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Louis C. Spiering

American architect

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 26, 2025
Entity authorityQ26702854 ↗
Source-derived summary

Louis Clemens Spiering (May 8, 1874 — March 9, 1912) was an American architect and architecture professor based in St. Louis, Missouri, who worked on building designs for the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904 and other local commissions. He died at the age of 37.

Family and education

Louis Clemens Spiering was born in St. Louis in 1874, the middle of three children of Theresa (Bernays) Spiering and Ernst Spiering, a violinist and orchestra conductor. His elder brother Theodore became a violinist, and his maternal grandfather was Karl Ludwig Bernays, a German-born Marxist journalist who changed his name to Charles Louis Bernays when he emigrated to St. Louis.

Spiering attended Webster Public School and then was sent to Berlin, Germany, for schooling at the Realgymnasium, from which he graduated in 1891. After two semesters studying architecture at the Berlin Royal School of Technology, he returned stateside to take up a position with Chicago architect William A. Otis.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Louis C. Spiering” is american architect. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Louis, Spiering and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1874, 1912, 1904, 1891—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1874-05-08. For this dossier, Louis, Spiering and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american architect” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q26702854. VIAF identifies the subject as 56335422. The Library of Congress control number is no2004122628. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1874, 1912, 1904 and 1891.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Louis C. Spiering”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Louis C. Spiering primary sources, Louis C. Spiering archive and Louis research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Louis C. Spiering”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Louis C. Spiering” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.