A Look Back
A Look Back • 1950s expressway gave a taste of a bigger system to come
ST. LOUIS • In the late 1940s, the city's only freeway was the Oakland Express Highway along Forest Park, from Skinker Boulevard to Vandeventer Avenue. Car ownership was growing quickly, and motorists clamored for relief from downtown gridlock.
Progress in concrete began with the short-lived Third Street Highway, called the Interregional, from Washington Avenue at the Eads Bridge south to Gravois Avenue and 12th (Tucker) Boulevard. Only 2.3 miles long, it took seven years to build. A turf-minded state senator got the Legislature to delay it. Condemnation lawsuits in crowded neighborhoods consumed more time. Some of the buildings in the way dated to the 1840s.
When the $13 million Interregional opened on Oct. 15, 1955, there was no ribbon-cutting. Everyone was tired of talk.
A look back • '44 World Series was played in an October chill
ST. LOUIS • It was a blustery 47 degrees at 8 a.m., when barely 250 hardy fans gathered outside the gate for $1.25 bleacher tickets. The preferred drink was coffee.
Inside Sportsman's Park, an usher mistakenly tried to eject a few fellow employees relaxing on break. One barked back, "In this weather, we should be beside a stove in some saloon."
The final game of the 1944 World Series — the only Series played entirely in St. Louis — was contested on a chilly Oct. 9 before only 31,630 fans, almost 3,000 fewer than a full house. For first pitch at 2 p.m., the temperature was 54. Fans swigged from flasks, not beer bottles.
A look back • Climatron, inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller, is a novel and enduring hit
ST. LOUIS • It rose like a honeycomb of aluminum tubes, slowly curling into a dome high above the flowers. It could save the palm trees and, perhaps, revive the garden.
The odd structure was the Climatron, the world's first geodesic greenhouse and new home for the Missouri Botanical Garden's orchids, coffee trees and hibiscus. The local architects who designed it were inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller, a Harvard dropout and prolific spinner of big ideas.
The unusual shape drew visitors during the year of construction. Shortly before the dedication on Oct. 1, 1960, all 112 interior floodlights were illuminated. Outside, the Climatron glowed like a magic mushroom in a fantasy movie.
A look back • Confederate spy's fateful bid to hook up with invading army in 1864
MANCHESTER • Confederate agent James Morgan Utz's wagon clattered toward the Meramec River with a hidden stash of medicine and secret messages. Utz hoped to contact Gen. Sterling Price's army, which was pressing north toward St. Louis.
Utz, 23, had grown up on a farm in present-day Hazelwood and was a Confederate soldier until his capture in 1862. Returning home, he became a spy. He was driving west on Sept. 25, 1864, when Union cavalrymen stopped him near the village of Manchester. They hauled him to the Gratiot Street Prison, the jail for secessionists in St. Louis.
Soldiers nervously prowled the countryside around St. Louis because Price's push from Arkansas, begun Sept. 19, had thrown the local Union leadership into a dither. "The Invader in Missouri!" shouted a headline in the Missouri Democrat, a pro-Union St. Louis newspaper that blamed Price for the "apprehensions of many good citizens and the foolish hopes of some traitors."
A Look Back • Archbishop Ritter integrated Catholic schools, warns opposition
ST. LOUIS • In 1947, St. Louis Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter quietly instructed Catholic schools to admit black children. Protests erupted as classes began in September.
About 500 angry white parents gathered in Capstick Hall, 5815 Easton Avenue (now Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard), on Sept. 9 to oppose Ritter's decision. Said meeting co-chairman William T. Rone, "We do not want Negro children alongside our children in the schools."
Ritter refused to meet their leaders. His spokesman said, "He is the father of the whole flock and must care for all, regardless of race."
A Look Back • Downtown landmark was demolished with little public ado in 1957
ST. LOUIS • At the 1:10 p.m. bell, five minutes to close, a few grain traders hustled final deals. Others boyishly hurled their metal inspection bowls, letting them clang upon marble tabletops and walnut handrails.
"I've been in this building since 1904," said Walter Toberman, a veteran trader. "I'm the maddest of the lot about moving."
Too few shared Toberman's frustration. After scattered laments and a few wistful editorials, the St. Louis Merchants Exchange building, an 82-year-old downtown landmark in carved stone and hardwood, fell to the wreckers. For the next 26 years, the site at Pine and Third streets was a humble parking lot.
A Look Back • Civil War gunboats built in Carondelet by James B. Eads
CARONDELET • James B. Eads, salvage king of the Mississippi River, promised President Abraham Lincoln he could build iron-armored gunboats in 65 days. Lincoln, hungry for a way to clear the river of Confederates, was skeptical but intrigued.
On Aug. 7, 1861, Eads won a contract to build seven burly gunboats from a novel design. At $89,000 apiece, each was to carry 13 heavy cannon, have 2.5 inches of armor and be delivered to Cairo, Ill., in 60 days. Blowing deadline would cost $200 per boat per day.
Eads leased a boatyard at the foot of Marceau Avenue in the town of Carondelet, near the River Des Peres eight miles south of St. Louis. By Sept. 5, when Navy Capt. Andrew Foote arrived to command the flotilla, more than 500 carpenters, ironworkers and engineers on two shifts were working seven-day weeks for Eads.
A Look Back • St. Louis mobster's quiet death at home unleashes war
ST. LOUIS • Home from federal prison, Anthony Giordano was hard to find at his old haunts around town. The man known and feared as "Tony G" didn't look so good.
"Aw, hell, I came down with that ... cancer," the profane mobster told a reporter outside the federal courthouse downtown in 1978. "I'm taking the cure, but I don't know how it's going to turn out."
Giordano had been in the crime business since the 1930s, when police dismissed him as a "cheap street hood with patches on his pants." Rising through local organized-crime ranks, he could afford flashy suits and hats. After becoming mob boss in the 1960s, he toned down his wardrobe, lest he draw more attention from FBI snoops.
A Look Back • River Des Peres floods after record downpour in 1915
ST. LOUIS • In the year 1700, two Jesuit missionaries from Quebec established camp next to a small stream flowing into the Mississippi River. It became known as the River of the Fathers, the River Des Peres.
The mission was abandoned after three years. The namesake river, with headwaters in present-day Creve Coeur and Normandy, meandered through countryside to the village of Carondelet. It was still a pleasant enough stream when St. Louis annexed Carondelet in 1870.
But urban growth increasingly made it a flood-prone sewer. Its path through Forest Park was encased temporarily in a wooden culvert for the 1904 World's Fair. There was talk of a permanent solution, but the $4 million price tag kept the drawings on a City Hall shelf.
A look back • Party starts early in St. Louis with word of Japanese surrender
ST. LOUIS • In August 1945, newspapers braced readers for an invasion of Japan. More than 19,000 Americans had died taking Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the run-up to the final event. Fear of ghastly death lists sobered the yearning for victory.
"U.S. Atomic Bomb Blasts Japan," screamed the Post-Dispatch on Aug. 6, 1945, describing the mysterious flash over Hiroshima. Inside pages spilled forth details about the top-secret bomb project, including contributions of scientists at Washington University and Monsanto Co.
After the second A-bomb blast Aug. 9 over Nagasaki, the St. Louis Tavern Operators Association planned for the victory bash surely to come. "It will be no occasion for getting drunk," warned its secretary, J. Miles Bench.
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