Sedgwick Mead, 82, Dies; Developer and Preservationist in City
Date Posted: July 29, 2025
Posted In: Organizations, People,
A memorial service was held July 28th at Ninth Street Abbey for Sedgwick “Sedg” Mead, Jr. cofounder of Mead McClellan Partnership. The firm was a developer in the City of St. Louis, known for its work in historic preservation and revitalization, specifically within the Soulard neighborhood.
Mr. Mead died peacefully on June 26, 2025, from complications of Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy. He was 82. He was born in Boston, Mass., on January 18, 1943, to Dr. Sedgwick Mead and Marjorie Chick Mead.
Sedg Mead graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in St. Louis, received his B.A. from Harvard College, and an MBA from Columbia University. He worked for Real Estate Research Company in Chicago and San Francisco, before joining the Charles H. Shaw Company, a real estate development firm based in Chicago.
He ran the New York office of the Shaw Company until the early 1990s, where his star project was Museum Tower, the condominium high-rise above the Museum of Modern Art. His other New York projects included several condominium and office buildings.
Rehabbing City Neighborhoods
Beginning in the mid-1970s and while he was working for the Shaw Company in New York, Sedg joined Guy and Peggy McClellan in forming the Mead McClellan Partnership. Together they rehabbed many multi-family buildings in Soulard and other city neighborhoods.
In the ‘90s he moved to different real-estate work, including working for the St. Louis Development Corporation and for A.G. Edwards, building several houses in St. Louis and in Madill, Okla.; helping his mother-in-law subdivide land in Corsicana, TX; working with a friend on a commercial development in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.; and investing in rentals for snowbirds in Fountain Hills, AZ.
As another part-time “retirement job” Mr. Mead joined with two friends to provide free real estate consulting to St. Louis non-profits.
He married Catherine Perry in 1984 and they adopted daughters Nellie and Margie in 1989 and 1991.
Sedg Mead is survived by his wife Catherine Perry, daughter Nellie Catanzaro and her husband Danny and their daughter Bella of Olathe, Kan., daughter Margie Mead and her husband Joey Urbanovitch of Cudjoe Key, Fla., sister-in-law Shari Smith-Mead of Duarte, Calif., and numerous Perry nieces, nephews and their parents and children.
He was preceded in death by his parents Sedgwick and Marjorie Mead, dear friend and stepmother Mary Abbott Mead, and brother Marshall Mead.
For memorials, the family suggests donations to Nine PBS at or Opera Theatre of St. Louis .