My longtime personal friend NiNi Harris has written another book looking at a small segment of St. Louis. Her six prior books covered a number of topics including a history of Carondelet and Bohemian Hill. This time her focus is on the history of the Polish in St. Louis.
NiNi (pronounced nee-nee) gave me a media copy of the book for review and I immediately got engrossed in the stories told. While the book includes a good dose of discussion about physical place (church cornerstones, streets, etc…) this is really a book about people.
The book is also a good lesson in history covering 19th Century trouble in Poland, WWI and WWI. This is all tied to immigration of people fleeing their homeland as well as Polish immigrants in St. Louis sending money and men to help in Poland.
Throughout the book we learn about how individuals and families played roles in the establishment of churches in the fast developing neighborhoods of St. Louis. Census figures are used minimally to communicate the point that there were brief periods of time where St. Louis’ population was doubling.
We learn about the founding of numerous Polish Catholic churches in the city. All are now closed except St. Stanislaus which is featured on the cover. The land for St. Stans at 20th & Cass on the then edge of the developing city cost $4,864 in 1880 — quite a sum of money. At the time the parishioners met in the basement of a local Irish church until their first structure was dedicated in 1882. Included in the subtle history lesson was an issue in cities to the east between Polish parishes and their Archdiocese over church management, which likely led to an unusual arrangement:
“With the advice and consent of the Archbishop of St. Louis on May 2, 1891, the parish was made a corporation in the State of Missouri.”
Other churches were established on the near north side including St. Casimir. We also learn about a small group from St. Casimir that formed Sts. Cyril and Methodius Polish National Catholic Church — separating themselves from the Roman Catholic church. Archbishop John Glennon, it was discovered, “on March 14, 1908, excommunicated nine Polish St. Louisans and cautioned parishioners of the St. Casimir.” The decree indicated that members of St. Casimir that attend “services at a schismatic or protestant Church are by that act excommunicated.”
The book looks at the three main areas where the Polish resided and worked in St. Louis — the near north side, the near South side (between what is now known as Soulard and the river) and an area further South now called Mt. Pleasant. Interestingly, I lived for a number of years in the Polish area to the North (including the now Old North St. Louis area) and currently live in the Mt. Pleasant area, just a couple of blocks from the closed St. Hedwig church. Oh sorry, make that “consolidated” church. Still, you learn about the people working hard to buy a home or 4-flat and still how much money they raised to fund and build these churches.
My first flat in Old North was downstairs from an old Polish woman who’d live basically her entire life in that 4-family. Like so many immigrants, her parents had bought the building when she was a young girl. Upon getting married she raised her family in that building. Times, however, changed and her children didn’t want to raise their families in small shotgun flats so while she remained she rented other units out to people like me. My rent in 1991 was only $75/month.
Neighbors included the Bratkowski family, mentioned throughout the book. By reading the book I learned about my friend John Bratkowski’s grandfather’s business being taken for construction of I-70 and much about the early childhood of his mother.
You also learn about businesses they opened as well as the overlap these ethnic areas had with German and Irish areas. Reading about Polish persons enslaved in WWII labor camps is tough. The reader is excited to learn about young men and women finally leaving the slave camps and immigrating to America and finding their way to Polish neighborhoods in St. Louis.
Of course it would be hard to go through a history of people and not talk about the Great Depression. You get a good sense of the importance of holding onto a job, no matter how low the pay or backbreaking the work, because you likely had to help support your entire family. Managing to pay the mortgage and keeping food on the table was the important focus for families through the city during lean years. Even during the prosperous 20s, many immigrant families were just getting started and were not awash in cash. Thus, it should be no surprise that given the poverty, the lack of materials during the war and the shortage of labor with men off fighting in Europe that maintenance of homes in older areas (now approaching 60 years old) was not a high priority.
It was a shock to the new immigrants that had seen their European homeland a battleground to begin to put their lives in order in the US only to have their neighborhoods bombed out not by war planes but by government action — the poorly named “Urban Renewal.” The “slums” around St. Stanislaus where Polish families lived and worked were forcibly taken and wiped off the planet. By this point in the book I had become attached to some of the families, learning about their lives and how they relate to their church and work. But, alas, not enough of the homes had indoor plumbing so the government solution was to raze everything in site — including streets, sidewalks and alleys. You see, the logic was these people were living in slum conditions due to the lack of an indoor toilet so therefore we (liberal society) must help them out by removing everything they had built and worked for. Twisted logic!
On a side note, this past week I visited my Dad, now 78, in Oklahoma and I began to inquire about the depression and the dust bowl in rural Western Oklahoma. He recalled thinking things were bad for his family, living in a small 3-room farm house lacking running water and electricity, until at about the age of 8 (roughly 1937) he went to Oklahoma City with his father to sell a few heads of cattle they had raised. It was then that he saw the shanty towns along the river near the stockyards and thinking that while they were not doing well many more people were far worse off than they were. My Dad remembers his family getting a new block outhouse from the WPA back in the late 30s to replace the old wooden one. When he married my mom in August 1949 his family still did not have indoor plumbing (that would come in the 1950s).
Back in St. Louis a bunch of white men decided that because a certain percentage of older buildings had not been updated with modern plumbing that entire neighborhoods must be decimated, a bad use of good statistics (see the 1947 Plan). In the Polish areas around St. Stans up to 70% of the units still relied on outdoor privies, certainly creating a health issue. Still, rather than create a program to assist residents to finally be able to improve their dwellings the planners of the day didn’t consider such a logical solution — they feared the lack deterioration would “continue to expand until the whole city is engulfed.” NiNi’s book takes you through this time as residents struggle with the loss of their homes, businesses and social networks. Sure, St. Stans was not razed — just most of the homes of its parishioners! Again, we have some really messed up logic when we think a church can survive when we destroy everything around it. Of course, the men at the time honestly thought they were going to be creating wonderful new neighborhoods. In short, they didn’t realize they had wonderful neighborhoods that simply needed long-overdue maintenance and toilets.
This book, highly recommended for anyone seeking a better understanding of life in St. Louis, can be purchased at the Carondelet Historical Society, the lovely Chatillion-DeMenil Mansion in Benton Park, during rectory hours at St. Stans and throughout the upcoming Polish Festival at the Polish Falcons on St. Louis Ave. The book, published by St. Stans is 143 pages and sells for $20. The ISBN is 978-0-9794985-0-3.
