Business History

Within the Local History Collection are a few St. Louis-based company archives, including Monsanto (now Bayer – Crop Science), the St. Louis Car Company (manufacture of trolleys, buses, commuter trains, and other vehicles, which closed in 1973), and Harland Bartholomew and Associates HBA (an urban planning firm, which merged with Parsons Corporation).

Primarily added in the 1980s, business history is no longer a subject actively collected by the archives at Washington University.

St. Louis Car Company Records

Selections from this large collection are available online, including a PCC sales brochure, specifications for PCC construction 1941 and 1947, and a Cardinal Aircraft Sales brochure. Images from the collection are also available on Flickr (less than 2% of the thousands of images in the collection).