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Look Back: Mayor's Christmas Dinner
Date: 12/23/2010 Album ID: 1140256
Photos by St. Louis Post-Dispatach staff photographers
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In 1933, newly elected St. Louis Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann, a New Deal Democrat, promised to provide hot holiday food for 25,000 people. The first "Mayor’s Christmas Party" fed 26,773 people Dickmann insisted the event be renamed "The Citizens’ Dinner," but the original stuck. For six lean years of the Depression, the mayor’s Christmas dinners served 260,000 meals.
Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann speaks into the KMOX microphone shortly after his election in April 1933. A New Deal Democrat, Dickmann had endless energy. Among his achievements were spurring construction of Homer G. Phillips Hospital for blacks, moving to clean St. Louis' infamously filthy air by banning soft coal, and founding the city's public housing authority. In November 1933, with unemployment rising to almost 25 percent during the Depression, he announced that the city would feed 25,000 needy people at its new Municipal Auditorium, still under construction across 14th Street from City Hall. Dickmann enlisted volunteers among the city's patronage workforce, twisted arms for donations of food and toys for kids, and opened the doors at 9 a.m. on Christmas Day 1933. The dinner fed 26,773 people. The event was repeated over the next five years, feeding 55,000 each on the Christmases of 1935 and 1936, and provided 260,000 meals over its six-year run. In 1939, Dickmann switched it to a clothing-and-shoes drive for needy children, and the donation machine collected enough for 12,000 youngsters. Dickmann was mayor from 1933 to 1941, losing his bid for a third term. But President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made him St. Louis postmaster in 1943, and Dickmann held the job for 15 years. He was on the back platform of the train at Union Station with President Harry Truman when Truman showed off the famous Dewey Defeats Truman headline in the Chicago Tribune, on the day after Truman's surprise election in 1948. A bachelor until age 60, Dickmann married Pat Harrington, a widow and postmaster of Mt. Olive, Miss., whom he had met at a convention. Their wedding was in the Old Cathedral in St. Louis. He died in 1971 at age 83 after suffering a fall at their home in Mississippi and was buried at Sts. Peter & Paul Cemetery in south St. Louis. The formal name of the Poplar Street Bridge is the Bernard F. Dickmann Bridge. (Post-Dispatch)
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A city worker gives a man a plate at the first mayor's Christmas dinner on Dec. 25, 1933. The fare was ham, beans, sweet potatoes and cookies. Kids drank milk, adults got coffee. Children received bags of trinkets on the way out. It was 17 degrees outside when the doors opened, and the last diners walked out into a snowfall. (Post-Dispatch)
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Some of the diners at that first Christmas dinner in the Municipal Auditorium, later called Kiel Auditorium. The exhibition floor was completed in time for the dinner, but workers were still building the auditorium above it. The area was warm enough, but many people kept their coats on because there was no room for hanging them up elsewhere. (Post-Dispatch)
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City workers sort through donated produce shortly before cooking begins for the second Mayor's Christmas Dinner in 1934. They cooked in the big kitchens at City Hospital and other city institutions, then delivered hot pans of food in trucks to the auditorium downtown. By 1934, the auditorium was finished, giving workers more room to set up more food lines and tables. That year, the dinner served 50,000 meals. (Post-Dispatch)
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Workers with piles of some of the donated toys that were distributed to kids during the 1934 Christmas dinner. (Post-Dispatch)
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Two children dig into chicken during the dinner on Christmas 1936. The addition of chicken to the menu and balmy temperatures in the mid-60s helped to attract 55,000 people to Municipal Auditorium that day. (Post-Dispatch)
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Mayor Dickmann with some of the clothing and shoes donated to his annual drive in 1939, the year in which he called for a much bigger clothing drive to replace the dinner. The collections gathered clothing and shoes for 12,000 youngsters. (Post-Dispatch)
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Mayor Dickmann helps distribute boxes for children at Municipal Auditorium shortly before Christmas 1939. (Post-Dispatch)
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Kids with their Christmas boxes, compliments of area businesses and numerous fund-raisers, in 1939. The scene is at Municipal Auditorium. (Post-Dispatch)
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Catherine Asaro happily shows off the contents of her Christmas box in 1939. She lived at 2719 Slattery Avenue, a short street near St. Louis Avenue and North Grand Boulevard. (Post-Dispatch)
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Other groups continued the tradition of big Christmas dinners after Mayor Dickmann left office in 1941. On Dec. 21, 1942, the Traffic Club, an organization of police officers, hosted this meal for needy children at the Hotel Jefferson, Locust Street and 12th (not Tucker) boulevard. (Post-Dispatch)
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Santa Claus visits young patients at City Hospital, 1515 Lafayette Avenue, on Dec. 6, 1943. The photo caption identified the popular visitor only as Santa Claus No. 1 of Stix, Baer & Fuller, one of three downtown department stores that put on big Christmas displays near their toy departments. (Post-Dispatch)
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A man down on his luck donned his tie and best suit for dinner on Christmas 1947 at Father Dempsey's Hotel for Working Men, 1421 Hogan Street. (Post-Dispatch)
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One of Famous-Barr's Santas meets with needy and handicapped children at the store on Dec. 6, 1948. The kids enjoyed live entertainment and received gifts. (Post-Dispatch)
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Children from the Hyde Park neighborhood fill the lobby of the old Fifth District Police Station, Penrose and 19th streets, to wait for Santa on Dec. 23, 1948. (Post-Dispatch)
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The tradition continues. Here are some of the hundreds who were fed on Christmas 1998 at the New Life Evangelistic Center, 1411 Locust Street. (Jacob N. Ware/Post-Dispatch)
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