The Lemp Mansion, one of St. Louis's most storied and reputedly haunted landmarks, is officially up for sale. The 33-room Italianate Victorian at 3322 South 13th Street in Benton Park is listed for $1.8 million, with the neighboring Lemp Stables property listed separately for $1.5 million.
The listing was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whose reporter Steph Kukuljan detailed the sale of the mansion and its adjoining stables property. According to that report, the asking prices include the turnkey restaurant and event-venue businesses currently operating on site, and both properties are set to remain open for scheduled events through December 20, 2026. Weddings, mystery dinners and other private bookings already on the calendar will be honored by current management through that date, the paper's report notes.
The mansion was built in 1868 by baker and saloon keeper Jacob Feickert, according to Legends of America. His son-in-law, William J. Lemp Sr., bought the home in 1876 and expanded it into a 7,300-square-foot manor featuring African mahogany trim and hand-carved Italian marble mantels, the outlet reports. Lemp grew his family's brewery into a beer-industry giant, per the Post-Dispatch's account, and the mansion's address changed over time from its original spot on 2nd Carondelet Avenue to today's DeMenil Place, per Legends of America.
An Underground World Beneath the Mansion
During that expansion, workers excavated a tunnel from the mansion's basement into natural limestone caves, connecting the home directly to the sprawling, 13-block Lemp Brewery complex, Legends of America reports. The caves once housed an underground auditorium, a bowling alley and even a swimming pool, and were originally used for lagering beer before mechanical refrigeration existed, according to the same account.
At its peak before Prohibition forced its closure in 1920, the William J. Lemp Brewing Co. employed 1,000 workers and produced 500,000 barrels of beer annually, according to the Historical Marker Database. The brewery, once outpaced commercially by rival Anheuser-Busch per the Post-Dispatch's report, was ultimately sold at a 1922 auction to International Shoe Company for under $600,000 — a fraction of the assets' pre-Prohibition value of several million dollars, the marker database notes.
A Family Marked by Tragedy
The Lemp family's history is inseparable from the mansion's reputation. Across three generations, four members of the family died by suicide: William Sr. inside the mansion in 1904, Elsa Lemp Wright at her Hortense Place home in 1920, William “Billy” Jr. in his mansion office in 1922, and Charles Lemp inside the mansion in 1949, leaving the family's only suicide note, according to reporting from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. William Sr.'s death followed the sudden 1901 death of his 28-year-old son and expected brewery heir, Frederick Lemp, from a heart-related illness, the outlet's archival account states.
After the last Lemp resident left in 1949, the mansion deteriorated into a boarding house, per background compiled from Wikipedia's entry on the property. In 1975, Paul Pointer acquired the decaying home and converted it into a restaurant, inn and event facility, with the Pointer family later purchasing the mansion outright in 1985, according to the Post-Dispatch's reporting. Under their five-decade ownership, the Pointers have hosted weddings and mystery dinners and built the site into a popular Halloween destination known for its ghost tours.
Ghost Lore Built a Business
The mansion's paranormal reputation dates back decades. In November 1980, Life Magazine named the Lemp Mansion one of the nine most haunted places in America, a designation that helped fuel decades of national television coverage on paranormal shows, according to a podcast produced by Hibbs Luxury Homes. That reputation has translated directly into tourism revenue, with the site's ghost hunts, murder mystery dinners and bed-and-breakfast stays forming the core of its commercial draw. Hoodline previously covered a haunted walking tour of the Lemp Brewery and surrounding neighborhood run by the St. Louis Paranormal Research Society.
The property hasn't been without recent physical setbacks. In August 2025, a direct lightning strike dislodged bricks from the mansion's northernmost chimney and temporarily knocked out power, internet and telephone service, according to a notice posted by the Lemp Mansion. No guests or employees were injured in the strike, per that same account.
Preservation Rules Could Shape a Buyer's Options
Any new owner will face constraints tied to the mansion's location within the Cherokee-Lemp Historic District, a section of Benton Park listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Local preservation ordinances administered by the City of St. Louis regulate exterior architectural modifications within the district, which protects a concentration of 19th-century industrial and residential German-American architecture.
The mansion also sits on DeMenil Place alongside the Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion, an 1848 Greek Revival house museum also listed on the National Register, which anchors the surrounding historic tourism corridor in Benton Park. Whether a future buyer continues operating the Lemp Mansion as a hospitality and ghost-tourism venue or pursues a different adaptive reuse under the district's historic guidelines remains an open question, one the current listing does not resolve.
