A Look Back • 1829 building, said to be home of the hot dog, demolished in 1947

ST. LOUIS It was the oldest dwelling in the city. Local tradition claimed the hot dog was invented within its limestone walls.

None of that was enough to save the Jean Baptiste Roy home, a crumbling and vacant two-story structure at 615-17 South Second Street that dated to 1829. Despite earnest efforts to preserve it, demolition began March 31, 1947. There was talk of reassembling it for a museum, but its building stones were scattered.

The building, two blocks south of the Gateway Arch grounds, probably would not have survived a lot longer anyway. The Poplar Street Bridge, running directly over the site, opened in 1967.

Roy, a fur trapper and explorer, had the home built on land he bought from Pierre Chouteau Jr. Whether he and his family lived there isn't clear. Nor is when he died, probably in 1847.

In 1874, a butcher named John Boepple bought the house from Roy's descendants and turned it into his meat shop. Boepple and his business partner, William Tamme, made sausage.

That's how St. Louis' claim to the hot dog evolved. The story has it that Anton L. Feuchtwanger, who peddled Boepple-Tamme sausages on city streets, suggested putting them between buttered buns.

Who knows? Other claimants hailed from Coney Island, N.Y., and Frankfurt, Germany. But the St. Louis version was catchy enough to spice up the effort to save the Roy house.

By 1946, the building was crumbling and empty. A homeless man who had spent a few nights there told a reporter, "Even the rats don't come 'round much."

Charles van Ravenswaay, director of the Missouri Historical Society, campaigned to save the building. The St. Louis Star-Times newspaper managed to delay demolition. A Harvard University professor, Kenneth J. Conant, who also was president of the American Society of Archaeological Historians, toured the home in January 1947 and declared it worthy.

"It is part of the birthright of the city," Conant said. "You will be surprised how elegant a restoration would be made of this building."

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A Look Back • 1829 building, said to be home of the hot dog, demolished in 1947