ST. LOUIS, MO – September 3, 2026 (STL.News) One of St. Louis’ most recognizable historic properties is looking for a new owner as the Lemp Mansion, the longtime home of one of the city’s most influential brewing families and now a restaurant, inn, and event destination, has been placed on the market.
The mansion at 3322 DeMenil Place in St. Louis’ Benton Park neighborhood is being offered for $1.8 million. In comparison, the neighboring Lemp Stables property is separately listed for $1.5 million, according to current reports on the sale.
The St. Louis Business Journal reported an asking price of about $3.9 million for the broader Lemp Mansion offering, which includes the existing business and Lemp family artifacts inside.
The sale could mark the start of a significant transition for a St. Louis institution the Pointer family has operated for about half a century.
The Lemp Mansion is far more than an unusual piece of commercial real estate. Its history is intertwined with the development of St. Louis’ brewing industry, the rise and collapse of the Lemp brewing fortune, and generations of stories that have transformed the mansion into one of the city’s best-known historic and paranormal attractions.
Today, the mansion operates as a restaurant, inn, wedding and event venue, and tourist attraction. The Pointer family restored the historic property and built a hospitality business around its architecture, brewing history and connection to the Lemp family.
Current reporting indicates the businesses are expected to continue operating while the properties are marketed for sale, with scheduled events being honored through December 20, 2026.
Lemp Mansion sale includes a piece of St. Louis history
The property’s significance begins with the Lemp family and its brewing empire.
The mansion dates to the 19th century and eventually became the residence of William J. Lemp and his family.
According to the Lemp Mansion’s own historical account, William Lemp used the wealth generated by the family’s brewery to transform the 33-room residence into an elaborate showplace.
The family’s brewing operation became one of the most important businesses in St. Louis during a period when the city was establishing itself as a major American beer-producing center.
The City of St. Louis says Lemp’s Western Brewery began in 1864 under William J. Lemp. The location benefited from the limestone caves found in the Benton Park area, which provided naturally cool conditions useful for storing lager beer before modern mechanical refrigeration became widespread.
By the mid-1870s, the city says Lemp Brewery had become the largest brewery in St. Louis and was shipping beer around the world.
The brewery complex eventually covered five city blocks.
That history places the Lemp name alongside the broader story of St. Louis brewing, an industry that helped shape the city’s economy, neighborhoods, and international reputation.
The Lemp brewery ultimately failed to survive the enormous disruption of Prohibition and changing conditions in the brewing business.
The brewery complex was sold to International Shoe Company in 1922.
The surviving brewery buildings remain an important architectural presence south of downtown and were designated a City Landmark in 1975. The complex later became part of the Lemp Brewery-Cherokee City Historic District.
The mansion also survived, but its story developed very differently.
After its years as a family residence, the building eventually deteriorated and served other purposes before the Pointer family took control of the property and began the long process of turning it into the attraction St. Louis residents know today.
The Lemp Mansion’s own records say the Pointer family has operated the restaurant and inn for decades, restoring the building and preserving its connection to the city’s brewing history.
Under the family’s stewardship, the mansion developed multiple businesses rather than relying solely on its historical significance.
Visitors can eat at the restaurant, stay overnight, attend weddings and private events, participate in murder mystery dinners, tour the property, and explore its famous paranormal reputation.
Its family-style Sunday chicken dinner also became a longstanding tradition for generations of St. Louis-area diners.
That combination of history, hospitality and entertainment makes the current sale different from the sale of a conventional restaurant or commercial building.
A buyer potentially acquires not simply real estate but a recognizable St. Louis name with decades of operating history.
Haunted reputation turned mansion into national attraction
The darker history surrounding the Lemp family has also become inseparable from the mansion’s identity.
Multiple members of the Lemp family died by suicide over several decades, including deaths connected with the mansion itself.
Those tragedies, combined with stories accumulated by employees, visitors, and paranormal investigators, eventually gave the Lemp Mansion a reputation as one of America’s most famous allegedly haunted properties.
Claims of paranormal activity are, by their nature, not something that can be established as historical fact in the same manner as property records or documented events. But the mansion’s reputation for being haunted is unquestionably a significant part of its modern business and cultural identity.
The Pointer family embraced that history through haunted tours, paranormal investigations, overnight stays and Halloween-related activities.
The mansion’s official website describes it as a world-renowned haunted destination and notes the extensive attention the property has received through books, television programs and paranormal investigations.
That reputation has helped turn the property into a destination for visitors who might otherwise be unfamiliar with St. Louis’ brewing history.
Halloween is particularly important to the mansion’s public identity, but its operations extend year-round.
The property has hosted weddings, banquets, overnight guests, dinners, historical events, and other private functions.
That diversified operation could make the property attractive to a buyer who wants to maintain the Lemp Mansion as an established hospitality and entertainment business.
A new owner could also face an unusual responsibility.
The mansion’s value is closely connected to preserving the very history that makes it commercially attractive.
Substantial changes to its character could potentially undermine the historic atmosphere visitors come to experience.
What could happen after the Lemp Mansion is sold?
For now, putting the property on the market does not mean the Lemp Mansion is closing immediately.
Current reporting indicates existing events will continue, giving the Pointer family time to operate the business while seeking a buyer.
The larger question is what a new owner would ultimately decide to do with the property.
Continuing the existing restaurant, inn, wedding, event, and paranormal-tourism operation would represent the most direct continuation of the Pointer family’s work.
The mansion already has a nationally recognizable identity, established history, and decades of connections with St. Louis residents.
A purchaser could potentially view those characteristics as advantages that would be extremely difficult to recreate at another hospitality property.
The separate availability of the neighboring Lemp Stables adds another dimension to the opportunity.
Depending on how the properties are ultimately purchased, a buyer or group of buyers could acquire multiple pieces of the historic Lemp destination, not just the mansion itself.
The sale also comes as St. Louis continues to place increasing emphasis on historic preservation and adaptive reuse.
Across the city, older buildings have been converted into apartments, hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues and mixed-use developments rather than being demolished.
The Lemp Mansion is an unusually successful example of that concept.
A building built for a wealthy 19th-century brewing family eventually became a commercial hospitality operation that drew visitors generations after the brewery that created the family’s fortune disappeared.
That makes the property’s next ownership chapter important beyond the purchase price.
The Pointer family did not merely occupy the mansion. Over approximately five decades, it helped transform the property into a modern St. Louis attraction while maintaining the connection to the Lemp name.
The mansion’s own website credits the family with lovingly restoring the building and creating an experience intended to give visitors a glimpse of the lifestyle associated with the city’s former beer barons.
Even a direct lightning strike in August 2025 did not end operations.
The mansion reported that the strike damaged brickwork on a chimney and caused electrical and communications problems, but no employees or guests were injured. Management said the restaurant and inn remained open at the time.
Now, a much larger change may be approaching.
The sale would allow investors, hospitality operators, and historic-property buyers to acquire one of St. Louis’ most distinctive landmarks.
It also creates understandable questions among longtime customers about whether the traditions associated with the mansion will continue after a transaction.
Until a buyer is identified and a sale is completed, those questions cannot be answered.
What is clear is that the property being offered represents an unusually deep piece of St. Louis history.
The Lemp story spans the city’s 19th-century brewing boom, Prohibition, industrial decline, preservation efforts, and the modern growth of heritage and paranormal tourism.
Few St. Louis commercial properties can claim that kind of history while still operating as a restaurant, inn and event destination.
After approximately half a century under Pointer family stewardship, the Lemp Mansion has reached another turning point.
The eventual buyer will acquire more than rooms, land and a commercial operation.
The new owner will inherit one of the strangest, darkest, and most recognizable chapters of St. Louis history — and responsibility for deciding what the next chapter of the Lemp Mansion will become.
