ST. LOUIS • Fred Saigh became an attorney the old-fashioned way, by apprenticing in a law office. He got his license to practice in 1928 and handled routine criminal cases.
He briefly owned a company that operated an early version of cigarette machines, but it went bankrupt.
His first splash was in the mid-1940s, when he was the public face of deals to buy two downtown retail landmarks — the Railway Exchange, housing Famous-Barr; and the home of Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney, two blocks away. Suddenly, the son of immigrant shopkeepers from northern Illinois had a plush office.