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Look Back: Municipal Auditorium, 1934
Date: 4/8/2011 Album ID: 1209732
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers
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By Tim O'Neil --- Thousands jammed downtown St. Louis on April 14, 1934, for the dedication of the city's new Municipal Auditorium and Community Center. Eleven years before, voters had adopted an $87 million bond issue for an ambitious list of projects, and $5 million was allocated towards an auditorium. In 1942 the massive limestone building would be renamed in honor of Mayor Henry W. Kiel.
Henry W. Kiel, namesake of Kiel Auditorium and Opera House, a few years before his death in 1942. Kiel, a Republican, was mayor from 1913 to 1925. He promoted an ambitious $87 million bond issue, adopted by voters in 1923, that included $5 million to build a city arena and civic center. In 1932, his company, Boaz-Kiel Construction, won the bid to build the Municipal Auditorium and Community Center on ground at Market and 14th streets. Kiel died Nov. 26, 1942, at age 71, and a grateful Board of Aldermen voted the following March to name the massive building in his honor. The Kiel name has faded from the landmark in phases. After the auditorium (or arena) side of the Kiel building was demolished and replaced with a new sports arena in 1994, that new building kept the name Kiel Center until 2000. But then it became the Savvis Center in a naming-rights deal (now it's the Scottrade Center). Last summer, the opera house became the Peabody Opera House in another naming-rights sale. Peabody Energy Corp. says it will honor Kiel's memory with a plaque somewhere in the lobby. (Post-Dispatch)
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St. Louis firefighters pass the reviewing stand and crowd as the parade marches west on Market Street in front of the new building on April 14, 1934, for the dedication ceremony. The building under construction in the background is the (old) federal courthouse at Market and 12th (Tucker) Boulevard. The city now uses it for the St. Louis Circuit Court. (Post-Dispatch)
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St. Louis letter carriers take their turn marching past the new building. (Post-Dispatch)
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A view of the march from the rooftop of a building at 15th and Market streets. (Post-Dispatch)
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Part of the crowd gathered for the dedication speeches from the front steps of the new building. Among the dignitaries at the microphones were J.F.T. O'Conner, comptroller of the currency; and Emily Roosevelt, an opera singer and cousin of the President. She sang one week later in the inaugural performance in the opera house, a presentation of Verdi's Aida. (Post-Dispatch)
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A view of the pillars from the balcony facing Market Street. (Post-Dispatch)
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A night view of the front of the new building. (Post-Dispatch)
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Opera fans await the beginning of Aida, the inaugural performance in the opera house on April 21. (Post-Dispatch)
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A scene of Aida on opening night. (Post-Dispatch)
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A view of the upper level of the opera house seats on opening night. (Post-Dispatch)
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Opera fans in the lobby during intermission on opening night. (Post-Dispatch)
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E.R. Kinsey, president of the St. Louis Board of Public Service, fills a copper time capsule on Nov. 11, 1932, to be sealed in the cornerstone of the planned new Municipal Auditorium and Community Center, at Market and 14th streets. In 1923, city voters adopted an $87 million bond issue that included $5 million to build a civic auditorium. Lawsuits by property owners delayed the work until July 1932. The Board of Public Service, the city's main construction-contracting agency, had awarded the job to Boaz-Kiel Construction Co., owned in part by Henry W. Kiel, who had been mayor when voters adopted the bond issue nine years before. The building was dedicated with a parade and ceremony on April 14, 1934, led by then-Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann. The city renamed it in Kiel's honor in 1943, five months after his death. In this photo, Kinsey is adding to the box a copy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from Nov. 9, 1932, one day after Democratic challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide victory to unseat President Herbert Hoover, a Republican. (Post-Dispatch)
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Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann speaking during a bond-issue rally in the building's unfinished arena on April 19, 1934. It was the first event in the arena, which was unfinished because the project ran out of money. The bond issue he is promoting was another $900,000 to complete the job. Voters adopted it in May, and the arena was finished in time for the American Legion's national convention in September 1935. (Post-Dispatch)
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The arena, or auditorium, on Sept. 14, 1935, one week before the American Legion convention. Workers finished the job just in time. The ceiling was 92 feet above the main floor. With temporary chairs on the floor, the arena could seat 11,345 people. (Post-Dispatch)
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A view of Kiel auditorium nearly filled on Sept. 27, 1946, for an address by the Rev. Fulton J. Sheen, professor of philosophy at Catholic University in Washington. The city renamed the building in honor of former mayor Henry Kiel in 1943, five months after his death. Kiel was mayor when voters adopted the 1923 bond issue to finance the building, and his company, Boaz-Kiel Construction, won the bidding to build it in 1932. Sheen, who became an auxiliary bishop of New York in 1951, long had been a regular on radio and then television. (Post-Dispatch)
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President Harry Truman at Kiel Auditorium on June 10, 1950, for the national reunion of the Army's 35th Infantry Division, which had included Truman's own Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, during World War I. He is in white tuxedo for the reunion's ball and gala with (from left) singer Maria Marceno, comedian Danny Thomas and band leader Russ David. (Post-Dispatch)
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Elvis Presley hugs two teenage fans during a press conference at Kiel on March 29, 1957, the date of one of his performances here. With him are (left) Pat Vardell of Pershing Boulevard and Kathy Orio of Chouteau Avenue. (Buel White/Post-Dispatch)
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Two fans of the Rolling Stones at the band's first visit to St. Louis on a steamy July 12, 1966, in Kiel Auditorium. (Buel White/Post-Dispatch)
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Percy Green of ACTION heralds the arrival on Oct. 3, 1969, of the black veiled prophet and his queen at Kiel Auditorium, where the annual Veiled Prophet Ball was taking place inside. ACTION frequently picketed the Veiled Prophet organization as racially exclusive and elitist. In 1972 in the same building, it engineered an unmasking of the man playing the role of the veiled prophet . (Gene Pospeshil/Post-Dispatch)
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Fans of Motley Crue near the stage on a performance on Sept. 11, 1985, at Kiel. (Karen Elshout/Post-Dispatch)
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