The Story of Bessie,
an 1890s Love Affair

In the late 1890s, when the great houses of Portland Place and Westmoreland Place were being built, Herman Luyties, owner of the first proprietary drug business in St. Louis, traveled to Italy on a pleasure trip. The Grand Tour was very popular during Victorian times. It is rumored that he fell in love with a voluptuous Italyn girl, the model of a sculptor from the Genoa area, Giulio Monteverde. (My thanks go to Hilary Richrod for providing the name of the sculptor.)

Herman proposed, but she declined. [What exactly he proposed, we can only imagine. After all, there was already a Mrs. Luyties at the time.]

Luyties commissioned Monteverde to render an eight foot statue to capture her beauty, carved in marble. Chances are Herman came directly home after placing the order, because the statue has details he wasn`t expecting. But we`re jumping the gun here. All this is hearsay, but juicy, isn`t it?

When the statue was completed, she was shipped to St. Louis, to be placed in the foyer of the Luyties home at #39 Portland Place. Her several tons didn`t sit well in the foyer (not to mention the strain it must have put on the wife). In time Herman was forced to find a new location for her. He chose the family burial plot in Bellefontaine Cemetery (section 299, corner of Memorial Avenue and Hawthorn Avenue).

As one might imagine, this only partially solved the problem. I`m not one to tell tales, especially when I have only juicy bits, but the gossip between the lines is pretty hot for 1900. The cemetery workers are quick to point out her slightly rounded belly, and they love to speculate about her.

Soon pollution and the weather began to deteriorate the marble. This was the industrial revolution in the city of St. Louis, after all. The cemetery sits above Broadway, and overlooks Hall Street. Herman had her enclosed in a granite shadow box with a glass face. [By the way, I don`t believe Mr. Luyties would have called her Bessie. That name is said to have originated with the cemetery workers, way back around the time she arrived in Bellefontaine.

Or so they say . . . ]

The family plot is a big one. Corner lot with a view. Space for sixteen or more. Herman is there alone. He died in 1921 at age 50, and is buried at Bessie`s feet. "Bessie, the girl in the shadow box" as she is known to the cemetery attendants, maintains the eternal vigil. The wife and the rest of the family have a cosy little spot of their own, across the road and down the block a ways.