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historical notes
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George Fox Steedman was a successful businessman and inventor in St. Louis in the early twentieth century. He became president of the family pneumatic machinery business, Curtis Manufacturing Company, in 1903, but his avocation was architecture, and he traveled extensively in Europe, amassing a first-rate collection of rare and important architectural books.
Steedman and his family traveled west in 1921, and settled in Montecito, CA, where they constructed the Casa del Herrero, a Spanish Colonial Revival house with an eleven-acre garden. Between 1922 and 1925 George Steedman worked closely with George Washington Smith and Ralph Stevens in the design of the Casa and its landscape.
In 1928 Steedman and his wife, Carrie Robb Howard, presented an outstanding collection of books on architecture and the allied art to the St. Louis Public Library, along with funds to build a special room and an endowment to be used for future purchases. |
