Venue notes: Billie Goat Hill, St Louis MO
Historic saloon located at 3800 Chouteau Ave (Chouteau & S 39th St) in St Louis. The building evidently dates to sometime in the 19th century. It was a grocery store in the 1880s and 1890s.
It's not clear when it first became a saloon: the canned description of Billie Goat Hill that appeared in the weekly Nightlife column of the St Louis Post-Dispatch includes the line, "Sit at an 1897 bar or make a call from an old wood-and-etched glass phone booth...," which implies that there was a tavern on the premises as early as 1897.
A non-exhaustive survey of articles archived on newspapers.com reveals the following later references to the property at 3800 Chouteau:
• 1915 - "poolroom" (name/owner unspecified)
• 1919 - "lunch room" (name/owner unspecified)
• 1919 - "Nick Guzina saloon"
• 1924 - "Nick Guzina soft drink bar"
• 1924 - "Nick Guzina's tavern"
• 1933 - "Grizina's" (presumed typo)
• 1942 - "John Guzina, John and Jeff's"
• 1944 - "Jeff Guzina's tavern"
• 1957 - "tavern" (name/owner unspecified)
• 1972 - property for sale
Correspondent Walt Winston, writing about Billie Goat Hill in 2023, states: "They opened in March of 1976. IRS closed it in the early 1990s. Bands played until the early 1990s. I know this because I worked there at that period. I got my start musically there and played there in the late 1980s."
In the mid-1990s the building was renovated and reopened as King Louie's restaurant. Its next incarnation was as City Cottage on Chouteau, a function space available for rent. Sometime after that, some part of the building became Chouteau's at 39th, another restaurant, for which the most recent online reference is a 2009 review panning the place. As of 2022, when this Google image was captured, the building looks to be in decent shape, and the City Cottage sign can be read next to the S 39th St entrance. The space was used, as City Cottage, for a wedding as recently as Nov 2013, so apparently it is still a going concern. No other info available.
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