Honorary Dallasite for a few days, Adolphus Busch – the 21st of 22 children. But don’t worry, his dad was a businessman with his fingers in several business pies and seemed to do ok, considering the number of mouths to feed. (No word on how well his mother, the second wife, weathered 15 pregnancies.) Adolphus would get his first paying gig at 17 years old, working as a shipping clerk in Cologne, Germany.
By that point, Adolphus already had three brothers in America and they sent home word that there were a lot of opportunities in the US. Adolphus packed up at 18 and headed to the United States, arriving in the port of New Orleans. He then made his way north to St. Louis.
But how does Dallas fit in? Adolphus would ultimately become part of a group of investors in St. Louis that threw it’s weight behind the building of the Oriental Hotel in Dallas – where the AT&T building now stands in the West End.
Pictured: The Adolphus most people know – the thick and mustachioed version.
Here is another of our blog posts on the Oriental Hotel.
