How we wiped out Kosciusko, which could have been another Soulard
Another St. Louis neighborhood lost to urban renewal in the 1960s
The widescale destruction of the African-American neighborhood of Mill Creek has garnered more attention the last couple decades, as it should. But a lesser known, majority-white neighborhood, Kosciusko, sandwiched between Seventh Street and the stretch of river south of the MacArthur Bridge, also saw itself annihilated by urban renewal in the 1960s. The same arguments city leaders used against African Americans in Mill Creek were turned against the poor white residents and their aging houses and apartment buildings in Kosciusko: surely they would live better and more upright and respectable lives if they moved into new Modernist public housing to the west? They would thus remove themselves from the vice-laden, soul-crushing rows of 19th-century houses crowding the riverfront. In the neighborhood’s place would rise a purely industrial and commercial district, ripe for investment.
But—and if you’ve been reading my previous columns, this will not surprise you—photographs and records of the Kosciusko neighborhood reveals a culturally rich and thriving community that welcomed wave after wave of immigrants to St. Louis. They lived in close proximity to the industries and docks along the river and often found work there. The area takes its name from Kosciusko Street, honoring Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko, a Polish patriot who famously fought in the American Revolution before returning and unsuccessfully struggling to maintain his own country’s independence in the face of Prussian, Russian and Austrian imperialism. Already in 1875, Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis shows a bustling community abuzz with various industries, some cleaner than others, alongside residential districts. Anheuser-Busch’s cooper (barrel) shop was located in the neighborhood at one point, for example.
By the 1940s, the neighborhood was on the verge of demolition. In photographs by famous dentist and preservationist William Swekosky, it looks a lot like the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The street wall of stores along South Broadway, forming the commercial district of the neighborhood, would be the envy of any urban planner today. Sure, they looked a little rough around the edges, but so did the Delmar Loop, Manchester in Maplewood, or Cherokee Street in the 1970s. The names on the signs and other records reveal a diverse immigrant community of Eastern European Jews, Croats, and other ethnic groups operating businesses along the artery. (Incidentally, a careful observer will realize the wide trafficway that cuts past Soulard Market is actually Seventh Boulevard, and Broadway is actually a block east at that point in Kosciusko.)
Of course, there were churches, and one of note was Our Lady of Czestochowa, a small Polish Roman Catholic parish church at the northeast corner of Fourth and Victor streets. It was originally built by German Lutherans as a school in 1867, reflecting the large number of Protestants emigrating from the region of Saxony. As the decades passed, Germans moved into the middle class, and they also moved westward, beyond Jefferson into neighborhoods such as Dutchtown. Eastern European immigrants moved in, and in 1907, the Roman Catholic Church bought the building from a group of Polish Catholics who had purchased it from the German Lutherans the year before. The second floor was wide open and functioned as the sanctuary, while a hallway on the first floor bisected two classrooms. A rectory was built next door; it was still standing when the parish was closed. Swekosky photographed the complex—all its members had moved west prior to “slum clearance”—prior to demolition.
Nearby, at the northeast corner of Third and Convent, was the John J. Roe & Co. pork packing plant, wrecked in 1954. Despite the fame of National City’s massive slaughterhouses, the Roe plant did a good business of its own. The first buildings were erected here in 1859, and this area, Block 48, was one of the most infamous in the city during the 19th century, as it flooded with water from the actual Mill Creek, sending porcine offal and other waste into neighboring streets. (Thanks to the famous brewers Ezra English and Isaac McHose and others, the City finally acted on renovating and channeling Mill Creek through the area to prevent the flooding that jeopardized their nearby investments.)
John J. Roe had gone into the packing business at just the right time, as the Civil War required huge amounts of food for Union soldiers billeted in St. Louis. German shepherd dogs helped usher the hogs up Gravois Avenue from the countryside to the packing plan; we’ll omit the details of the hogs’ slaughter, which were inhumane to say the least. The sounds could be heard throughout the neighborhood, according to records of the time. There is also an unverified story of “Pigsfoot Alley” in St. Louis, associated with the packing plant. While Armour might have utilized every part of the hog except the squeal, Roe discarded pigs’ feet in the alley behind the packing plant, allowing anyone interested to pick them up for free.
There was also a sophisticated side to Kosciusko, best seen in many of its handsome private residences. The George W. Sherrick House, for example, was an extremely rare (and now forever lost) example of Greek Revival architecture expressed in a row house structure. Greek Revival is rare in St. Louis, and it was usually reserved for large country homes; Sherrick’s house, built in 1850 at 2618 South Seventh Street, features square pillars holding up a two-story porch. The second floor of the porch still retained its ornamental iron railings when photographed in the 1940s; they are almost certainly lost. The Trudeau and Steinkauler houses were also examples of Greek Revival vernacular in the neighborhood; they were demolished as well.
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At the Phoenix Musical Club, built in 1899 at 1712 South Third Street, members could enjoy playing instruments, eating, and drinking. Founded in 1887, it had 40 members and a board of directors drawn from the German community. It would be interesting to know how much serious music playing occurred, relative to the eating and drinking. Slowly, Monsanto began to buy up the surrounding block, and eventually, the Club sold out the last parcel it owned in 1962.
Finally, the People’s Savings Institution Bank Building, erected in 1857 at Park and Broadway, perhaps best shows just what stunning architecture was lost in the clearance of the land south of downtown. This stately edifice shows a style of building in St. Louis that is rare or nonexistent. This was where the men and women who built the city before the Civil War worked and made transactions in the booming years of the 1840s and 50s. Its tragic loss is replaced with nothing of value today—except a curved right turn lane that allows drivers to swing around onto Broadway at high speeds without having to worry about pesky pedestrians or curbs getting in their way.
Which of course leads to the inevitable question asked last week: was the wholesale clearance of Kosciusko a net gain for St. Louis? Unequivocally, undeniably, no. From the pages of the Globe-Democrat in the 1960s, fascinating and depressing statistics emerge. An August 28, 1960, article reports the usual party line from city officials: Residents are happy to move out, there is all sorts of talk of investment, etc. We’ve all heard that before.
But then, in an October 23, 1963, column by Allan Merritt, the startling truth of the success of the massive clearance of huge swaths of St. Louis is laid bare in stark numbers. Merritt reports that city officials had originally forecast $100,000,000 in new investment in Kosciusko—but four years in, and three years before its scheduled completion, the development had only attracted $1.6 million, 1.6 percent of the projected investment. Even worse, not a single new company had moved in where 3,000 “slum dwellings” had been demolished. Driving around Kosciusko today, it is obvious that city leaders did not somehow find the remaining 98.4 percent in those last three years before completion—or in the next half-century. We are left to wonder what might have happened if the government had trusted regular St. Louisans to rebuild the neighborhood themselves.
By the way, that quote at the beginning of this article was not actually describing living conditions in Kosciusko in the 1960s, but rather in Soulard. One must always remember that what is now one of the most treasured neighborhoods in St. Louis was once targeted for complete annihilation, just like its neighbor to the east. But despite being maligned as a “slum,” Soulard now commands some of the highest real estate prices in South St. Louis, and it is one of the richest neighborhood communities. Given half a chance, Kosciusko might have been right there next to Soulard, with the same charming rows of beautiful brick houses and bustling stores.
Instead, it was “renewed.”
