70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor • Downtown workers gathered around a loudspeaker at Eighth and Olive streets, outside the federal Custom House (now the Old Post Office), to hear a live broadcast of President Franklin Roosevelt’s war speech to a joint session of Congress. The day before, Japan bombed a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Congress quickly ratified the declaration of war, as seen on the front page of the Post-Dispatch on Dec. 8. (The government didn’t confirm the destruction of the USS Arizona for another week.) You can see me at the bottom of the page — there was no “bird line” phrase that day. (Post-Dispatch archives)
Execution part of Missouri's brutish civil war
ST. LOUIS • Six prisoners of war were tied to wooden posts and blindfolded with cotton bandages. A squad of 36 riflemen waited at 10 paces. One of the condemned asked to speak.
“I am now to be shot for what other men have done,” said Charles W. Minniken, 22, a Confederate soldier from Arkansas. “Oh Lord, be with me.”
The volley ripped across a field northeast of present-day Jefferson and Shenandoah avenues at 3 p.m. Oct. 29, 1864. It was a vengeance execution, ordered by the Union command in St. Louis for the murders of Union Maj. James Wilson and six soldiers who had been captured by Confederates. Their bodies were found in Franklin County.
Beer wins applause in 1932 campaign
ST. LOUIS • The serious speechifying was about hard times. The cheers were for beer.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democratic candidate for president, stopped in St. Louis on Oct. 21, 1932, barely two weeks before Election Day. More than 12,000 Democrats jammed the St. Louis Coliseum, a convention hall at Washington and Jefferson avenues. On the sidewalk outside, an additional 5,000 gathered around scratchy loudspeakers.
Roosevelt delivered a ponderous 50-minute prepared speech on farm policy, railroad debt and President Herbert Hoover’s “dangerous” budget deficits. Democrats, sensing the landslide to come, were easy to please.
They gave their most joyous applause for two lines that weren’t in the typewritten text.
Expressway gave a taste of the future
ST. LOUIS • In the late 1940s, the city’s only freeway was the Oakland Express Highway along Forest Park, from Skinker Boulevard to Vandeventer Avenue. Car ownership was growing quickly, and motorists clamored for relief from downtown gridlock.
Progress in concrete began with the short-lived Third Street Highway, called the Interregional, from Washington Avenue at the Eads Bridge south to Gravois Avenue and 12th (Tucker) Boulevard. Only 2.3 miles long, it took seven years to build. A turf-minded state senator got the Legislature to delay it. Condemnation lawsuits in crowded neighborhoods consumed more time. Some of the buildings in the way dated to the 1840s.
The Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Garden celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009. Construction began at the garden in 1959, and cost $700,000 — almost double the projection. Today, it provides cover for 2,800 plants, including palm trees, devil flowers, spider lilies and orchids. (Photo by Johnny Andrews / jandrews@post-dispatch.com)
Workers assemble the first rows of aluminum tubes in October 1959 to build the Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The tubes create interlocking hexagons, (six-sided structures) to form a 70-foot-high dome that needs no interior vertical supports. Local architects Wayne Mackey Sr. and Joseph Murphy designed the building with inspiration from prolific inventor R. Buckminster Fuller, who patented the “geodesic dome.” (Photo by Buel White / Post-Dispatch)
Confederate spy's fateful bid to join invading army
MANCHESTER • Confederate agent James Morgan Utz’s wagon clattered toward the Meramec River with a hidden stash of medicine and secret messages. Utz hoped to contact Gen. Sterling Price’s army, which was pressing north toward St. Louis.
Utz, 23, had grown up on a farm in present-day Hazelwood and was a Confederate soldier until his capture in 1862. Returning home, he became a spy. He was driving west on Sept. 25, 1864, when Union cavalrymen stopped him near the village of Manchester. They hauled him to the Gratiot Street Prison, the jail for secessionists in St. Louis.
When the St. Louis Merchants Exchange building opened in 1875, it was a bustling affair, fitting for the importance of the new building to commerce and society. Grain traders used its vast hall to buy and sell the harvests that poured into St. Louis by steamboat, railroad and horse cart. The following year, the Democratic Party held its national convention there, choosing Samuel J. Tilden as their candidate. Last call was Sept. 13, 1957. Traders watched as closing prices were posted on the final day of trading at Merchants Exchange. The business moved to a new, forgettably modern brick building at 5100 Oakland Avenue. Wreckers moved in, and for the next 26 years the Pine and Third streets location was a parking lot. (David Gulick • Post-Dispatch archives)
Civil War gunboats built in Carondelet
CARONDELET • James B. Eads, salvage king of the Mississippi River, promised President Abraham Lincoln he could build iron-armored gunboats in 65 days. Lincoln, hungry for a way to clear the river of Confederates, was skeptical but intrigued.
On Aug. 7, 1861, Eads won a contract to build seven burly gunboats from a novel design. At $89,000 apiece, each was to carry 13 heavy cannon, have 2.5 inches of armor and be delivered to Cairo, Ill., in 60 days. Blowing deadline would cost $200 per boat per day.
Eads leased a boatyard at the foot of Marceau Avenue in the town of Carondelet, near the River Des Peres eight miles south of St. Louis. By Sept. 5, when Navy Capt. Andrew Foote arrived to command the flotilla, more than 500 carpenters, ironworkers and engineers on two shifts were working seven-day weeks for Eads.
James B. Eads, salvage king of the Mississippi River, promised President Abraham Lincoln he could build iron-armored gunboats in 65 days. On Aug. 7, 1861, Eads won a contract to build seven burly gunboats from a novel design. At $89,000 apiece, each was to carry 13 heavy cannons, have 2.5-inches of armor and be delivered to Cairo, Ill., in 60 days. The gunboats were built in the Eads Boatyard in Carondelet. The gunboat’s five boilers, seen here, sat side-by-side and powered the engines that turned a single enclosed paddlewheel. (U.S. Naval Historical Center)
