Municipal Auditorium Cornerstone Set Eighty Years Ago Today
Four decades ago, during the Great Depression, the cornerstone on the city’s new Municipal Auditorium was set into place. Later it was renamed Kiel Opera House after former mayor Henry Kiel (1871-1942).
Last year the building reopened as the Peabody Opera House.
In today’s political climate stimulus funds to kickstart the economy are highly controversial. thankfully we can still benefit from those that came before us.
I like seeing names on buildings, makes it easier decades later to know who to thank, or curse.
— Steve Patterson
Eighty years ago, the city’s population was more than twice what it is today. With twice the resources available, it’s easier for the government to focus on discretionary projects (like this one), even in the midst of a crippling economic crisis. Plus the concept of government retirees receiving generous pensions was a foreign one, back then – there’s only so much money to go around and only so much blood you can squeeze out of a turnip . . . .
It was at Kiel that I attended my first political rally, in late August or early September 1964 for Barry Goldwater. The crowd was so unexpectedly large that after the main hall filled to capacity-plus they opened up what I sort of remember being a balcony high up behind the stage. That was where my college roommate and I got seated. I remember that we were behind Goldwater looking down on him.
Not a discretionary project. St. Louis built & opened the greatest outdoor theater in America in spring of 1917 as the U.S. was about to enter WW1. Seventeen years later to the month, The opera house in the Municipal Auditorium opened: presenting 61 shows, concerts and special events over its first 3 weeks. Honored all cultures, all forms of music, all peoples. The comb gave St. Louis a huge advantage in drawing tourists, conventions and festivals. Their benefits were civic, cultural and economic. Other cities have tried to copy, but never matched. Both opened without debt, with no financial burden to the people. They represented the best of St. Louis. I ‘carried’ the opera house on my shoulders and ‘out of reach’ of those who would have ‘killed it’, for a decade. After a year of being ridiculed and limited primarily to banquets corporate meetings and weddings to protect the Fox, it would be a very wise for this regressed city and its regressed sports and casinos (with no sports) downtown, to reopen Kiel Opera House, .The building with such great history, does not present its history.
IF the Kiel is/was “a huge advantage in drawing tourists, conventions and festivals”, please explain how/why the city lost more than half its population over the intervening years and the venue, itself, went dark?! I’m not questioning whether or not it should’ve been built in the 1920’s, I’m stating that a city that has lost half its population and half its tax base is going to have to make some hard choices between funding pensions and funding “culture”. Basic services like the police, fire, trash, jails, courts, welfare, schools, transit and streets ARE a priority over discretionary services (ones you can live without), things like parks, recreation, large cultural venues (Kiel, Muny, Zoo, Museums) and libraries. IF a private entity wants to run it, “with no financial burden to the people”, much like Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, the City Museum or Six Flags, DO IT, more power to ’em! Just don’t expect the public to fund everyone’s pet projects with finite tax resources . . . .
The minute we lose our culture is the minute we lose ourselves.