Alumni Spotlight: Andy Hahn
06/16/2025
As a young boy standing roughly half the height of his grandparents’ wall, Andy Hahn (A&S ’97) surveyed the oversized world map that marked the couple’s recent travels. What he didn’t realize at the time was that his affinity for maps and history would eventually orient him to a career where the past, plats and publishing would intersect.
Fast-forward to 2024, when the coordinates merged, and Hahn’s first book, Mapping St. Louis: A History of the Gateway City in 40 Rare Maps, debuted. The book captures St. Louis’ historical significance through the lens of city maps.
“Maps are the ultimate spatial tools for helping people better understand the world around them,” Hahn said. “They tell such a great all-encompassing history.”
Hahn, who earned bachelor’s degrees in history and art history at SLU, was eager to tell the story of his hometown through a visual perspective, he said. He first pitched his idea, inspired by similar storytelling approaches used in other cities, to Reedy Press in 2008.
Hahn and his wife, writer Valerie Schremp Hahn, were both working and raising a family at the time, making it challenging to pursue the book endeavor. The time needed to be right. In 2023, Reedy Press revisited the proposal, asking Hahn if he was still interested in authoring the book.
With access to 200 maps chronicling St. Louis’ evolution, he also knew about the city’s history from his role as director of the Campbell House Museum, the only building remaining from the Lucas Place neighborhood in downtown St. Louis. Hahn also did two internships at SLU’s Samuel Cupples House Museum that enriched his love of art and history. Hahn was ready to navigate the publishing world.
Hahn worked feverishly for 10 weeks, dedicating four to seven hours each night to writing after full days at the Campbell House. He winnowed his map collection to 40 to shape the historical narrative — no small feat for a city 260 years in the making.
Hahn carefully considered the mapmaker’s angle to determine which maps to include, knowing that intentions can be obscure, even from the titles themselves, he said. He selected “1767: The First Map of St. Louis” to introduce the story of the “Gateway to the West.”
Throughout the following 160 pages, the city unfolds through pivotal maps and stories illustrating its growth, challenges, divisions, disasters and innovations. From the catastrophic “1849: The Great St. Louis Fire” to the celebratory “1904: Forest Park Welcomes the World,” and concluding with “2021: New St. Louis Wards,” Hahn not only documents the past but also inspires readers to envision future explorations. In addition, he notes SLU’s historic 1818 founding in the 1822 and 1865 map sections. As the first institution of higher learning west of the Mississippi River, the campus is pictured in most of the book’s maps.
“The main takeaway from the book is that a city’s history is always evolving and creating opportunities to make new maps,” Hahn said. “Mapping St. Louis leads readers to consider what the maps of tomorrow will reveal in the future.”
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Universitas, the award-winning alumni magazine of Saint Louis University, is distributed to alumni, parents and benefactors of the University. The magazine includes campus news, feature stories, alumni profiles and class notes, and has a circulation of 103,000.