J.D. Perry Lewis and his battery powered horseless vehicle, the first in St. Louis. Photograph, ca. 1893. Missouri History Museum Photographs and Prints Collections. Transportation. n28813.
John D. Perry Lewis
The First Horseless Carriage on Garrison Avenue
One of the most delightful and unexpected storylines connected to the Lewis family of Garrison Avenue reaches far beyond coal yards and industrial leadership. It points instead toward the dawn of the automobile age in St. Louis.
In April 1893, John D. Perry Lewis, the son of William J. Lewis of the Lewis Coal Company, reportedly operated what is considered the first documented automobile in St. Louis. The experimental vehicle, assembled after a formative trip to Europe, represented the curiosity, confidence, and inventive spirit that increasingly defined America’s rising industrial generation at the close of the nineteenth century.
According to the surviving account attached to the historic photograph:
“A group of five St. Louis students of the Smith Academy, while visiting Paris in 1892 saw for the first time a horseless carriage. One of the young students, J. D. Perry Lewis, said, ‘I would like to have one like that.’ When he returned home he converted a horse drawn buggy into the first horseless vehicle seen in St. Louis.”
The machine itself was primitive by later standards, yet astonishing for its time. Lewis adapted a traditional buggy frame and powered it with electric batteries. The vehicle reportedly achieved speeds of seven to eight miles per hour—enough to attract widespread attention on the streets of St. Louis in an era still dominated by horses, wagons, omnibuses, and streetcars.
Most remarkably for the Lucas and Garrison project, the first recorded operation of the vehicle reportedly occurred on Garrison Avenue itself on April 24, 1893.
That detail transforms the image from a simple curiosity into something historically symbolic. Garrison Avenue—already home to industrialists, merchants, civic leaders, clergy, and entrepreneurs in 1875—became, less than two decades later, a stage for the arrival of a technology that would fundamentally reshape American life.
The photograph captures a fascinating transitional moment in transportation history. The wheels, carriage body, and seating arrangement still belong visually to the horse-and-buggy world of the nineteenth century. Yet the missing horse announces the future. The machine stands awkwardly between two eras: one rooted in animal power and Victorian streetscapes, the other moving toward mechanized mobility, urban expansion, and the automobile culture that would dominate the twentieth century.
The Lewis family’s connection to this event also reinforces a recurring theme throughout the Lucas and Garrison project: many of these residents were not merely passive participants in St. Louis society. They were early adopters, investors, organizers, and innovators who helped propel the city into modernity.
John D. Perry Lewis would later spend much of his life in the automotive industry in St. Louis, suggesting that this youthful experiment was not an isolated novelty but the beginning of a lifelong engagement with transportation technology.
Seen in that broader context, the image becomes more than an early automobile photograph. It is evidence of the restless experimentation occurring within the city’s educated and prosperous circles during the 1890s. The same neighborhood networks that fueled railroads, coal companies, bridge construction, manufacturing, and finance were also positioned to embrace the coming automotive revolution.
And remarkably, one of the earliest sparks of that revolution in St. Louis appears to have rolled quietly down Garrison Avenue.
That actually strengthens the narrative clarity considerably.
So the relationship chain becomes:
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William J. Lewis — major coal operator on Garrison Avenue
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John D. Perry — William’s brother-in-law
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John W. Lewis — likely named his son, John D. Perry Lewis, in honor of Perry
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John D. Perry Lewis — builder/operator of the first documented automobile in St. Louis
That gives the story a wonderfully Victorian-family-network quality that fits your project perfectly. Naming patterns in these interconnected upper-middle and professional St. Louis families were often deeply intentional, and this becomes a visible example of kinship continuity across generations.
It also subtly illustrates another Lucas and Garrison theme:
these families were not isolated households. They functioned as interconnected social, business, and intellectual networks whose influence extended across decades.
The timeline becomes even more elegant:
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1875: the Lewis and Perry families are established on Plate 71
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1892: young John D. Perry Lewis sees a horseless carriage in Paris
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1893: he operates the first documented automobile in St. Louis on Garrison Avenue
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Later decades: he remains active in the St. Louis automotive industry