This was one of ten St. Louis-based companies manufacturing automobiles

Dorris Motor Car Company, St. Louis Missouri

Date added: November 03, 2023 Categories: Missouri Industrial Auto Companies

Camera looking southwest at the corner of Laclede & Sarah (1919)

In addition to the finely crafted handmade automobiles built from his design between 1898 and 1926, George Preston Dorris is credited with many "firsts" in St. Louis motor vehicle history and with significant innovations in the advance of the fledgling American automobile industry. Perhaps his most important innovation, the "distillator," was first introduced in his 1916 models that were produced at this 1911-12 factory. Though sheathed in brick and dressed with terra cotta by St. Louis architect John L. Wees, the building is the earliest known St. Louis example of mushroom capital/paneled-slab technology, the most advanced reinforced concrete construction of the day. It is also the building with the strongest association to the remarkable career of George P. Dorris.

The St. Louis Motor Carriage Co./Dorris Motor Car Company was the first St. Louis-based company to manufacture automobiles and the only company in operation for almost three decades (1898-1926). Although St. Louis failed to sustain its leading role as an automobile manufacturing center, the pioneering efforts of the St. Louis/Dorris Company laid the groundwork for St. Louis' later significance as a location for major assembly plants and automobile parts manufacturing.

The history of the Dorris Motor Car Company began in Nashville, Tennessee where teenagers John L. French and George Preston Dorris built a gasoline motor for a second-hand steam launch in 1891. In 1895, French moved to St. Louis to work, at the family-owned piano and organ company and Dorris decided to attend the Thanksgiving Day Road Race in Chicago. Fascinated with that event and by accounts of early German and French experiments with the horseless carriage as reported in Scientific American, Dorris returned to Nashville determined to build an automobile. By the spring of 1897, Dorris' car was in operation: "It attracted a great deal of attention," as he reported some years later. Meanwhile, in 1896, French's father had ordered a single-cylinder car from the Winton Motor Carriage Co. but the car (the sixth produced by Winton) did not arrive until 1898. That same year, French decided to organize the first automobile manufacturing company in St. Louis and sent to Nashville for Dorris and his experimental car. Dorris arrived on Thanksgiving Day in 1898 and the St. Louis Motor Carriage Co. was inaugurated with $5000 in capital stock. French, whose father provided the equity, was President; Dorris, Vice President and Chief Engineer.

The new company's first two cars, virtual copies of Dorris' Nashville experiment with twin-cylinder 4 x 5-inch motors, were completed and delivered in 1899, one to A. L. Lambrick of St. Louis and the other to E. H. R. Green of Dallas, Texas. In 1900, Dorris developed a motor-powered omnibus during the St. Louis streetcar strike and French won the gold medal in the five-passenger race at the "First International Automobile Exhibition and Race Meet." His "St. Louis" had a single-cylinder unit power plant machine with the patent issued to Dorris. The motor, clutch and transmission were built as a single unit. French also drove a "St. Louis" in the New York City to Buffalo Race in 1901. After the race, French shipped the car to Boston where he spent the summer demonstrating its prowess. "He sold sixty-five in Boston, which was practically the entire output of the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company for that season." The following year, the same car was produced by Dorris and French as the "Boston Model" with brisk sales in Boston handled by Reed & Underhill. The "Boston," / "St. Louis," sold for $1,200.

French died in May of 1903 from injuries received in a 1902 accident with a streetcar while demonstrating the car in Pittsburgh. French's brother Jesse Jr. continued the business for almost two years in St. Louis before moving the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company to Peoria, Illinois in 1905. Dorris resigned rather than move and with wealthy grocer Henry B. Krenning as President formed the Dorris Motor Car Company, incorporated in August of 1905 with capital of $315,000. The first "Dorris" was completed in time for the 1906 New York Automobile Show at Madison Square Garden. The new car incorporated a four-cylinder vertical valve-in-head motor with the valves in a line, a concept Dorris had been working on for several years. In 1907, the company moved to a new plant on Forest Park Boulevard. The building, of masonry construction and interior iron columns, was designed by St. Louis architect John L. Wees. Wees had designed a 1902 mercantile building for Krenning's wholesale grocery operation.

Dorris was one of ten St. Louis-based companies manufacturing automobiles in 1909; an additional eight enterprises would only build to order. Regular model "Dorris" cars, the Roadster and touring cars, cost $2,500 on average with the limousine priced at $3,500. The competition's average cost per car was about $1,300. The total St. Louis production for 1909 was 2,400 cars; 1,850 employees turned out products with a total value of $3,890,000. Boosters claimed that St. Louis was experiencing greater production and sales of the automobile than any other city in the country and forecast a continuing boom based on the new industry:

On the whole, the automobile business for St. Louis gives greater promise than any other line here. To the south and west of this city is a virgin territory in which the automobile is all but unknown. It is a rich country and its people are financially in a position to own motor cars so that St. Louis manufacturers, agencies and dealers seem to have nothing to do but offer their cars for sale to find buyers.

The Dorris Co. made plans for expansion as early as 1909 with the purchase of a lot at Sarah and Forest Park Boulevard. In 1911, the company bought a larger piece of property at Sarah and Laclede. Reinforced concrete technology, a parallel evolution to the automobile, was uniquely suited for automobile plants. The new building for Dorris designed by Wees in 1911 utilized state-of-the-art flared, or mushroom, capitals to reduce the shearing stress at the perimeter of the columns and paneled-slab construction. The principles of the mushroom columns have been attributed to the 1905-06 work of Minneapolis engineer C. A. P. Turner. The modification of his continuous slab to the broad, shallow beam system between columns (paneled slab) was introduced by engineers Condron & Sinks of Chicago in 1909 and first utilized in the Studebaker Automobile Building in Chicago. The Dorris building is the earliest known example of its use in St. Louis. The primary elevations of the exterior, however, were dressed with the more traditional brick veneer and terra cotta ornament of early 20th-century St. Louis industrial designs. The 1913 model "Dorris," the first line produced in the new plant, like all preceding models was entirely produced by hand with all parts manufactured by Dorris. The company's early motto "Built to Last" was now revised to "Built up to Standard, Not down to Price." The basic model Dorris cost $2400 in 1914 and by then Ford could turn out an assembly line car for $325. The Dorris six-cylinder engine with an improved fuel distillator was inaugurated in 1916. The "distillator" collected heavy petroleum residues in the low-grade gasoline where heat from the warming engine would vaporize the residue before being drawn into the engine and burned. "The 'distillator,' unnecessary with today's high-octane fuels, resulted in greater fuel and oil economy, longer engine life (especially bearings), fewer carbon deposits, and smoother engine performance at colder temperatures." Retaining the valve-in-head, the new "six" was cast three in a block and had a bore of four inches and a stroke of five inches. The car included a transmission-run speedometer (another Dorris first) and a self-starter, standard in the Dorris since 191l, a year before Cadillac. The model held the economy record for its class and weight for three successive years. In spite of the technological success of the new car, actual production of automobiles at Dorris was on the decline and the company turned to an emphasis on trucks and buses during the WW I era. By 1919, the cost of producing a Dorris automobile had sent the retail price soaring to $4340. Nonetheless, Dorris production peaked at an all-time high in 1920 with an output of almost 400 cars and 117 trucks.

St. Louis' geographical advantages, "Ship From the Hub, Not the Rim," continued to attract assembly plants for Detroit-based competition. A massive Chevrolet plant that could produce over 100,000 cars a year was built in 1920. The days of the open, "sporty" cars driven for pleasure by well-heeled gents were over. The consumer expected a closed car with new models and many color selections every year. Performance was still important but durability had become secondary. The Dorris Company production plummeted in 1921, turning out less than three cars a week. After an unsuccessful attempt to improve the financial status by producing the lower-cost "Astra" in 1924, Krenning (who had resigned as President of Dorris in 1917 but still held $100,000 of the preferred stock) applied for a dissolution of the corporation. The following year Krenning paid $115,000 for all the assets of the old company and reorganized the business as Dorris Motors Inc. with himself as President and Dorris as Vice President. The new corporation lasted only a year. A newspaper story about the St. Louis automobile industry in 1926, "Five Large Auto Manufacturing Companies Here," was really an account of four remaining plants: Chevrolet, which produced 110,000 cars in 1925; Ford, 72,635 cars; Moon (a St. Louis-based company) 15,000 cars and Gardner (the other St. Louis-based company) 3,600 cars. The Cupples Company, however, shipped automobile tires from its St. Louis plant all over the country. McQuay-Norris had become one of the world's leading manufacturers of pistons. Smaller companies turned out spark plugs and a variety of other parts, accessories and supplies for automobiles. The diversity of St. Louis' economic/industrial base would help it weather the lean years of the Depression in better shape than many single-industry cities. By 1931, however, both Moon and Gardner were finished.

The first of three Cadillac dealers to occupy the Dorris Building moved there in 1928. Meanwhile, George P. Dorris had started a gear manufacturing company which is still in business today. Indefatigable, Dorris (described in 1943 as a "lean and sharp inventor") retooled his operation for airplane parts during WW II. (The former Dorris Building also did service. Requisitioned by the Army, the building housed the McDonnel1 Aircraft Engineering Department and Model Shop.) Although alleging that he was retired, the 69-year-old Dorris spent at least six days a week at his shop. At age 80, Dorris (and two brothers ages 82 and 71) set off for California in a 1919 "Pasadena" model Dorris, the last of his many successful excursions undertaken in antique Dorris autos.

George P. Dorris died in November of 1968 at the age of 94. (The building at 4100 Laclede had been acquired by Washington University for warehousing a year earlier.) In addition to St. Louis's "firsts" (1. Chief Engineer and partner in the first automobile company; 2. designed and produced the first cars, the first truck, the first bus and the first skidoo or paddy wagon), Dorris is acknowledged by experts in the field to have made important contributions to the evolution of the American automobile industry. Dorris was the first to use Timken roller bearings, to perfect a one-cylinder engine with multiple-disc clutch and sliding gear transmission running in oi1, to invent the first float-feed carburetor, to design the first valve-in-head four-cylinder engine and to produce the first transmission-run speedometer. His 1916 "distillator" is considered a key innovation in the era of low-grade gasoline. Nelson Metz, in his 1977 account of the Dorris Motor Company, estimated that only twelve Dorris-designed cars were still in existence. One of the earliest, a 1901 "St. Louis," is on display at the National Museum of Transport in St. Louis County.

According to a 1928 article, St. Louisans regarded Dorris' arrival in St. Louis with his experimental car as "the best joke since the McKinley-Bryan election returns." Only a portion of the one-story building on Vandeventer where Dorris and French produced the "St. Louis" cars is still standing and that portion has been refaced. Although the 1907 plant on Forest Park Boulevard is still standing, it was used for production for less than five years. The 1911-12 building at 4100 Laclede is not only significant for structural engineering but also as the site associated with Dorris' technological genius for the longest period of time.

The building was converted to Condominiums in 1985.

Building Description

Constructed in 1911-12 at an estimated cost of $68,000 by the St. Louis Unit Construction Company, the three-story Dorris Motor Car Building at 4100 Laclede Avenue features a reinforced concrete frame sheathed in red brick trimmed with terra cotta and limestone. St. Louis architect John Ludwig Wees designed the factory and showroom. On October 1, 1911 the St. Louis Globe-Democrat published Wees' drawing of a U-shaped building; the building permit was issued later that month. Sometime before March 6, 1912, the decision was made to reduce the size of the building by eliminating three bays on Sarah and the southern wing of the U.

Measuring 300 x 60 feet and 59 by 60 feet, the L-shaped building is divided into 15 bays on the north (Laclede) elevation and six bays on the east (Sarah) elevation. Those elevations are articulated by vertical brick piers that rise from stone bases at street level (except at the corner) to the terra cotta cornice just below the roof line. White stone sills and brick soldier courses define the windows; first-floor windows have been glass-blocked. Terra cotta coping is highlighted on the north elevation by a pediment (which once capped an elaborate terra cotta parapet) of the same material bearing the Dorris logo. Originally, large "Dorris" terra cotta panels were installed between the second and third floors at the northeast corner bays. Other alterations include the removal of the brick and terra cotta parapet at the northeast corner bays, replacement windows in reduced openings at the 5^th and 6^th bays on the third floor of the Sarah elevation, the removal of terra cotta ornament surrounding the entrances and relocation of the Laclede entrance to the 3^rd bay. Six bays on Laclede and two on Sarah have been faced with stone on the first floor. The remaining elevations are devoid of ornamentation.

Originally, the large fixed-glass bays at the corner of Laclede and Sarah opened into the showroom; sales offices occupied the southern three bays on Sarah. The 1919 photo below, looking north from the sales area, documents the 1919 Dorris models and the mushroom column and paneled slab construction. In 1928, the offices were installed with quarter-sawn oak paneling, leaded glass windows, and a fireplace. Illumination is provided by large 60-pane metal frame windows. The original corporate offices of the Dorris Motor Car Company occupied third floor space at the west (rear) of the Sarah elevation. Details that have survived include a fireplace with a black marble surround and hearth, ornamental plaster cove molding and a bay window. In 1947, a one-story brick addition designed by Hugo Graf (AIA) for the Forest Cadillac Co. was attached to the west end of the original building.

Today, a construction fence capitalizes on the building's original use and serves as a marketing tool for condominium sales.