In the summer of 1917, East St. Louis seethed with racial turmoil. Blacks moved here from the South in large numbers in the years before World War I, adding more poor people to a hardscrabble town already crowded with low-wage workers. Embittered union leaders demanded that City Hall "get rid of the migrants." Violence exploded on July 2 after whites poured from a union meeting in the Labor Temple. Mobs attacked the first black people they could find. The official death count was 39 blacks and nine whites, although police estimated a death toll closer to 100.
6/28/2012
Album ID: 1494913
Photos by Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Bowen Archives
Look Back: Union Station, 1894
17 photos
On Sept. 1, 1894, newspapers carried detailed traffic instructions for carriages approaching 18th and Market streets. No one would get through without a pass.
The occasion was the grand opening of Union Station, the monument to St. Louis’ sense of itself as industrial powerhouse and national crossroads. Organizers printed 13,000 invitations, ran out and printed more. About 20,000 men and women, many in tails and gowns, jammed the Grand Hall and strutted the 606-foot-long midway to the tracks.
6/21/2012
Album ID: 824804
Photos by Post-Dispatch files and Missouri History Museum
Look Back: Spanish Pavillion bankruptcy, 1970
14 photos
for sale
by Tim O'Neil --- It was called the "jewel" of the New York World’s Fair. After the fair’s two-year run, Mayor Alfonso Juan Cervantes snapped up the Spanish Pavilion for St. Louis in 1965, saying the pavilion would add pizzazz to downtown’s comeback, already alive with construction of the Arch, Busch Stadium, new highways and office towers. On June 15, 1970, the Spanish International Pavilion Foundation filed for bankruptcy. The hotel, later a Marriott, now is the Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark. The pavilion endures as the lobby and main public area.
6/15/2012
Album ID: 1488142
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers
Look Back: Army Gen. Omar Bradley, 1945
17 photos
for sale
by Tim O'Neil --- Missouri’s own four-star Gen. Omar Nelson Bradley was honored here on June 11, 1945, with a massive parade downtown and a dinner at the Hotel Jefferson. One month before, he had led the million-man Twelfth Army Group to victory in Germany. Americans were still dying on Okinawa and in the air over Japan, but the homefront deserved a break.
6/8/2012
Album ID: 1484333
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers and family photos
Look Back: East St. Louis Flood, 1903
25 photos
by tim O'Neil --- In 1903, East St. Louis and other industrial cities on the American Bottom relied upon a network of railroad embankments to hold the Mississippi River. The Madison County levee, which ran from the Merchants Bridge near Venice eastward to Mitchell, broke on June 6. By June 10, East St. Louis was nearly surrounded by water.
6/1/2012
Album ID: 1480105
Photos by Missouri History Museum, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and Post-Dispatch files
Look Back: Golden Eagle steamboat, 1947
12 photos
for sale
The early morning of May 18, 1947, was dark but quiet, the Mississippi River 10 feet below flood stage. The Golden Eagle was bound for Nashville, Tenn., from its St. Louis home via the Ohio and Cumberland rivers. Most of its 91 passengers and crew were asleep when the drifting boat smacked into submerged rocks near Grand Tower Island, opening a gash on its port side.
5/18/2012
Album ID: 1472259
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers
Look Back: American Legion, 1919
14 photos
by Tim O'Neil --- The veterans of World War I who formed the American Legion first met on American soil in a theater downtown on May 8, 1919. The killing had ended six months before. They adopted a national constitution, promoted employment for veterans and cheered Col. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., a war hero and son of the late former president.
5/4/2012
Album ID: 1464058
Photos by Post-Dispatch files and the Missouri History Museum
Look Back: Repeal of Prohibition, 1933
12 photos
for sale
by Tim O'Neil --- The countdown was to 12:01 a.m. Friday, April 7, 1933, when beer would be legal again after 13 long years. At midnight, the Anheuser-Busch brewery whistles were overwhelmed by the roar of happy humans. August A. "Gussie" Busch Jr. spoke to a national radio audience, then went inside to greet his private guests. "Come and get it," he told them.
4/6/2012
Album ID: 1446758
Photos by Post-Dispatch files
Look Back: Jean Baptiste Roy house, 1947
5 photos
for sale
by Tim O'Neil --- It was called the oldest dwelling in the city. Local tradition claimed the hot dog was invented within its limestone walls. None of that was enough to save the Jean Baptiste Roy home, a crumbling and vacant two-story structure at 615-17 South Second Street that dated to 1829. Despite earnest efforts to preserve it, demolition began March 31, 1947.
3/30/2012
Album ID: 1442290
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers
Look Back: Centralia coal mine disaster, 1947
26 photos
for sale
by Tim O'Neil --- It was almost quitting time for 142 men working 540 feet below ground in Centralia Coal Co.’s Mine No. 5. In operation since 1908, the mine’s tentacles ran three or more miles from the elevator shaft into the coal seams. At 3:27 p.m. March 25, 1947, coal dust exploded deep inside. Thirty-one survivors all reached surface shortly after the blast, but 111 miners were dead or dying.
