Background
George Morton was born in 1790 in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom.
George Morton was born in 1790 in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom.
In 1823 he moved to St. Louis to begin practice in association with the late Joseph Laveille with whom he had worked in Pennsylvania, and of the several buildings they planned the most noteworthy was the Roman Catholic Cathedral in St. Louis, of Greek Revival design, completed in 1834 and one of the city’s distinguished landmarks. Also designed by Morton & Leveille was the brick church at the corner of Third and Chestnut built in 1825, said to have been the first Episcopal Church west of the Mississippi.
It is also recorded that the firm built the old Jefferson Barracks in 1825, and during the same year the partners were commissioned to design the first Court House in St. Louis. This structure, built of brick with a semi-circular Ionic portico, stood on the west side of Fourth Street between Market and Chestnut, in the eastern half of the square set aside by Auguste Choteau and J. B. Lucas for a Court House. It stood until 1854 when razed to make way for the East wing of the present Court House