Henry Lewis View of St. Louis 1854     The Mercantile Library, the citizens of St. Louis, and the American West have always possessed a great kinship. The Mercantile Library's founders in 1846 could look back on many eventful decades of their city's existence, decades which coincided with the growth of the United States. Already for three generations before, everyone seemed to have been involved somehow in the creation of the American West - business leaders, tradespeople, explorers, soldiers, statesmen, naturalists and scientists, cartographers, artists, journalists, and writers, settlers - pioneers all. The Library was a collecting vantage point, witness to the legendary days which gave St. Louis its western gateway heritage.