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Looks Back: St. Louis’ Hoovervilles
Date: 12/31/2009 Album ID: 918017
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers
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During the Great Depression, more than 5,000 homeless settled on a stretch of the Mississippi River in downtown St. Louis, living in shacks of crate wood, scraps of sheet metal and canvas.
Unemployed men and sympathizers stand for photographers at 12th and Olive streets on Jan. 13, 1930, during their march to City Hall to protest the economic events that were overwhelming them. Not yet two months after the great stock market collapse of October 1929, many people already had been thrown out of work. The 300 demonstrators demanded city jobs. But Mayor Victor Miller, who refused to meet with their leaders, said the city had no money to hire the unemployed. Press reports identified some of the leaders as members of the Communist Branch of America. Twelfth Street is now Tucker Boulevard. (Post-Dispatch)
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Women from destitute families prepare peaches and string beans for canning just outside the Welcome Inn, a food-distribution charity that was built beneath the Municipal (later MacArthur) Bridge, just east of Fourth Street. The picture was published Sept. 11, 1931. Ralph Hirsch, who owned a nearby bunkhouse for workingmen, organized the Welcome Inn in April 1930 to help jobless and homeless families that had been building shacks along the Mississippi River. Those squatter communities became known as Hoovervilles, a bitter reference to President Herbert Hoover. The biggest such community in St. Louis formed along the river from the Municipal Bridge south for more than a mile. The Welcome Inn was only three blocks to its west. In November 1930, charity-minded philanthropists from the city's wealthy Central West End took over the Welcome Inn and expanded its offerings. They hired women, such as those seen here, to can donated produce for winter distribution. The women were paid in food. (Post-Dispatch)
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Women at the Welcome Inn clean jars in preparation for canning. Wholesale grocers, bakeries and other local businesses donated produce and day-old bread to the Welcome Inn, which distributed it to residents of Hooverville and other poor families. (Post-Dispatch)
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The Mississippi River rises into some of the shacks of the city's biggest Hooverville in November 1931. The Municipal Bridge upriver is in the background. Press reports estimated that more than 3,000 people lived in the big Hooverville, and another 2,000 lived in smaller clusters along the city's 16-mile riverfront. Residents who were chased by floods kept returning until the federal Works Progress Administration cleared out Hooverville in 1936. But some residents came back and rebuilt after that, and clusters of squatter shacks could be seen along the river into the 1960s. (Post-Dispatch)
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A man hammers scavenged wood as the floor of a Hooverville home under construction in late December 1931. Hooverville residents built their own homes with old wood, crates, scraps of metal, canvas -- even flattened cans. (Post-Dispatch)
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Another scene of home construction in Hooverville, this time in November 1932. Note the old railroad ties being used for an expansion of a riverside shack. Note also the address, 1103, presumably of Wharf Street. (Post-Dispatch)
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A group of men from Denver and Salt Lake City march on Broadway in St. Louis on July 20, 1932, as part of a larger march upon Washington for jobs to help the unemployed endure the Great Depression. By 1932, the unemployment rate was 23 percent. (Post-Dispatch)
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Hooverville residents with their geese in August 1932. The boy is holding a pet cat. (Post-Dispatch)
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Another Hooverville resident in August 1932. Behind him is a wall made of crate wood that once held paper products. (Post-Dispatch)
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Hooverville residents eat meals provided by a charity on Dec. 4, 1932. Fortunately for the 1,500 dinners, it was a balmy 52 degrees that day. (Post-Dispatch)
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Irene Dianasic and her 2-year-old daughter, Mary Ann, show off one of the nicer homes in Hooverville on June 16, 1936. The photographer's note on the back of the print says, Hooverville is going high hat. The two-story house at 1804 South Wharf Street features a shaded porch and a fine view of the water -- assuming the Mississippi River doesn't rise too high. (Post-Dispatch)
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Another example of makeshift Hooverville architecture as of June 1936. The builders may have been poor, and they had to use junk lumber, but they still had aspirations for a few comforts, such as porches to endure the St. Louis summers. (Post-Dispatch)
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Mrs. Ellis Muckelroy in front of her home at 1732 South Wharf Street, Hooverville in June 1936. (Post-Dispatch)
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An open expanse of Hooverville in December 1936 after workers for the federal Public Works Administration demolished much of the squatter community. The scene is near the foot of Barton Street, one mile south of the Municipal (MacArthur) Bridge. The headline over the photo says, Hooverville Gone; Now It's Roosevelt Shores, a reference to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The city harbor manager's office had cleared some shacks after floods, and press reports said the population of Hooverville had been reduced by some relief in the jobless rate. Federal agencies found housing for some of the residents. But even after this early example of urban renewal demolition, some people continued living in shacks along the river. Clusters of squatter communities existed into the 1960s.
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Jobless people line up on Jan. 12, 1938, outside the Social Security Commission building, 2221 Locust Street, after an announcement that the federal Works Progress Administration would be hiring. After the unemployment rate reached 24.9 percent in 1933, the worst of the Great Depression, it fell slowly for the next three years. But it rose again in 1938 to 19 percent. (Post-Dispatch)
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A man pushes his cart filled with bottles and rags in February 1938 to a Hooverville known as Happy Landing, about a mile south of the big one that federal crews had tried to clear out. The path is the foot of President Street. With unemployment sky high again after a three-year dip, Hoovervilles made a comeback.
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One of the residents of Happy Landing as of February 1938 breaking glass bottles he collected on the streets. He sold the smashed glass for 10 cents a bushel, using that money to pay his 50-cent monthly rent and to buy food. (Post-Dispatch)
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The last of St. Louis' Hoovervilles was a community of 47 families on city-owned land along the river at the foot of Madison Street, one mile north of downtown. In March 1959, the city served eviction notices. The residents filed suit, challenging the city's claim to the land. That August, after about half of the families had moved out, city building inspectors arrived to condemn the shacks and begin forcing the people out. In this photo, a woman expresses her anger to an inspector. Later, the city used the property to build its municipal dock on the river. (Post-Dispatch)
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City building inspectors Max Feuerbacher (squatting) and Fred Best hammer a condemnation notice onto a squatter home in August 1959 while children play on the back-yard swing set. (Louis Phillips/Post-Dispatch)
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A Hooverville couple reads the eviction notice that building inspectors gave them in August 1959. (Post-Dispatch)
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