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Look Back: Jefferson National expansion
Date: 10/8/2010 Album ID: 1092643
Photos by P:ost-Dispatch staff photographers and files
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On Oct. 9, 1939, St.Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann took a crowbar to the corner of a crumbling two-story warehouse at 7 Market Street to begin clearing 486 buildings from the riverfront. The massive demolition to follow would make way for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and the Gateway Arch.
An aerial view of the St. Louis riverfront taken in 1933, when local leaders began discussing a major urban-renewal project to honor President Thomas Jefferson with a riverfront memorial. Local lawyer Luther Ely Smith suggested clearing a wide swath of the old riverfront commercial area for the memorial. After talks with Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann and federal officials, who were interested in the idea as a Depression-era job creator, Smith and others incorporated the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association. Planning soon fixed upon the area bounded by the Mississippi River, the Eads Bridge and Washington Avenue (bottom of photo), Third Street and Poplar Street (a few blocks north of the MacArthur Bridge, then the Municipal Bridge, near the center of photo). It also would include the city's Old Courthouse. Beginning in 1939, the city would demolish 486 buildings, sparing only the courthouse, the Old Cathedral and Manuel Lisa's Rock House at Chestnut and Wharf (now Leonor K. Sullivan) streets. By the 1930s, many of the buildings and warehouses along the riverfront were vacant or underused, and many had deteriorated. Condemnation officials reported that 179 were vacant, 131 partially occupied and only 176 fully occupied. But the area also included a few gems, such as the Old Customs House at 218 North Third Street. All was swept away, something probably unthinkable today. (Post-Dispatch)
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Bernard F. Dickmann, mayor of St. Louis from 1933 to 1941, in a press photo taken during his first year in office. That same year, local lawyer and civic booster Luther Ely Smith visited him with the idea of building a memorial to President Thomas Jefferson on the St. Louis riverfront. Dickmann endorsed the idea and began lobbying the federal government and city taxpayers to pay for it. City voters adopted a $7.5 million bond issue in 1935 to clear the riverfront, and the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt jumped on the idea as a way to create jobs during the Depression. Dickmann used a crowbar on Oct. 9, 1939, in a ceremony to begin demolition of 39 blocks of old warehouses, commercial buildings and a few homes -- some of it derelict, but others architecturally significant. (Post-Dispatch)
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This photo shows cars parked on the cobblestone levee in front of the future Arch grounds in May 1938. At right, a switching locomotive hauls boxcars along the riverfront railroad trestle. Owned by the Terminal Railroad Association, the trestle wasn't removed until the early 1960s, when the track was rerouted on the tunnels and cuts running through the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Moving those tracks proved to be one of the major sources of delay for the project. (Post-Dispatch)
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U.S. District Court Clerk James J. O'Connor (right) disburses the first checks for riverfront properties handled by condemnation. The checks he gives on Aug. 12, 1939, were a building at 200-24 South Second Street. E. Maltitz (left), a lawyer for the Mississippi Valley Trust Co., accepts $10,000 for the remaining mortgage on the building. David Baron (center) holds a check for $58,000 for Denchar Realty Co., owner of the building. (Post-Dispatch)
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After Mayor Dickmann and the crowd departed, workers smash their way through the building at 7 Market Street. (Post-Dispatch)
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Workers demolish the building at 20-22 North Commercial Street in late October 1939. It last housed the Blue Lantern Bohemian Club. Commercial Street was between Wharf Street (now Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard) and First Street. A bit of Commercial remains in Laclede's Landing. This spot would be roughly beneath today's main staircase from the Arch to the levee. (Post-Dispatch)
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A worker uses a pick to remove heavy wood beams from the old Blue Lantern club. (Post-Dispatch
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The Nichols-Howard Building, on Wharf Street near Locust Street, shortly before it was demolished. The building was built in 1847 and was one of the few riverfront structures that survived the city's Great Fire two years later. That blaze destroyed 23 steamboats on the landing and 15 blocks of the old downtown area in the heart of today's Arch grounds. Depression-era shanties lean against the building's north wall. (Post-Dispatch)
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Warehouses looking south along Wharf Street in 1939. The photo was taken beneath the old railroad trestle that ran along Wharf Street. (Post-Dispatch)
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A view of the future Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, looking southeast above Washington Avenue and Third Street in 1935. At left is the streetcar station for service over the Eads Bridge to East St. Louis. To the far right is the Municipal Bridge, renamed the MacArthur Bridge in 1942 in honor of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. (Post-Dispatch)
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Fur trader Manuel Lisa's Rock House, built about 1818, in a photograph taken in 1958. The Rock House, on Wharf Street, was one of three buildings preserved during the massive demolition project in 1939-1941. It was dismantled in 1959 to make way for construction of the Arch, and the plan was to reassemble it later on the grounds. But most of its limestone pieces disappeared during the years in storage. The remaining ones are on display in the Old Courthouse. Lisa was a trading partner of Pierre Laclede, founder of St. Louis. (Post-Dispatch)
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A view of First Street looking north from Poplar Street before the demolition. Poplar is the south boundary of the park. The National Park Service administrative building is near this site. (Post-Dispatch)
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The iron front of 219-21 Chestnut Street, one of the 486 buildings that came down to make way for the Arch grounds. The front was one of the many examples of the architecture and craftsmanship that made way for progress. Some of the ornate works were saved for other restorations or museums, but much of it was hauled away. A few pieces are on display in the Old Courthouse and in the Smithsonian museum in Washington. (Post-Dispatch)
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The Green Tree Coffee House and tavern, at 308 South Second Street, shortly before it was demolished. Above its entrance is an iron porch railing. Beer was still a nickel. (Post-Dispatch
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The Papin Building, 113 North Main Street, one of the buildings of historical interest that was razed to make way for the Arch. In 1854, it housed the U.S. District Court, which that year heard the slavery case of Dred and Harriet Scott. The Scotts won their freedom during a trial at the St. Louis County (Old) Courthouse in 1850, but the Missouri Supreme Court overturned that decision. The Scotts then appealed to the federal court, which also sided with the Scotts' owners. That was the decision appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1857 rendered its fateful decision against the Scotts, not only siding with the owners but ruling that blacks were not citizens and that slaves could be taken into any of the territories. That decision accelerated the pace toward Civil War. (Post-Dispatch)
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The Old Custom House, at 218 North Third Street, completed in 1859. It was the seat of federal power here during the Civil War and was the main federal building until the (Old) Post Office and Custom House, 815 Olive Street, was completed in 1884. The National Park Service put the Old Custom House on a short list of buildings considered for preservation, but there wasn't enough public outcry to save it. During the 1930s, it housed an Army recruiting station, the Works Progress Administration and other federal offices. It was razed in 1941. (Post-Dispatch)
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The iron front of the former Merchants Bank, at Main and Locust streets, before demolition. It was built in 1857. (Post-Dispatch)
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The Caxton Building, 206-212 Olive Street, before its demolition. Built in 1859, the building housed book and music publishers, printers and a typewriter shop during the 1930s. It also had been known as the Graham-Newman building. (Post-Dispatch)
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Demolition as of May 24, 1940, as seen from the east door of the Old Courthouse. The headline over the photograph says Blitzkrieg on the Riverfront, a reference to the widening war in Europe. Blitzkrieg, or lightning war, was the term for the hard-hitting German military offenses that were rolling up victories in 1940. (Post-Dispatch)
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