Ellis Wainwright

Ellis Wainwright (August 3, 1850 – November 6, 1924) was an American capitalist, brewer, art collector and socialite from St. Louis, Missouri. He was President of the St. Louis Brewing Company and Director of the St. Louis and Suburban Company. He is best known for the Wainwright Building in downtown St. Louis, which was one of the first skyscrapers in the world and one of the most important office buildings of the period.

Biography Wainwright was born on August 3, 1850, and although the family hailed from Godfrey, Illinois, he grew up in nearby St. Louis, where he also spent much of his adult life. The son of a prominent brewer and building contractor, an English immigrant Samuel Wainwright and his wife Catherine Dorothy, Wainwright was an important figure in railway development in the region. In 1889, he consolidated his father's Wainwright Brewery Company (in which Samuel Wainwright had successfully doubled the profits)

Wainwright visited Europe in the summer of 1890. Meanwhile his plans for the Wainwright Building, named in his honor, and designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan were put into effect. It was to be built on the corner of Seventh and Chestnut streets in downtown St. Louis on a plot of land which had been purchased by his mother Catherine. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright called the Wainwright Building "the very first human expression of a tall steel office-building as Architecture."

Before the building was completed, Wainwright's wife Charlotte died of peritonitis, aged just 34. He was said to have co-signed a $75,000 bank loan for the bribe money. it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 15, 1970 and became a St. Louis Landmark in 1971. The tomb is a domed cubic building with walls of concrete covered in limestone on the exterior. On the northeast (front) side of the tomb is the entrance with a double-leafed bronze grill and double-doors. The sides of the tomb each have windows, also covered in bronze grills. The interior of the tomb has two burial slabs and a mosaic floor and ceiling. The Wainwright Tomb has been described as "the most sensitive and the most graceful of Sullivan's tombs" and as "one of Sullivan's masterpieces." After Wainwright's death, an endowment was established that provided for the reconstruction or renovation of the tomb in case of earthquake or vandalism.