A draft of one of Lind­sey’s pan­els. Come by in two weeks to see the whole exhib­it in per­son. (Believe me, she’ll be REALLY hap­py if you do.)

Wel­come to the down­hill slope of Mon­day, every­one. It’s been a marathon around here the last few weeks, and this is what we have to show for it:

New Civ­il War Exhib­it
Out with the old and in with the new.….Weekend Man­ag­er Lind­sey is putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on her new exhib­it, A Fam­i­ly Apart: The Camp­bells Dur­ing the Civ­il War Years. She’s pulling some of Vir­gini­a’s dress­es and jew­el­ry out of stor­age, along with some excep­tion­al old let­ters. Come by after May 8th to see the sto­ry of the Camp­bells dur­ing this tur­bu­lent peri­od in Amer­i­can history.

Mag­i­cal Spring Thing
Sam Clark’s big show — the Mag­i­cal Spring Thing — on April 14th was a huge suc­cess. We’re still recov­er­ing from it, but we raised a few dol­lars for new envi­ron­men­tal pro­gram­ming and spe­cial projects around the house. Big thanks to Sam and all the vol­un­teers and board mem­bers who helped pull off anoth­er spec­tac­u­lar show with Union Avenue Opera, St. Louis Bal­let, stu­dents from Web­ster Uni­ver­si­ty’s Leigh Ger­dine Col­lege of Fine Arts, St. Louis Rag­timers and the Ball­room Dance Acad­e­my of St. Louis.

Web­ster Groves High School stu­dents work­ing on an over­grown area at our fence. The yard looks won­der­ful thanks to their hard work.

Web­ster High School Lends a Hand
Our gar­den vol­un­teers (read: Moms and Dads of the CHM staff) are espe­cial­ly grate­ful for the group of ten Web­ster Groves High School stu­dents and par­ents who came by on April 10th to do some heavy lift­ing in the gar­den. The enthu­si­as­tic teens knocked out an impres­sive amount of weed­ing, trim­ming, mulching and plant­i­ng, and it was a plea­sure to have them at the house.  The gar­den looks FABULOUS because of all their help. <please come back!>

The Mys­te­ri­ous Gus Meyer
Between dig­ging up scoop on Lucas Place and the Camp­bell Fam­i­ly, there isn’t much Intre­pid Researcher Tom™  can’t find. Last week, he start­ed the quest to uncov­er more infor­ma­tion about Gus Mey­er, a devot­ed ser­vant who began work­ing at Camp­bell House as a gar­den­er in 1901, and he even­tu­al­ly worked his way up to be Hugh Camp­bel­l’s per­son­al assis­tant. After Hugh died in 1931, Gus stayed in the house and took care of Hugh’s broth­er Hazlett until he died in 1938. Gus con­tin­ued to live in and man­age the house until it final­ly opened as a muse­um five years lat­er. He signed the Muse­um’s guest book on its open­ing day, and we lost track of him after that. Intre­pid Researcher Tom™ has found infor­ma­tion on his fam­i­ly and what hap­pened to him after he left his job of over 40 years at Camp­bell House. We’ll make a blog post with all of his find­ings shortly.

Bring Mom to Camp­bell House for Moth­er’s Day
Stumped for what to get your dar­ling mom on Moth­er’s Day? Easy, bring her to our house for Arias in the After­noon, a gar­den par­ty we’re co-host­ing with Union Avenue Opera. Spend the after­noon relax­ing in our gar­den and lis­ten­ing to a spe­cial one-hour con­cert while enjoy­ing tea and nib­bles from our neigh­bors, the Lon­don Tea Room. It’s going to be a great event and if you bring your mom, you’ll be her favorite son or daugh­ter. We promise. Click here for tick­ets.

Urban Explor­ing 2.0: Muse­um Build­ing at the Mis­souri Botan­i­cal Garden
After the over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the post on our recent trek through the St. Louis Tran­sit Com­pa­ny Elec­tri­cal Sub­sta­tion, we’re going to try mak­ing Urban Explor­ing a reg­u­lar fea­ture. This week­end we had the chance to get inside the Muse­um Build­ing at the Botan­i­cal Gar­den, a struc­ture that’s closed to the pub­lic. A blog post fea­tur­ing pic­tures of the Muse­um Build­ing and Tow­er Grove House is com­ing this week.

That’s just some of what is hap­pen­ing at Camp­bell House. Check back with us for some excit­ing news on house paint­ing (!), the 2012 Free­dom’s Gate­way Sig­na­ture Event, and our Spring Mem­bers Par­ty. From the Camp­bell fam­i­ly to yours, have a stel­lar week!