dents from Locust, Wash­ing­ton Avenue and oth­er adja­cent streets are always out and about and walk­ing their dogs.  Con­struc­tion work­ers from the Pub­lic Library project are every­where, and we always have gen­er­al down­town foot traffic.

Camp­bell House has had its share of mys­ter­ies over the years. We occa­sion­al­ly get mail addressed to mem­bers of the fam­i­ly — we’ll post some of those tomor­row — and we’ve always had reports of super­nat­ur­al activ­i­ty, but this is the first reg­u­lar and con­sis­tent ongo­ing puz­zle. Because of the 50-cent pieces, we’ve been more enthu­si­as­tic than usu­al to unlock the doors and work in the gar­den to see what we’ll find.

And maybe this is some­one’s Christ­mas gift to Camp­bell House. The dona­tion is cer­tain­ly nice, but what a sto­ry! The mys­te­ri­ous donor had giv­en us some excite­ment over the last few weeks, and we appre­ci­ate the dai­ly rid­dle it brings.

What do you think? Com­ment here, on our Face­book page, or tweet us at @campbellmuseum. We’re look­ing for­ward to your take on this hap­py lit­tle happenstance.