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Look Back: Repeal of Prohibition, 1933
Date: 4/6/2012 Album ID: 1446758
Photos by Post-Dispatch files
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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.
Seekers of permits to sell beer with 3.2 percent alcohol content line up on March 23, 1933, at the desk of B.J. Carragher, a state official, in his office in the Chemical Building downtown, at 721 Olive Street. The Congress elected in November 1932 along with President Franklin D. Roosevelt was strongly wet, and moved quickly to rewrite the federal statute enforcing Prohibition to permit the manufacture of beer. Repealing Prohibition on all liquor would have to await an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Carragher worked for the Missouri Pure Food and Drug Department, which issued permits after the Missouri Legislature agreed to go along with 3.2 beer. (Post-Dispatch)
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Potential beer retailers also needed a federal permit, obtainable from the office of Louis J. Becker, U.S. Internal Revenue collector for the St. Louis District. The scene is in the hallway outside his office in the Federal Building at Eighth and Olive streets, now called the Old Post Office, on April 2, 1933, four days before beer sales would be legal. The office issued more than 3,763 permits, most of them for St. Louis establishments. (Post-Dispatch)
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Some of the 25,000 people gathering outside the Anheuser-Busch Co. brewery, South Broadway and Arsenal Streets, on the evening of April 6, 1933. Beer sales would become legal at midnight, and the brewery was ready with 45,000 cases of bottles and 3,000 half-barrels stored in the plant. The trucks would roll at midnight. Other trucks awaiting loading lined Arsenal almost to Jefferson Avenue. Another 10,000 people awaited the first deliveries from Joseph Griesedieck's Falstaff brewery at Forest Park and Spring avenues. (Post-Dispatch)
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The first wagon filled with beer leaves the Anheuser-Busch brewery, pulled by Clydesdales and recorded by a movie cameraman. The brewery also dispatched a truck to Lambert Field for shipment of beer by air to the White House. August A. Gussie Busch praised President Franklin D. Roosevelt for his support during a live national radio broadcast from the brewery at midnight. (Post-Dispatch)
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Workers at Anheuser-Busch load another truck in the early hours of April 7, 1933, the first day of legal beer since 1920. Other trucks awaiting loads lined Arsenal almost to Jefferson Avenue. (Post-Dispatch)
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A scene from the party at the Hotel Jefferson, 12th (now Tucker) Boulevard at Locust Street, in the first hour of April 7, 1933. More than 600 people had made reservations for the ballroom in anticipation of legal beer, and cheered loudly when the first deliveries pulled up outside. (Post-Dispatch)
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St. Louis Mayor-elect Bernard F. Dickmann (left) makes the first toast of legal beer at the Elks Club, 3619 Lindell Boulevard. The first beer truck arrived there at 12:08 a.m. April 7, 1933. Dickmann declined calls for a speech, preferring to let his fellow Elks savor their beer. (Post-Dispatch)
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The Elks Club building at 3619 Lindell Boulevard, where Mayor-elect Bernard F. Dickmann led the toast. The building was razed in the 1960s, the site now a parking lot for Jesuit Hall, at Lindell and Grand Boulevard. (Post-Dispatch)
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A waiter in a downtown hotel serves his happy customers in the early hours of April 7, 1933. Most of the hotels were crowded with people who awaited the first shipments from the city's two breweries. (Post-Dispatch)
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Post-Dispatch editorial cartoonist Daniel Fitzpatrick drew this for the editions of April 7, 1933, the first day of legal beer sales since Prohibition began in 1920. The copy is from the newspaper's microfilm files. (Post-Dispatch)
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Barmaid Orpha Matthews serves beer in the diner at the American Hotel Annex, 615 Walnut Street. By noon on April 7, 1933, St. Louisans had drunk the first batch dry. Calls for more swamped the switchboards at the Anheuser-Busch and Falstaff breweries, the only ones ready for legal beer. (Post-Dispatch)
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Saloonkeeper Leo J. Sullivan pours legal whiskey at his tavern at 226 Collinsville Avenue in East St. Louis shortly after national Prohibition officially was repealed on Dec. 5, 1933. Illinois was ready, but the Missouri Legislature's dry members stalled full repeal in Missouri until January 1934. (Post-Dispatch)
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