Missing theaters, missing buildings, vacant buildings speak of a burn factor—-the limiting of function for a whole segment of the population—with war like effects.
Denying of 97% of financial assets, ownership, income, jobs, education, and many other things—-in these previously legally segregated zones——and now in 2014, defacto they are still racially segregated zones. 99% black inside and 95% black on the fringes.
AS said previously, racially segregated.
Like many other historic sites, we see no state or city preservation of what once was Poro College. There was a “manufacturing plant, a retail store, business offices, a 500-seat auditorium, dining and meeting rooms, a roof garden, dormitory, gymnasium, bakery, and chapel. It served the African-American community as a center for religious and social functions.”
As an African-American woman of 1900 era, born in 1869,in the US, she is an extremely non-celebrated “great” of the past. Her business endeavers are marked with a non-descript vacant lots like tens of thousands of other vacant lots there.
Rags to riches
Father a soilder in Civil War, mother escapes with children from a salve state, 10th out of eleven children, parents died, orphaned, liked chemistry-but few black schools and they had to work to survive, and ill due to poor conditions and health—so did not finish high school. Sounds like the 30% to 50% dropout rate of today and the last 30 years. Came to St. Louis, 4th largest black city population in 1902.
She rose during the era of the movie “Birth of a Nation”, White Citizen Councils, KLu Klux Klan and so on.
“In 1924 she paid income tax of nearly $40,000, reportedly the highest in Missouri. While extremely wealthy, Malone lived modestly.” She gave money to the black YMCA, black colleges and The St. Louis Black Orphans home and was President from 1919-1943.
(WiKkopedia). This seemed to not bring admiration, but instead contempt—the US first black female millionare.
After almost a ¼ of a century in St. Louis and after her divorce, it appear Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone found the City of St. Louis a hostile environment and moved what was left of her operation to the strength and safety of South Side of Chicago——farther north.
The growth in the size and number of blacks in St. Louis, MO, in general, organizations, and post WWI black veterans, movement towards cities for jobs by blacks and a scant abberational handful of blacks with money seemed to cause difficulty for many Caucasians.
The call for “redevelopment” and continued segregation continued. Typically this means containment, or dispersal, control of finaces via job control or public housing. Ghettoization. Destruction of independent black businesses——even theaters——for “modernization” and “redevelopment.” Destroying self sufficiency.
Families without money, kept at the margin, cannot support theaters or buildings or invest in businesses or housing. Buildings cannot get maintenance and fall into disrepair. Re-investment from outside the segregated areas has not taken place in 70-100 years. So crumbling buildings turn into vacant lots.
Today and in the past, African American woman are forced to straighten their hair to make those in the general society feel comfortable. It would be similar to all women with straight hair being forced to chemically curl their hair to go on a job interview, go to a job, be seen in public,or be seen as militant or unprofessional. An extra cost and burden on black women, to make others with straight hair, offended by braids and afro’s, comfortable—even in 2014.
Think of the difference between Michael Jackson the singer circa early 1980’s versus later. A lighter skin color, European facial features and straight hair seemed to exponentially boost his career.
The people around many of these old theaters, did not have the money to change they’re physical appearance the way Michael Jackson did nor do they look like Beyonce, Lena Horn, Dorothy Dandridge, Vanessa Williams,Or Miley Cyrus. Would that have attracted outside investors? Maybe then these inner city theaters would have been saved—-and would not be dozens of vacant lots remembered by historians, researchers, and 600,000 city of St. Louis residents who fled to distant suburbs 60-70 years ago.
The black population has no theaters North of Delmar in the city limits-the ghetto zone.
Was the segregated London half a block from the Star Theater?
I pass these comments along.
“The London Theater was over that way.
They didn’t have a toilet……—so we called it the Funky London.”
“Now on Jefferson, about half a block down, was the Star Theater. That was an upright, clean theater. They had a toilet. And most of the people who wanted to be dignified would go there. It cost about 15 cents.
But they had cowboys at the Funky London, seven days a week. I’d look both ways to see if anybody I knew was lookin’, then rush in. It cost a nickel.”
“This Irish restaurant, Maggie O’Brien’s, was The Strand Theater. And Blue Moon Restaurant was at 22 ½ S. Beaumont. It was a tavern, so I never went in there.
I couldn’t afford the Deluxe Restaurant, either—that was comparable to the finest restaurant today. Even the black movie stars were segregated back then, and when they came to St. Louis, that’s the only restaurant(segregated) they ate at. Joe Louis, Cab Calloway, Count Basie…”
Mill Creek Valley
Born in 1934, John Curtis grew up in Mill Creek Valley, the historically black neighborhood that had produced Josephine Baker 28 years earlier. By 1959, the entire neighborhood had been wiped out, its shops, theaters, and nightclubs replaced with bland businesses.
I lived in Mill Creek Valley all my young life. My grandfather, A.W. Curtis, had a big church, The Church of God in Christ, and a grocery store, Curtis Confectionery, at 2714 Clark. It was for black people—90 percent of the black people went to black stores.”
Mill Creek Valley was blighted in early ’50s. Most people went north, where I stay. — As told to J.C.” From Vanished Neighborhoods…..from STLM Nov 2010 Jeannette Cooper
Being black,DOS(Descendent of Slavery) racial segregated, financially segregated, kept to 1/50 of financial assets back then, (1/20 to 1/30 now in 2013), far less financial income, limited where you work, live, buy, type of education, voting, what you eat and who you could marry(no interracial marriage) or marrying into the vast majority of familes with ownership resources really defines how “dignified” your life is in comparison to the average movie go-er.
Politically and legally they had no power to save their community or in some cases theaters forced to close. It all even impacted if————all theaters had a bathroom. It takes money to do most things, even go to the movies. Notice the theater with a bathroom cost triple the price. How did these prices compare with the general society in 1940’s?
Like many things in these black communities, the general society———decided to force the closing of many theatres. Neighborhoods that use to be Irish and Italian had become black. Spreading out of Laclede’s Landing, to Chestnut Valley to Mill Creek and to The Ville and then farther north——-similar to how Native Americans were pushed west.
Seen by many as a consequence of WWII civil rights gains in war factories for blacks, black population increase to fill these factories, being present after the war and a building civil rights movement—————-had a back lash—-to clear them out.
A Caucasian theatre for 30 years, turned to defacto segregated theatre—few caucasian people would go there in 1943 and survived 18 years—-til the general society killed it.
It is very close to Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd.
Vast areas of the City of St. Louis are desolate, ghost town, “redeveloped” areas, that carved away the black population—-in an attempt to build a buffer zone——-separation space—-segregation space——black to white——East to West and to preserve downtown St. Louis and its 4 million annual visitors.
Theatres and many business' were shuttered.
The local black theatre going population was not allowed to preserve them—due to emminent domain.
Art Theatre/Screening room North Comptan and Olive-seemed to endure because it was 4 blocks south of the starting psuedo Color Line—-Washington Street across the whole length east to West of the City and it was 7 blocks south the the Delmar Color line. It was north of and close to the Stowe—segregated St. Louis black teachers school. Plus it was near St. Louis University
The top were segregated theatres—began that way.
Were there only six or many more?
Segregated black theatre in Laclede’s Landing where blacks owned businesses down on the Levee—-after the great fire that gutted the riverfront and part of downtown?
Any additions to: Chestnut valley? Mill Creek valley?
How many became theatres de-facto segregated due to who came to the theatre later via closing down of these neighborhood reservation ghettoes and forced push of—-blacks elsewhere. Meaning few to no Caucasian people would come to that neighvorhood or come to that theatre or sit with descendents of slavery. When these theatres did not close on their own city hall had——a “redevelopment” plan to shut them down.
Roosevelt, Criterion and other theaters may be in this group.
What was the tipping point? 10%, 15% or 20%—-for all the other theatre’s whose customer base shifted?
These are entire areas, almost half the City of St. Louis where——the Caucasian population fled and extreme majority has not lived in, invested in, spent much time or stayed til dark and slept overnight in, for 50 to 60 years.
It is easy to make mistakes when people may not have been to that theatre or lived in that areas for——half a century.
Vacant lots and crumbling theatres have a story to tell.
We saw the building but it was already closed(1965) by the time I saw it 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s…No theatre.
Baden always felt like it’s own little town.
Other buildings around it continued for awhile.
Arlens department store was there into the later 1970’s—I went to the closing sale. School uniforms and other little stores were there for a while. A few re-sale shops and antique stores were there for decades. Bars were still there. Sterling Grocery store was there for a time. The Hostess bakery outlet was well known on Broadway. The neighborhood was 92%-95% African-American for many decades. Plus people who lived in Walnut Park and Mark Twain neighborhoods made the journey through Calvery and Bella Fountaine cemetaries to reach Baden.
Almost all businesses on the far remote edges of North St. Louis pulled some old sustaining business from the more well-to-do prior residents who fled to the county. This sustained them, briefly. Ultimately, centers for the purchase of goods or entertainment pressed farther out. Income is very low and although there may have been over 100,000 at times in that zone, no theatres existed in that half of the city limits.
Baden is not far from the North Twin drive-in. North Twin was the ultimate surviver in this area staying open till 2001 that was in Jennings, North St. Louis County. I loved it. It is probably the closest shared experience of theatre to children who lived in a 95%-99% African-American ethnic North St. Louis City and counties and the prior Caucasian residents of North St. Louis who left North St. Louis closing down the theatres in 1950’s to 1960’s. Why? It is one of the few that stayed open that was in range.
Typically if you lived in North St. Louis City even as a child in the last half century you do not remember a theatre that closed 48 years ago. I do remember the building. Baden was always nice.
Great place. The drive up to it seemed narrow and long.
I remember almost an entirely African-American audience from 1972-1974.Before that it is vague. I remember the films with black stars—I do not remember what we saw—-Shaft, Superfly, Grier, Buck and the Preacher, …
This area was completely surrounded by a majority African-American community and you could access it from black areas with out passing through non-black areas via Highway 70 to Goodfellow, drive down Natural Bridge from Union or Kingshighway, drive from Kienlen…safe physical access mattered.
It was called “The Bird.” Being from the city, Thunderbird was a drink, like Rosie O'Grady, Freight Train,or Brass Monkey.
Next door:
I liked the Goody Goody Restaurant.
I liked Sam the Watermelon man
There was a liquor store across the street.
I love Skateking in 1970’s 1980’s and 1990’s—-real DJ’s, real mixes, real dancing with couples, Soul Train line on skates, flips and jumps, slow songs, fast songs a real vibrant sycopated dance floor. Fabulous urban line dancing on skates—you name it. Christian nite, old school for elders night and so on.
Groups use to travel from Skateking to other rinks around the country—New York, Atlanta, Detroit—-and people use to ask—elsewhere —about Skateking.
Tom Casevelli Ford was there on Goodfellow.
Old reserve Army Barracks and Small Ammunition plant.
After thunderbird closed, North Twin was the only drive-in left within range.
Union and Thekla or Union and Harney
Maybe 1970-1971—two older ladies had a place where they gave piano lessons and a shoe repair man was next door and a pool hall. This was up closer to the Play Mor Theatre site.
We never knew Union area or Claxton had a theatre.
This building is being used by a commercial HVAC company for the last 50 years with a van fleet that might be using up the space.
I grew up there in Mark Twain and Walnut Park and most people who lived there are completely on purpose to some extent kept in the dark on what few businesses use some of these old buildings. The people live elsewhere and drive in and out via the rear like armoured trucks—to repair HVAC. It is close to getting on and off HIghway 70. Mostly they are used as old warehouses or storage. Also if someone has a fleet of diesal trucks or vans that idle allot and put out allot of pollution —also asthma inducing.
They do not solicit business from the neighborhood directly. I knew of no one in the neighborhood who worked there. Your not supposed to know what they do. The building is supposed to draw as little attention as possible. I do not remember seeing someone enter the front door—-ever. Different rules in a different environment.
With few to no business'—-I watched and knew in about 1975 what it was.
I knew it was something, but never knew it was once a theatre—— blocks from where I lived. There might have been some companion business' but we never knew what they were.
There was an old Velvet Freeze on West Florissant, next to the old Public library like in a two family building, that maybe closed 1978-79, not much left on Union but old closed bars or diner, little candy store maybe, and dry cleaners and small store/licquor store at Kingshighway and West Florissant. The dairy queen like place near Northwest High School, Riverview, I went to in 1980’s was still there. Lombardo’s on Riverview and West Florissant Corner. Not much for long 16-20 blocks by 5-10 blocks area and almost all these were on the outside circumfirance of the area.
If you wanted a theatre or just about anything else, you were out of luck.
The Bremen
Follow the money, financial resources of the people in the neighborhood and you can predict what will happen to the theatre and the building. Over half the people are living below the poverty level and most barely above it in 2013. Fifty years has passed. They are in survival mode with no resources to rehab the old Bremen theatre. They are structurally, institutionally, extended family-friends-and personally—-cutoff from the resources of the general society.
So, the Bremen could not be rehabbed without money. Many owners of the old theatres after they moved away opened them only on weekends in the 1950’s or 1960’s. Some exquisite unique German buildings existed a block or two down Bremen Street but no one could ever get the money to rehab them.
If major complete rehab and maintenance investments are not done on buildings since WWII and the late 1940’s they decay. If a building built in 1910 is still standing 100 years later and has had little major financial investment in 50 to 60 years—— someone here and there did something to try to preserve the building. I remember when the building was used as a church.
Leave a typical building out in the suburbs for 70 to 100 years with little or no maintenance for 50 years plus. It will have caved in or bowed out long before these St. Louis Red, double or triple brick structures. Most of St. Louis' great architecture is in the City of St. Louis, but those with financial resources to preserve these areas abandoned them.
The miracles are the hundreds of thousands of people who lived in these “zones” and preserved the buildings to this degree. The time warp of disparate financial assets, income, opportunity, promotions, infant mortality, healthcare, life expectancy, and expectations ——the vast difference versus the rest of the society————made it a “dangerous place.”
It was not a dangerous place for people who lived there everyday. There was a different level of knowledge required. This is a normal part of American life for these areas to be created. Childhood did end very early—-and theatre going was not part of it for many children.Clearly, it impacts how they see the world as young adultsVacant empty buildings show no films. The Bremen theatre found itself enveloped into one of these areas.
What ever is going on with the people in the neighborhood when people lose their jobs or cannot obtain jobs, income, assets it impacts all the business there and the buildings—even the old Bremen.
The old Bremen building survived a long time. Why the Bremen theatre building was still there?
1)
Police station was up the street for years,til late 1980’s maybe 1990, later used to store parking meters. When the police retreated to a super substation on North Jefferson, reduced costs and shut down all the neighborhood police stations the police were more distan, so more buildings and people were vulnerable. A population with low property values, no one with money moving in or investing, few job opportunities, leaves little money for schools and city services—like police, or fire protection—that are funded on property taxes. Unwanted property brings in few taxes. Little money available for the old Bremen.
2)
The parks acted as a segregated barrier Windsor Park 3 blocks up farther north vs Hyde Park as many streets and other areas. Various dividing lines, oasis' existed across the camp landscape during many decades.
3)
A few people with access to education, union jobs, family contacts, who could cross the color line(Caucasian) to job access, were sprinkled in on one or two streets up against Highway 70, south from East Grand College Bissell Hill, back down Blair Ave to Hyde Park where the Bremen Theatre buildinis located—on the street called Bremen.
Resources only appear if it comes from Downtown to the south or from far outside: Areas near the old Bremen stuggled to hang on—but everyone fled.
Old North St. Louis with Crown Candy and White Castle Hamburgers is a little farther south across from Little Sisters of the Poor. An old diner sandwich shop was down there maybe north of Parnell and North Market colored white and blue tile—but a car ran into it and wipped it out in 1980’s. The 14 Street Pedestrian mall of a few old stores were almost vacant for decades.-except for Crown Candy—which I like very much. Great people, great ice cream, great rueben sandwiches-the German way, chocolate from molds, decor———-again like most of North St. Louis a place where 99.999999% of the outside population of 2.5 million would never venture.
This was home for hundreds of thousands of American adults and children-at the bottom economically so outside of the old Bremen theatre being a church on Sundays they did not have the money to do more for the old building and no one else came to help restore it. Long term economic deprivation has very negative impacts on buildings like the Bremen and human beings. The old Bremen theatre might collapse on someone or drop a brick on their head or a deprivated human transfixed near the old Bremen might throw a brick.
4)Bremen street was was one of the rare streets in North St. Louis to be not only temporarily blocked off, but money was paid to permanently block off the street— as the traffic plan changed in the area to protect this street and Hyde Park. Security corridors were created with one way in and out of areas if security check points or gates or police could be stationed there.With few financial resources, police had to be highly leaveraged.
Near there—-the Army National Guard Summer 2012 did training exercises with armored personnel vehicles—practicing in the camp zone.
5)The City Alderman of the area, 1 of 28 for the city of St. Louis, called councilmen or women elsewhere lives on this block with the the old Bremen theatre
6)The Alderman who lives on Bremen Street with the Bremen theatre——his son was Mayor of the City of St. Louis, 1993-1997.
This is why the building is still there.
The private investment never materialized for the old Bremen theatre.
Bremen Street: this was an old German neighborhood. The last old German fellow who was born there, read the old German newspapers there, moved out in his late 90’s, maybe in 1989-91. This was also and old Polish neighborhood. Piekutowski European Sausage may still be on N. Florissant around the corner from the old Bremen theatre—excellent. The Bishop of Krakow visited there in 1960’s –long before he became Pope of Vatican City. He might have come back to visit in 1990’s when he ws in St.Louis.
All the above factors, preserved for a time: Hyde Park Pizza-(1970-1980-1990’s)remember the 1950’s car out front, Hyde Park Donut, upholstery shop?, the Hardware store on the opposite corner from the old Bremen theatre. These closed or changed hands in 1990’s or 2000’s. A family from outside Red Bud, IL I think turned the pizzaria into Cornerstone Cafe.
Outside money is necessary for preservation.
This was the front line for building preservation the last 50 years.
The old Bremen Theatre was not far from what looked like the 4 times larger German Turner’s Gymnasium that was down the street. It was nice—both the old and new one. I do not know if movies were ever shown there, —sometimes?
The theatres were closed. Missionary churches in the camp zone were maybe the only people who lived there and worked there—-showed a little movie to children on a weekend in the summer some time. Lacking money, they still tried to keep the children’s hope and spirits up. Children and Churches—-could not repair the building. Children did try to clean up the area.
These children were invisible, forgotten and grew into successive generations of adults, without the financial assets or top notch property financed education to move up the ladder. They’re deficient educations could not fund superior rebuilding funds and investment income.
The city never had the money to repair the old Bremen theatre. At best people could move to another area at the same low income level. Without a huge jump in assets, and money and jobs—no change. It was more like a third world, perpetual great depression-just for them. A surrounded, ghetto war torn situation—but in the USA not Warsaw 1945. This is a norm in the USA. Not many theatres in Jewish areas made it in European German occupied WWII ghettoes.
Preservation was blocked. These US urban areas, the economic and educational hostilities never ended. Whitney Young’s Urban Marshal plan—that might have preserved these historical neighborhoods and theatres as non-profit treasures did not happen. The Hi-Point single theatre on Skinker south of WAshing ton Univerity—-like another world or reality than North St. Louis—has been saved and in operation for decades. Where people have money options exist.
Lacking major opportunities like the small ammunition war factory that employed 35,000 WWII on Goodfellow/Bircher or thousands employed at North St. Louis GM plant, Emerson Electric, Carter Carburetor and others all closed or moved—preservation money is missing.
The economic investment—that would have included the old Bremen theatre, ( rebuilding)— has not taken place in 40, 50 or 60 years and counting.But people who live there were hopeful and did the best they could with what little they had to preserve the building as long as they could. Multiple groups for decades in the past Northside Ministries,many churches—Holy Trinity, Lutheran, 61 Initiative—preserved what they could.
I never saw it open. I saw it as a church. I knew it had been a theatre because of the big space outside, indentation in the brick for posters or windows and I remembered it having a barrel vault roof from the outside(viewed from the side)—I think. The bricks would fall off sometimes onto the sidewalk.
It was “what it was.” It was not comparably dangerous for people who lived there, and had to live there everyday. People who live under a mandated different reality—must have additional skill sets like military personnel. It was as safe as it could be under the disparate economic circumstances imposed in varying levels the last 4 centuries. The theatres can be restored but the people who live there or someone from the outside has to fund it. The majority of people there, 97% behind in assets, 7% movement every 50 years means, maybe 18 sets of 50 years for closure at this rate. So outside funding is the best option.
The Palm was not demolished for a parking lot. The old GM plant is quite a distance away, blocks to highway 70, then blocks down to Natural Bridge.
The “Roller Rink” and “Pla-Mor” letters were long gone—scavenged along with the Budweiser sign sometime after the above picture was taken. With only skeletans and ruins of things left as children and teenagers we felt like we were in the movie “Logan’s Run” and tried to figure out what was once there. There was such a big sidewalk out fron you knew something had been there once.
The ancient black paint on the vertical sign under where the letters were attached was extremely faded tp a dark dirty black gray and the other paint was very worn—-the contrast between the two colors of old black paint showed the outline of “PLAY MOR.”
I thought it was an old bar like the place next door.
There was a large amount of jagged glass everywhere and heavy like barbed wire in the windows on each side of the door where the white signs are located in the pictures. I reached my hand in to touch the barb wire—the glass was caved in and it was boarded up from behind. I touched what was left of it at that time.
I lived very close to it and never knew it was a theatre, roller rink and bowling alley. I never met anyone who was there when it was a theatre, roller rink and bowling alley because they left the area.
When I walked down the rear alley you could see that the building had collapsed, been scavenged, walls removed, or the roof caved in or it had caught on fire—so it would have been on the demolish list. The old Palm Theatre might have been sitting there for decades unused since it was closed.
Another Londoff vacant bowling alley existed, maybe owned by the same people, east of Fairgrounds park down Natural Bridge, going toward Parnell(maybe part of Old North St. Louis) towards downtown. I do not know if it previously was a theatre. I never saw it open, we just saw again the outline of words on old signs. Maybe it was the same family of Londoff Chevrolet fame.
The blocks there seemed like a beautiful oasis near the old cinema. Children walking down Harney to Walbridge and Nativity of Our Lord/ St. Adalberts school late 1960’s through 1970’s always noticed the well kept vacant large lot. .
The houses around the old Robin Cinema were all small, and very pretty- like out of a story book myth. It did not look like a vacant lot—because it had been re-planted and kept up. I first thought a stately old French 17th century home might have been there. Next I thought an old fountain, or English glassed in “Jewel Box” type botanical garden like in Forest Park was there. It looked like an elegant garden had stood there. I use to see one of the neighbors cutting the lawn where the Robin Theatre once stood.
I knew something significant had been there but never knew what it was at that time. It seemed like something important had been there and people’s houses where like beautiful gingerbread houses as if saluting and point towards this area. There was no garbage, dumped tires, abandoned cars, ditchs and rubble in this lot.
Many children had to dis-embark on this march down Harney Street past the old Robin lot, it was a long journey alone for children-so we gathered in units to go. The general 90% of areas approaching the old Robin Theatre, doorway to doorway, house to house, past alley ways and streets, block to block were dilapidated and deterioriated and the Walnut Park camp was full of surprizes. You knew you would be safe briefly between two no man’s lands if you made it there to where the old Robin Theatre area, even if you had to run. We never knew why or what had been there.
This area/place where the Robin theatre was located felt dimensionally different for a block or two, a safe railroad station or a safe house overground. As a child I walked that urban trail with other children and I was happy to make it back to base/home.
A measure of residual happy energy remained in the adults there. Decades of laghter and people coming and going left a brief feeling of safe harbor. The Robin Cinema although very small, survived during WWII but was closed since 1947 made an impact on the neighbors who seemed to treat it as hallowed ground—keeping the area around its buriel and the houses very nice.
Maybe this is where they saw WWII newsreels or met their husband or wife, children saw they’re first movies or had great family memories.
Noir
commented about
MX Movieson
Sep 12, 2013 at 2:27 pm
Central Corridor:
Downtown City of St. Louis has been without a movie theater for 10 years.
10 years since Union Station 10 Cinema closed in 2003
So it is great there is a 3 screen option—MX.
Has anyone been to the MX?
Next closest theatre:
Forest Park, Hospital complex to St. Louis University, Harris Stowe College.
Chase Park Plaze theatre—North Kingshighway
Since 2005 the Moolah Temple on Lindell
Beaumont played a role for the site of the movie “A City Decides” by Charles Guggenheim(1956) that was nominated for an Academy award. It was nice that 3 of the Little Rock Nine went there to finish high school after Little Rock Central High School was intentionally closed to thwart they’re attendance.
Some theaters played a role but since many theaters in their early years when they opened were segregated and later many closed in 1950’s and early 1960’s period of the Civil Rights movement——-they played less of a role in the population of that half of the city the last 40 years. Most of them were vacant buildings or demolished vacant lots.
I’m not blaming movies. Humans are always responsible for criminal actions even if they are under economic deprivation pressures not felt by the wider society. Creating economic refugees does not help problem. Bootless, strap-less and the resource-less found very few paths to success via they’re hard work—out into industry from there. Roads out for the 90% were few and they were stranded. Cinema owners with all their ability also could not figure how to make it work with all their business experience. No new cinemas or anything else have been built in that half of the city and the only other new movie theaters I remember were in the old train yards behind Union Station downtown or at the old Chase Park Plaza.
Sorry, I was not trying to be political. If you grew up there, the disparity of resources inside the zone vs outside the zone, the harshness, (what fundamentally caused the Cinemas to close)—-we saw as factual, versus political. People can differ on why all the cinemas just shut down.
But, I will in the future limit any future posts to a few lines of information on the visual facts of the old remains if any on the buildings—-versus forensic whys or the anthropology of what happened.
I was just responding to other people’s comments on the “demographics” and the neighborhood “changing” and it being a “God-forsaken ghetto.” I just thought some background on the underlying economic and social factors of why all the Cinemas were closings or being demolished would be helpful. Things did not happen at that time for no reason. It is not like today—where theaters are deciding to go digital or have competition form Netflix, cable, satillite, broadcaste TV, and internet streamed in movies.
As you said Chuck, “shifts in population and white flight to the suburbs.” Your not taking a political stand, you are just stating that facts. There seemed to not be any comments from those who lived there 24 hours a day and went to school there in decades. This was our daily environmentwith all its complexity.
For those who lived there, we saw here and there vacant old cinema buildings and vacant lots for most of the last 50 years. This environment is an accepted norm of American society. The hundreds of thousands of people who as children who grew up there, and were raised there have very different experiences than you do.
We would also have liked to have been able to visit when the neighborhood cinemas were open. If they are ever revitalized—maybe public viewing of movies, together with others, will be unique and popular again.
I am happy you have so many found memories of these cinemas in they’re heyday that have enriched your life.
Thank you for your knowledge and input Chuck.
Norside—gone in 1970’s.
Lindell, gone in 1961
Aubert on Martin Luther King Blvd is family dollar store,
Many smaller old buildings were used as churches.
Big theaters they were too expensive to heat and maintain for another use.
I grew up in Walnut Park in North St. Louis City and lived there until I was 21. I graduated from grade school and high school there. I continued to live continuously in two other different areas of North St. Louis the next 11 years. I lived also about 7 blocks from Beaumont.
Cinemas must have income. Shifts in assets and income close theaters. The economic system for most who moved in there remained the same. They were constantly spatially, economically, educationally marginalized wherever they went. There was not a new start, really. The 1970’s St. Louis Rand consulting report called these “depletion zones.” City services and many other things were diminished there. The vast majority of block grant money was sent to the central corridor south of Delmar. Businesses including cinemas were cut off.
Children are born into families and rely on parents and grand parents ability to provide—-or are impacted by the deprivations of the existing system. Children enter a pre-existing system as they’re parents did. Cumulative, compounded, continuing, hundreds of layers of exponentially increasing historical pressures on those families was not really a new start.
Red lining and the most basic of comparably resources and opportunities—-were missing. Assets, incomes and opportunity needed to provide for families and children, when missing, do not allow you to properly or competitively maintain these families, raise children, maintain neighborhoods, businesses===or cinemas.
Areas and people in a struggle, in a war of sorts, all over the world have battle areas that look the same. Economic deprivation, 3%-5% assets, the men are missing-dead—prisoners-PTSD-coping mechanism—alcohol-legal/illegal drugs, single female headed households, women and children everywhere, teenagers clump together for protection and run wild, poverty, high dropout rate, rubble, bombed out looking buildings, and poor infrastructure and schools. This zone has existed for 4-5 decades near the old Rio and many of the theaters you mentioned. The “flight” of the assets, inheritances, incomes, opportunities, contacts, business owners, investors——those with expendable income—-beyond poverty level——left. This caved in the cinemas. It caved in everything else also.
Why so many Cinema closings or demolished in urban areas?
Even the (Frederick) Douglas Theater on Vandeventer in the Ville closed in the early 1960’s—a segregated theater.
People do not have money for cinema pleasure when they are paid considerable less than average. If they exist on 3-5% of the financial assets poor to rich, quadruple unemployment,less money for education, fewer promotions, less ownership, no property appreciation, disparate impact in infant mortality and courts, health and so on—-entertainment takes a back seat.
Some families get ahead traditionally in America via who you know, connections, inheritance all via marriage—but this was completely outlawed for blacks until about 1968—it was not legal to marry someone in the general society.
45 years later,2013, very few Caucasian men today in US even in 2013 marry African American women although her family might have been solders fighting alongside of George Washington in a pivotal battle of the revolutionary war. Instead, it is 30 times as likely for a Caucasian man to marry a foreign born Asian woman from a communist country who may have an accent when they speak English than marry an African-American woman whose family has been defending the USA for centuries and helped build it for 400 years. Although African-Americans are one of the highest groups putting themselves at risk in the military—maybe due to a lack of opportunity, they are still not welcome in many families. People lament the old movie theater but do not lament the lack of diversity in they’re families.
Resources are not passing via marriage. With artificially limited money and the general population not moving into North St. Louis, the typical wealth accumulation method via property appreciation –is cut off from blacks in North St. Louis. Normal upward movement is blocked for 85%. The ghetto is an artificial creation, by the wider society that has caused depredation and raised a high economic invisible wall-force field.
Cinema movie houses like thousands of things were cut off. The deprivation is so high you could see families out on Sunday—dismantling buildings, taking the bricks to sell. A cinematic view looking like something out of the 1860’s, women, children, mom and dad in dusty old clothes.At night, the preditors, vampires and scavengers came out —because the wider society had locked them all inside—with 3%-5% of what they had to live on. So, yes this compression—-created violence.
African –Americans per the Urban League’s 50 year study 2013-1963 “I have a Dream Speech” report find that after 50 years and the entire civil rights movement—-blacks like those pushed into North St. Louis only had an increase in income in 50 years of 7%. What blacks were making as maids and porters in 1963, as a group in income they have advanced 7% from their old position—not much in 50 years. Remember blacks came out of the South in large numbers to work at the defense plants during WWII when the US was afraid of losing when pressed between Japan and Germany. Many of the plants had been converted but were shut down into the 1960’s and very early 1970’s. No jobs = no money.
Civil Rights leaders were gunned down, and JFK and the attorney general hopeful democratic candidate were killed. Martin Luther King was killed. Large numbers of black boys with no money for college or influence were sent to Vietnam. Military jeeps came to find you. They did not come back home after Vietnam to better treatment. Vietnam ate up all the national money. Simultaneously, manufacturing was declining and continued to decline. OPEC oil embargo in early 1970’s continued an ongoing-perpetual DEPRESSION that had existed in these communities, caused from deprivation.
While others had access, contacts, resources, money—-and still do, they lost hope. Like prisoners of war, who have been fenced off, thrown in solitary, tortured, and starved in so many ways—-all you have to do is drop a few pieces of bread in they’re midst. They have been setup to cannibalize and fight each other for the minuscule crumbs. Frankensteined and zombied a few will try to save themselves at the expense of others. They learned this from the wider society—but in an environment of few resources—this is the result.
Hopeless at being saved in they’re lifetime, they turn on each other—they no longer believe their leadership—or escape committee that has failed to release them from this ordeal. The urban Marshal plan like what was given to Germany and Japan was never given to black Americans in the USA. Like in 1940’s when American black GI’s had to go to the kitchen door to get food—German Prisoners of WAr got to eat up front. Old habits die hard.
In fact, most of the few leaders and educated were the only ones allowed to get out—leaving them. The leaders and those behind are both lacking the resources to help. The young look to the model of the Italian gangs, Jewish Gangs, Polish gangs, Irish gangs and German gangs—who made it out, and tried to copy some of these methods of surviving or freeing themselves. Could the general society survive under these conditions or worse for 400 years? They have people surrounding them who they are supposed to take the trash out for with immense resources comparably daily showing them what they do not have and will never have. A few gave up hope and history has shown they had good reason to give up hope. They took on the self focused, I am going to save myself at the expense of everyone else belief disease—-like in the general society.
They were just young urban capitalists in a society created War Zone, surrounded—who saw that forgiveness and kindness and non-violence—did not appear to work. They saw many A students getlittle or nothing. If they cannot get out they want to live a brief better life, get a few drops of water in Hades and die young and fast in the prison camp. The outside pressure ensures that they are not afraid of dying—they are afraid of living—seeing what the compression does to your loved ones over decades. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is not new.
Living under, other different rules—then the general society they responded differently—being at war with everything. They think everyone betrayed them.
They did not break into schools and commit mass murders—they seemed to be in an economic battle. They did cause allot of collateral damage—when they targeted adversaries. Living cinema.
People trying to survive in manmade depredated war zones——-have film noir cinema all around them. They are the movie. Ask those who went to Afghanistan or Iraq, except they had a green zone, pulled in and out of safe zones——and get to leave that zone or ghetto. They were funded with training, resources, college, and get to leave. These American black people, most of them do not get to leave, they do not have the resources —they are born into it, refugees, prisoners—in America. It took 50 years for some to crawl out into North County with the few resources that they had available. Some try to get out via the military—and come home in a body bag.
Life is a very different American cinema experience for them—real Noir. It was not God forsaken, it was an ordered result of Americans forsaking and creating a deprivation war zone for them—-they’re parents—they’re grandparents———and they’re children. It is the ultimate living American cinema.Living nostalgia.
Without the Rio and others you had to have the money to go all the way downtown. Everyone did not have money for cars. External segregated financial pressures just like in Warsaw during WWII, create ghettoes, and these just bring down movie houses.
The response to desegregation is blamed for closing many movie houses. We were not welcome and safe as minorities in most places. But at least we did not have to sit in the balcony.
Booker T Washington Theater never appears in listings. Hundreds of thousands of people continued to live in North St. Louis. A traditional minority neighborhood Mill Creek received the Civil Rights push back response. It was taken by force of emminent domain to create the site of the Gateway Arch, highway 40, St. Louis Univ got some area, and Grand Towers, and a Laclede town—-and 40 black churches and all their businesses, stability, and homes were raised to the ground. A different method than what happened in Tulsa, OK in 1920’s but the same result-devastation of the community. Compensation was little or nothing as everything was torn down starting in maybe before 1959. NAACP called it a “removal project.” So this is why “those people” were pushed to live there.
Josephine Baker lived in that neighborhood. Scott Joplin’s house was farther inland on2600 block of Delmar a streetcar ride from the Ragtime Turpin’s Rosebud Café. Turpin’s father Tom –honest John and brother Charles-owned the segregated Booker T Washington Theater opened in 1912 at 23rd St and Washington I think. Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters and many others performed there. Red Fox’s Sanford and Son fame was on Vandventer near the White Castle and Manchester. A large numbers of black men were used for years to haul cotton and other goods on and off paddle wheelers and steam ships down by the Mississippi river so an old black neighborhood was there. This area grew with the war factories in WWII, being 95% black. Mark Twain even comments about hearing the work songs on the levy; syncopated timing paralleling Negro spirituals, all the unique music precursors to blues, Jazz, soul, Rock N Roll, pop, modern Country music and rap-that speaks of not being very happy. A great deal of American cinema was informed by these urban events and people. Hard work, Christian values, forgiveness, patience over hundreds of years by the late 1960’s and 1970’s did not seem to change much in economic conditions in comparison to the general societies resources. The deaths of many non-violent leader proved change—was not coming for several hundred years. So starting in the 80’s-rap tells a negative story.
From the movies—they copy James Cagney and many movies of “gangs.” People who eventually made it out of the poverty from other out of favor ethnic groups who were inurban areas.Cinema influenced them a great deal.
Never used as a parking lot. It was next to Lombardo’s I went there in 1981. I lived in Walnut Park. I believe around 1976-1977 I saw the back door opened of the old RIO and I wandered in as a grade school boy seeking a little adventure. It was being used to store vending machines or vending machine parts. It was an old storage room, I did not see the rest of it.
People could go past the Katz drug store and Steak and Shake on Riverview, and past the old Howard Johnson’s near the Top of Tower to the Drive Inn during the summer. There was not enough money, assets, jobs, business ownership, promotions—income for these new frefugee families from mill Creek and elsewhere to support anything. Economic warfare has negative impacts.
You had to bridge the vast divide with money you did not have to go all the way up to River Roads in North County up West Florissant to see a movie or The Fox on the other side of town. You were not welcome at many places that might have been closer. There were once maybe 9 theaters around the North Grand area, near the Veterans hospital. Before The Fox was re-habbed it had cheap shows. People from the suburbs came to go to the Symphony across the street at night (before it was a movie palace) but most people from north of Delmar and Page, North St. Louis could not afford it.
The Fox theaterwas cheap on Saturday Matinee. Just like in North St. Louis it was old and falling apart. I think I saw “Snoopy Goes Home” or something there maybe around 1976-1977. It might have been $1 or $2 then.
Missing theaters, missing buildings, vacant buildings speak of a burn factor—-the limiting of function for a whole segment of the population—with war like effects.
Denying of 97% of financial assets, ownership, income, jobs, education, and many other things—-in these previously legally segregated zones——and now in 2014, defacto they are still racially segregated zones. 99% black inside and 95% black on the fringes. AS said previously, racially segregated.
Like many other historic sites, we see no state or city preservation of what once was Poro College. There was a “manufacturing plant, a retail store, business offices, a 500-seat auditorium, dining and meeting rooms, a roof garden, dormitory, gymnasium, bakery, and chapel. It served the African-American community as a center for religious and social functions.” As an African-American woman of 1900 era, born in 1869,in the US, she is an extremely non-celebrated “great” of the past. Her business endeavers are marked with a non-descript vacant lots like tens of thousands of other vacant lots there.
Rags to riches Father a soilder in Civil War, mother escapes with children from a salve state, 10th out of eleven children, parents died, orphaned, liked chemistry-but few black schools and they had to work to survive, and ill due to poor conditions and health—so did not finish high school. Sounds like the 30% to 50% dropout rate of today and the last 30 years. Came to St. Louis, 4th largest black city population in 1902.
She rose during the era of the movie “Birth of a Nation”, White Citizen Councils, KLu Klux Klan and so on.
“In 1924 she paid income tax of nearly $40,000, reportedly the highest in Missouri. While extremely wealthy, Malone lived modestly.” She gave money to the black YMCA, black colleges and The St. Louis Black Orphans home and was President from 1919-1943. (WiKkopedia). This seemed to not bring admiration, but instead contempt—the US first black female millionare.
After almost a ¼ of a century in St. Louis and after her divorce, it appear Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone found the City of St. Louis a hostile environment and moved what was left of her operation to the strength and safety of South Side of Chicago——farther north.
The growth in the size and number of blacks in St. Louis, MO, in general, organizations, and post WWI black veterans, movement towards cities for jobs by blacks and a scant abberational handful of blacks with money seemed to cause difficulty for many Caucasians.
The call for “redevelopment” and continued segregation continued. Typically this means containment, or dispersal, control of finaces via job control or public housing. Ghettoization. Destruction of independent black businesses——even theaters——for “modernization” and “redevelopment.” Destroying self sufficiency.
Families without money, kept at the margin, cannot support theaters or buildings or invest in businesses or housing. Buildings cannot get maintenance and fall into disrepair. Re-investment from outside the segregated areas has not taken place in 70-100 years. So crumbling buildings turn into vacant lots.
Today and in the past, African American woman are forced to straighten their hair to make those in the general society feel comfortable. It would be similar to all women with straight hair being forced to chemically curl their hair to go on a job interview, go to a job, be seen in public,or be seen as militant or unprofessional. An extra cost and burden on black women, to make others with straight hair, offended by braids and afro’s, comfortable—even in 2014.
Think of the difference between Michael Jackson the singer circa early 1980’s versus later. A lighter skin color, European facial features and straight hair seemed to exponentially boost his career.
The people around many of these old theaters, did not have the money to change they’re physical appearance the way Michael Jackson did nor do they look like Beyonce, Lena Horn, Dorothy Dandridge, Vanessa Williams,Or Miley Cyrus. Would that have attracted outside investors? Maybe then these inner city theaters would have been saved—-and would not be dozens of vacant lots remembered by historians, researchers, and 600,000 city of St. Louis residents who fled to distant suburbs 60-70 years ago.
The black population has no theaters North of Delmar in the city limits-the ghetto zone.
Was the segregated London half a block from the Star Theater?
I pass these comments along.
“The London Theater was over that way. They didn’t have a toilet……—so we called it the Funky London.”
“Now on Jefferson, about half a block down, was the Star Theater. That was an upright, clean theater. They had a toilet. And most of the people who wanted to be dignified would go there. It cost about 15 cents.
But they had cowboys at the Funky London, seven days a week. I’d look both ways to see if anybody I knew was lookin’, then rush in. It cost a nickel.”
“This Irish restaurant, Maggie O’Brien’s, was The Strand Theater. And Blue Moon Restaurant was at
22 ½ S. Beaumont. It was a tavern, so I never went in there.
I couldn’t afford the Deluxe Restaurant, either—that was comparable to the finest restaurant today. Even the black movie stars were segregated back then, and when they came to St. Louis, that’s the only restaurant(segregated) they ate at. Joe Louis, Cab Calloway, Count Basie…”
Mill Creek Valley Born in 1934, John Curtis grew up in Mill Creek Valley, the historically black neighborhood that had produced Josephine Baker 28 years earlier. By 1959, the entire neighborhood had been wiped out, its shops, theaters, and nightclubs replaced with bland businesses.
I lived in Mill Creek Valley all my young life. My grandfather, A.W. Curtis, had a big church, The Church of God in Christ, and a grocery store, Curtis Confectionery, at 2714 Clark. It was for black people—90 percent of the black people went to black stores.”
Mill Creek Valley was blighted in early ’50s. Most people went north, where I stay. — As told to J.C.” From Vanished Neighborhoods…..from STLM Nov 2010 Jeannette Cooper
Being black,DOS(Descendent of Slavery) racial segregated, financially segregated, kept to 1/50 of financial assets back then, (1/20 to 1/30 now in 2013), far less financial income, limited where you work, live, buy, type of education, voting, what you eat and who you could marry(no interracial marriage) or marrying into the vast majority of familes with ownership resources really defines how “dignified” your life is in comparison to the average movie go-er.
Politically and legally they had no power to save their community or in some cases theaters forced to close. It all even impacted if————all theaters had a bathroom. It takes money to do most things, even go to the movies. Notice the theater with a bathroom cost triple the price. How did these prices compare with the general society in 1940’s?
Like many things in these black communities, the general society———decided to force the closing of many theatres. Neighborhoods that use to be Irish and Italian had become black. Spreading out of Laclede’s Landing, to Chestnut Valley to Mill Creek and to The Ville and then farther north——-similar to how Native Americans were pushed west.
Seen by many as a consequence of WWII civil rights gains in war factories for blacks, black population increase to fill these factories, being present after the war and a building civil rights movement—————-had a back lash—-to clear them out.
A Caucasian theatre for 30 years, turned to defacto segregated theatre—few caucasian people would go there in 1943 and survived 18 years—-til the general society killed it.
It is very close to Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd.
Vast areas of the City of St. Louis are desolate, ghost town, “redeveloped” areas, that carved away the black population—-in an attempt to build a buffer zone——-separation space—-segregation space——black to white——East to West and to preserve downtown St. Louis and its 4 million annual visitors.
Theatres and many business' were shuttered.
The local black theatre going population was not allowed to preserve them—due to emminent domain.
What happend to the Pendleton theater, maybe 4264 Finney or 4298 finney?
Theatres:
Douglas, Roosevelt, Critereon, Comet,
Star, Laclede
Bonanza, Auburt, Queens,
Amytis
Art Theatre/Screening room North Comptan and Olive-seemed to endure because it was 4 blocks south of the starting psuedo Color Line—-Washington Street across the whole length east to West of the City and it was 7 blocks south the the Delmar Color line. It was north of and close to the Stowe—segregated St. Louis black teachers school. Plus it was near St. Louis University
The top were segregated theatres—began that way. Were there only six or many more?
Segregated black theatre in Laclede’s Landing where blacks owned businesses down on the Levee—-after the great fire that gutted the riverfront and part of downtown?
Any additions to:
Chestnut valley?
Mill Creek valley?
How many became theatres de-facto segregated due to who came to the theatre later via closing down of these neighborhood reservation ghettoes and forced push of—-blacks elsewhere. Meaning few to no Caucasian people would come to that neighvorhood or come to that theatre or sit with descendents of slavery. When these theatres did not close on their own city hall had——a “redevelopment” plan to shut them down.
Roosevelt, Criterion and other theaters may be in this group.
What was the tipping point? 10%, 15% or 20%—-for all the other theatre’s whose customer base shifted?
These are entire areas, almost half the City of St. Louis where——the Caucasian population fled and extreme majority has not lived in, invested in, spent much time or stayed til dark and slept overnight in, for 50 to 60 years.
It is easy to make mistakes when people may not have been to that theatre or lived in that areas for——half a century.
Vacant lots and crumbling theatres have a story to tell.
Roosevelt
We saw the building but it was already closed(1965) by the time I saw it 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s…No theatre.
Baden always felt like it’s own little town. Other buildings around it continued for awhile. Arlens department store was there into the later 1970’s—I went to the closing sale. School uniforms and other little stores were there for a while. A few re-sale shops and antique stores were there for decades. Bars were still there. Sterling Grocery store was there for a time. The Hostess bakery outlet was well known on Broadway. The neighborhood was 92%-95% African-American for many decades. Plus people who lived in Walnut Park and Mark Twain neighborhoods made the journey through Calvery and Bella Fountaine cemetaries to reach Baden.
Almost all businesses on the far remote edges of North St. Louis pulled some old sustaining business from the more well-to-do prior residents who fled to the county. This sustained them, briefly. Ultimately, centers for the purchase of goods or entertainment pressed farther out. Income is very low and although there may have been over 100,000 at times in that zone, no theatres existed in that half of the city limits.
Baden is not far from the North Twin drive-in. North Twin was the ultimate surviver in this area staying open till 2001 that was in Jennings, North St. Louis County. I loved it. It is probably the closest shared experience of theatre to children who lived in a 95%-99% African-American ethnic North St. Louis City and counties and the prior Caucasian residents of North St. Louis who left North St. Louis closing down the theatres in 1950’s to 1960’s. Why? It is one of the few that stayed open that was in range.
Typically if you lived in North St. Louis City even as a child in the last half century you do not remember a theatre that closed 48 years ago. I do remember the building. Baden was always nice.
Great place. The drive up to it seemed narrow and long. I remember almost an entirely African-American audience from 1972-1974.Before that it is vague. I remember the films with black stars—I do not remember what we saw—-Shaft, Superfly, Grier, Buck and the Preacher, …
This area was completely surrounded by a majority African-American community and you could access it from black areas with out passing through non-black areas via Highway 70 to Goodfellow, drive down Natural Bridge from Union or Kingshighway, drive from Kienlen…safe physical access mattered.
It was called “The Bird.”
Being from the city, Thunderbird was a drink, like Rosie O'Grady, Freight Train,or Brass Monkey.
Next door: I liked the Goody Goody Restaurant. I liked Sam the Watermelon man There was a liquor store across the street. I love Skateking in 1970’s 1980’s and 1990’s—-real DJ’s, real mixes, real dancing with couples, Soul Train line on skates, flips and jumps, slow songs, fast songs a real vibrant sycopated dance floor. Fabulous urban line dancing on skates—you name it. Christian nite, old school for elders night and so on. Groups use to travel from Skateking to other rinks around the country—New York, Atlanta, Detroit—-and people use to ask—elsewhere —about Skateking. Tom Casevelli Ford was there on Goodfellow. Old reserve Army Barracks and Small Ammunition plant.
After thunderbird closed,
North Twin was the only drive-in left within range.
Union and Thekla or Union and Harney Maybe 1970-1971—two older ladies had a place where they gave piano lessons and a shoe repair man was next door and a pool hall. This was up closer to the Play Mor Theatre site.
We never knew Union area or Claxton had a theatre.
This building is being used by a commercial HVAC company for the last 50 years with a van fleet that might be using up the space.
I grew up there in Mark Twain and Walnut Park and most people who lived there are completely on purpose to some extent kept in the dark on what few businesses use some of these old buildings. The people live elsewhere and drive in and out via the rear like armoured trucks—to repair HVAC. It is close to getting on and off HIghway 70. Mostly they are used as old warehouses or storage. Also if someone has a fleet of diesal trucks or vans that idle allot and put out allot of pollution —also asthma inducing.
They do not solicit business from the neighborhood directly. I knew of no one in the neighborhood who worked there. Your not supposed to know what they do. The building is supposed to draw as little attention as possible. I do not remember seeing someone enter the front door—-ever. Different rules in a different environment.
With few to no business'—-I watched and knew in about 1975 what it was.
I knew it was something, but never knew it was once a theatre—— blocks from where I lived. There might have been some companion business' but we never knew what they were.
There was an old Velvet Freeze on West Florissant, next to the old Public library like in a two family building, that maybe closed 1978-79, not much left on Union but old closed bars or diner, little candy store maybe, and dry cleaners and small store/licquor store at Kingshighway and West Florissant. The dairy queen like place near Northwest High School, Riverview, I went to in 1980’s was still there. Lombardo’s on Riverview and West Florissant Corner. Not much for long 16-20 blocks by 5-10 blocks area and almost all these were on the outside circumfirance of the area.
If you wanted a theatre or just about anything else, you were out of luck.
The Bremen Follow the money, financial resources of the people in the neighborhood and you can predict what will happen to the theatre and the building. Over half the people are living below the poverty level and most barely above it in 2013. Fifty years has passed. They are in survival mode with no resources to rehab the old Bremen theatre. They are structurally, institutionally, extended family-friends-and personally—-cutoff from the resources of the general society.
So, the Bremen could not be rehabbed without money. Many owners of the old theatres after they moved away opened them only on weekends in the 1950’s or 1960’s. Some exquisite unique German buildings existed a block or two down Bremen Street but no one could ever get the money to rehab them.
If major complete rehab and maintenance investments are not done on buildings since WWII and the late 1940’s they decay. If a building built in 1910 is still standing 100 years later and has had little major financial investment in 50 to 60 years—— someone here and there did something to try to preserve the building. I remember when the building was used as a church.
Leave a typical building out in the suburbs for 70 to 100 years with little or no maintenance for 50 years plus. It will have caved in or bowed out long before these St. Louis Red, double or triple brick structures. Most of St. Louis' great architecture is in the City of St. Louis, but those with financial resources to preserve these areas abandoned them.
The miracles are the hundreds of thousands of people who lived in these “zones” and preserved the buildings to this degree. The time warp of disparate financial assets, income, opportunity, promotions, infant mortality, healthcare, life expectancy, and expectations ——the vast difference versus the rest of the society————made it a “dangerous place.”
It was not a dangerous place for people who lived there everyday. There was a different level of knowledge required. This is a normal part of American life for these areas to be created. Childhood did end very early—-and theatre going was not part of it for many children.Clearly, it impacts how they see the world as young adultsVacant empty buildings show no films. The Bremen theatre found itself enveloped into one of these areas.
What ever is going on with the people in the neighborhood when people lose their jobs or cannot obtain jobs, income, assets it impacts all the business there and the buildings—even the old Bremen.
The old Bremen building survived a long time.
Why the Bremen theatre building was still there?
1) Police station was up the street for years,til late 1980’s maybe 1990, later used to store parking meters. When the police retreated to a super substation on North Jefferson, reduced costs and shut down all the neighborhood police stations the police were more distan, so more buildings and people were vulnerable. A population with low property values, no one with money moving in or investing, few job opportunities, leaves little money for schools and city services—like police, or fire protection—that are funded on property taxes. Unwanted property brings in few taxes. Little money available for the old Bremen.
2) The parks acted as a segregated barrier Windsor Park 3 blocks up farther north vs Hyde Park as many streets and other areas. Various dividing lines, oasis' existed across the camp landscape during many decades.
3) A few people with access to education, union jobs, family contacts, who could cross the color line(Caucasian) to job access, were sprinkled in on one or two streets up against Highway 70, south from East Grand College Bissell Hill, back down Blair Ave to Hyde Park where the Bremen Theatre buildinis located—on the street called Bremen.
Resources only appear if it comes from Downtown to the south or from far outside: Areas near the old Bremen stuggled to hang on—but everyone fled. Old North St. Louis with Crown Candy and White Castle Hamburgers is a little farther south across from Little Sisters of the Poor. An old diner sandwich shop was down there maybe north of Parnell and North Market colored white and blue tile—but a car ran into it and wipped it out in 1980’s. The 14 Street Pedestrian mall of a few old stores were almost vacant for decades.-except for Crown Candy—which I like very much. Great people, great ice cream, great rueben sandwiches-the German way, chocolate from molds, decor———-again like most of North St. Louis a place where 99.999999% of the outside population of 2.5 million would never venture.
This was home for hundreds of thousands of American adults and children-at the bottom economically so outside of the old Bremen theatre being a church on Sundays they did not have the money to do more for the old building and no one else came to help restore it. Long term economic deprivation has very negative impacts on buildings like the Bremen and human beings. The old Bremen theatre might collapse on someone or drop a brick on their head or a deprivated human transfixed near the old Bremen might throw a brick.
4)Bremen street was was one of the rare streets in North St. Louis to be not only temporarily blocked off, but money was paid to permanently block off the street— as the traffic plan changed in the area to protect this street and Hyde Park. Security corridors were created with one way in and out of areas if security check points or gates or police could be stationed there.With few financial resources, police had to be highly leaveraged. Near there—-the Army National Guard Summer 2012 did training exercises with armored personnel vehicles—practicing in the camp zone.
5)The City Alderman of the area, 1 of 28 for the city of St. Louis, called councilmen or women elsewhere lives on this block with the the old Bremen theatre
6)The Alderman who lives on Bremen Street with the Bremen theatre——his son was Mayor of the City of St. Louis, 1993-1997.
This is why the building is still there.
The private investment never materialized for the old Bremen theatre.
Bremen Street: this was an old German neighborhood. The last old German fellow who was born there, read the old German newspapers there, moved out in his late 90’s, maybe in 1989-91. This was also and old Polish neighborhood. Piekutowski European Sausage may still be on N. Florissant around the corner from the old Bremen theatre—excellent. The Bishop of Krakow visited there in 1960’s –long before he became Pope of Vatican City. He might have come back to visit in 1990’s when he ws in St.Louis.
All the above factors, preserved for a time: Hyde Park Pizza-(1970-1980-1990’s)remember the 1950’s car out front, Hyde Park Donut, upholstery shop?, the Hardware store on the opposite corner from the old Bremen theatre. These closed or changed hands in 1990’s or 2000’s. A family from outside Red Bud, IL I think turned the pizzaria into Cornerstone Cafe. Outside money is necessary for preservation.
This was the front line for building preservation the last 50 years.
The old Bremen Theatre was not far from what looked like the 4 times larger German Turner’s Gymnasium that was down the street. It was nice—both the old and new one. I do not know if movies were ever shown there, —sometimes?
The theatres were closed. Missionary churches in the camp zone were maybe the only people who lived there and worked there—-showed a little movie to children on a weekend in the summer some time. Lacking money, they still tried to keep the children’s hope and spirits up. Children and Churches—-could not repair the building. Children did try to clean up the area.
These children were invisible, forgotten and grew into successive generations of adults, without the financial assets or top notch property financed education to move up the ladder. They’re deficient educations could not fund superior rebuilding funds and investment income.
The city never had the money to repair the old Bremen theatre. At best people could move to another area at the same low income level. Without a huge jump in assets, and money and jobs—no change. It was more like a third world, perpetual great depression-just for them. A surrounded, ghetto war torn situation—but in the USA not Warsaw 1945. This is a norm in the USA. Not many theatres in Jewish areas made it in European German occupied WWII ghettoes.
Preservation was blocked. These US urban areas, the economic and educational hostilities never ended. Whitney Young’s Urban Marshal plan—that might have preserved these historical neighborhoods and theatres as non-profit treasures did not happen. The Hi-Point single theatre on Skinker south of WAshing ton Univerity—-like another world or reality than North St. Louis—has been saved and in operation for decades. Where people have money options exist.
Lacking major opportunities like the small ammunition war factory that employed 35,000 WWII on Goodfellow/Bircher or thousands employed at North St. Louis GM plant, Emerson Electric, Carter Carburetor and others all closed or moved—preservation money is missing.
The economic investment—that would have included the old Bremen theatre, ( rebuilding)— has not taken place in 40, 50 or 60 years and counting.But people who live there were hopeful and did the best they could with what little they had to preserve the building as long as they could. Multiple groups for decades in the past Northside Ministries,many churches—Holy Trinity, Lutheran, 61 Initiative—preserved what they could.
I never saw it open. I saw it as a church. I knew it had been a theatre because of the big space outside, indentation in the brick for posters or windows and I remembered it having a barrel vault roof from the outside(viewed from the side)—I think. The bricks would fall off sometimes onto the sidewalk.
It was “what it was.” It was not comparably dangerous for people who lived there, and had to live there everyday. People who live under a mandated different reality—must have additional skill sets like military personnel. It was as safe as it could be under the disparate economic circumstances imposed in varying levels the last 4 centuries. The theatres can be restored but the people who live there or someone from the outside has to fund it. The majority of people there, 97% behind in assets, 7% movement every 50 years means, maybe 18 sets of 50 years for closure at this rate. So outside funding is the best option.
The Palm was not demolished for a parking lot. The old GM plant is quite a distance away, blocks to highway 70, then blocks down to Natural Bridge.
The “Roller Rink” and “Pla-Mor” letters were long gone—scavenged along with the Budweiser sign sometime after the above picture was taken. With only skeletans and ruins of things left as children and teenagers we felt like we were in the movie “Logan’s Run” and tried to figure out what was once there. There was such a big sidewalk out fron you knew something had been there once.
The ancient black paint on the vertical sign under where the letters were attached was extremely faded tp a dark dirty black gray and the other paint was very worn—-the contrast between the two colors of old black paint showed the outline of “PLAY MOR.”
I thought it was an old bar like the place next door. There was a large amount of jagged glass everywhere and heavy like barbed wire in the windows on each side of the door where the white signs are located in the pictures. I reached my hand in to touch the barb wire—the glass was caved in and it was boarded up from behind. I touched what was left of it at that time.
I lived very close to it and never knew it was a theatre, roller rink and bowling alley. I never met anyone who was there when it was a theatre, roller rink and bowling alley because they left the area. When I walked down the rear alley you could see that the building had collapsed, been scavenged, walls removed, or the roof caved in or it had caught on fire—so it would have been on the demolish list. The old Palm Theatre might have been sitting there for decades unused since it was closed.
Another Londoff vacant bowling alley existed, maybe owned by the same people, east of Fairgrounds park down Natural Bridge, going toward Parnell(maybe part of Old North St. Louis) towards downtown. I do not know if it previously was a theatre. I never saw it open, we just saw again the outline of words on old signs. Maybe it was the same family of Londoff Chevrolet fame.
The blocks there seemed like a beautiful oasis near the old cinema. Children walking down Harney to Walbridge and Nativity of Our Lord/ St. Adalberts school late 1960’s through 1970’s always noticed the well kept vacant large lot. .
The houses around the old Robin Cinema were all small, and very pretty- like out of a story book myth. It did not look like a vacant lot—because it had been re-planted and kept up. I first thought a stately old French 17th century home might have been there. Next I thought an old fountain, or English glassed in “Jewel Box” type botanical garden like in Forest Park was there. It looked like an elegant garden had stood there. I use to see one of the neighbors cutting the lawn where the Robin Theatre once stood.
I knew something significant had been there but never knew what it was at that time. It seemed like something important had been there and people’s houses where like beautiful gingerbread houses as if saluting and point towards this area. There was no garbage, dumped tires, abandoned cars, ditchs and rubble in this lot.
Many children had to dis-embark on this march down Harney Street past the old Robin lot, it was a long journey alone for children-so we gathered in units to go. The general 90% of areas approaching the old Robin Theatre, doorway to doorway, house to house, past alley ways and streets, block to block were dilapidated and deterioriated and the Walnut Park camp was full of surprizes. You knew you would be safe briefly between two no man’s lands if you made it there to where the old Robin Theatre area, even if you had to run. We never knew why or what had been there.
This area/place where the Robin theatre was located felt dimensionally different for a block or two, a safe railroad station or a safe house overground. As a child I walked that urban trail with other children and I was happy to make it back to base/home.
A measure of residual happy energy remained in the adults there. Decades of laghter and people coming and going left a brief feeling of safe harbor. The Robin Cinema although very small, survived during WWII but was closed since 1947 made an impact on the neighbors who seemed to treat it as hallowed ground—keeping the area around its buriel and the houses very nice.
Maybe this is where they saw WWII newsreels or met their husband or wife, children saw they’re first movies or had great family memories.
Central Corridor:
Downtown City of St. Louis has been without a movie theater for 10 years. 10 years since Union Station 10 Cinema closed in 2003 So it is great there is a 3 screen option—MX. Has anyone been to the MX?
Next closest theatre: Forest Park, Hospital complex to St. Louis University, Harris Stowe College. Chase Park Plaze theatre—North Kingshighway Since 2005 the Moolah Temple on Lindell
Beaumont played a role for the site of the movie “A City Decides” by Charles Guggenheim(1956) that was nominated for an Academy award. It was nice that 3 of the Little Rock Nine went there to finish high school after Little Rock Central High School was intentionally closed to thwart they’re attendance.
Some theaters played a role but since many theaters in their early years when they opened were segregated and later many closed in 1950’s and early 1960’s period of the Civil Rights movement——-they played less of a role in the population of that half of the city the last 40 years. Most of them were vacant buildings or demolished vacant lots.
I’m not blaming movies. Humans are always responsible for criminal actions even if they are under economic deprivation pressures not felt by the wider society. Creating economic refugees does not help problem. Bootless, strap-less and the resource-less found very few paths to success via they’re hard work—out into industry from there. Roads out for the 90% were few and they were stranded. Cinema owners with all their ability also could not figure how to make it work with all their business experience. No new cinemas or anything else have been built in that half of the city and the only other new movie theaters I remember were in the old train yards behind Union Station downtown or at the old Chase Park Plaza.
Sorry, I was not trying to be political. If you grew up there, the disparity of resources inside the zone vs outside the zone, the harshness, (what fundamentally caused the Cinemas to close)—-we saw as factual, versus political. People can differ on why all the cinemas just shut down.
But, I will in the future limit any future posts to a few lines of information on the visual facts of the old remains if any on the buildings—-versus forensic whys or the anthropology of what happened.
I was just responding to other people’s comments on the “demographics” and the neighborhood “changing” and it being a “God-forsaken ghetto.” I just thought some background on the underlying economic and social factors of why all the Cinemas were closings or being demolished would be helpful. Things did not happen at that time for no reason. It is not like today—where theaters are deciding to go digital or have competition form Netflix, cable, satillite, broadcaste TV, and internet streamed in movies.
As you said Chuck, “shifts in population and white flight to the suburbs.” Your not taking a political stand, you are just stating that facts. There seemed to not be any comments from those who lived there 24 hours a day and went to school there in decades. This was our daily environmentwith all its complexity.
For those who lived there, we saw here and there vacant old cinema buildings and vacant lots for most of the last 50 years. This environment is an accepted norm of American society. The hundreds of thousands of people who as children who grew up there, and were raised there have very different experiences than you do.
We would also have liked to have been able to visit when the neighborhood cinemas were open. If they are ever revitalized—maybe public viewing of movies, together with others, will be unique and popular again.
I am happy you have so many found memories of these cinemas in they’re heyday that have enriched your life.
Thank you for your knowledge and input Chuck. Norside—gone in 1970’s. Lindell, gone in 1961 Aubert on Martin Luther King Blvd is family dollar store, Many smaller old buildings were used as churches. Big theaters they were too expensive to heat and maintain for another use.
I grew up in Walnut Park in North St. Louis City and lived there until I was 21. I graduated from grade school and high school there. I continued to live continuously in two other different areas of North St. Louis the next 11 years. I lived also about 7 blocks from Beaumont.
Cinemas must have income. Shifts in assets and income close theaters. The economic system for most who moved in there remained the same. They were constantly spatially, economically, educationally marginalized wherever they went. There was not a new start, really. The 1970’s St. Louis Rand consulting report called these “depletion zones.” City services and many other things were diminished there. The vast majority of block grant money was sent to the central corridor south of Delmar. Businesses including cinemas were cut off.
Children are born into families and rely on parents and grand parents ability to provide—-or are impacted by the deprivations of the existing system. Children enter a pre-existing system as they’re parents did. Cumulative, compounded, continuing, hundreds of layers of exponentially increasing historical pressures on those families was not really a new start.
Red lining and the most basic of comparably resources and opportunities—-were missing. Assets, incomes and opportunity needed to provide for families and children, when missing, do not allow you to properly or competitively maintain these families, raise children, maintain neighborhoods, businesses===or cinemas.
Areas and people in a struggle, in a war of sorts, all over the world have battle areas that look the same. Economic deprivation, 3%-5% assets, the men are missing-dead—prisoners-PTSD-coping mechanism—alcohol-legal/illegal drugs, single female headed households, women and children everywhere, teenagers clump together for protection and run wild, poverty, high dropout rate, rubble, bombed out looking buildings, and poor infrastructure and schools. This zone has existed for 4-5 decades near the old Rio and many of the theaters you mentioned. The “flight” of the assets, inheritances, incomes, opportunities, contacts, business owners, investors——those with expendable income—-beyond poverty level——left. This caved in the cinemas. It caved in everything else also.
Why so many Cinema closings or demolished in urban areas?
Even the (Frederick) Douglas Theater on Vandeventer in the Ville closed in the early 1960’s—a segregated theater.
People do not have money for cinema pleasure when they are paid considerable less than average. If they exist on 3-5% of the financial assets poor to rich, quadruple unemployment,less money for education, fewer promotions, less ownership, no property appreciation, disparate impact in infant mortality and courts, health and so on—-entertainment takes a back seat.
Some families get ahead traditionally in America via who you know, connections, inheritance all via marriage—but this was completely outlawed for blacks until about 1968—it was not legal to marry someone in the general society.
45 years later,2013, very few Caucasian men today in US even in 2013 marry African American women although her family might have been solders fighting alongside of George Washington in a pivotal battle of the revolutionary war. Instead, it is 30 times as likely for a Caucasian man to marry a foreign born Asian woman from a communist country who may have an accent when they speak English than marry an African-American woman whose family has been defending the USA for centuries and helped build it for 400 years. Although African-Americans are one of the highest groups putting themselves at risk in the military—maybe due to a lack of opportunity, they are still not welcome in many families. People lament the old movie theater but do not lament the lack of diversity in they’re families.
Resources are not passing via marriage. With artificially limited money and the general population not moving into North St. Louis, the typical wealth accumulation method via property appreciation –is cut off from blacks in North St. Louis. Normal upward movement is blocked for 85%. The ghetto is an artificial creation, by the wider society that has caused depredation and raised a high economic invisible wall-force field.
Cinema movie houses like thousands of things were cut off. The deprivation is so high you could see families out on Sunday—dismantling buildings, taking the bricks to sell. A cinematic view looking like something out of the 1860’s, women, children, mom and dad in dusty old clothes.At night, the preditors, vampires and scavengers came out —because the wider society had locked them all inside—with 3%-5% of what they had to live on. So, yes this compression—-created violence.
African –Americans per the Urban League’s 50 year study 2013-1963 “I have a Dream Speech” report find that after 50 years and the entire civil rights movement—-blacks like those pushed into North St. Louis only had an increase in income in 50 years of 7%. What blacks were making as maids and porters in 1963, as a group in income they have advanced 7% from their old position—not much in 50 years. Remember blacks came out of the South in large numbers to work at the defense plants during WWII when the US was afraid of losing when pressed between Japan and Germany. Many of the plants had been converted but were shut down into the 1960’s and very early 1970’s. No jobs = no money.
Civil Rights leaders were gunned down, and JFK and the attorney general hopeful democratic candidate were killed. Martin Luther King was killed. Large numbers of black boys with no money for college or influence were sent to Vietnam. Military jeeps came to find you. They did not come back home after Vietnam to better treatment. Vietnam ate up all the national money. Simultaneously, manufacturing was declining and continued to decline. OPEC oil embargo in early 1970’s continued an ongoing-perpetual DEPRESSION that had existed in these communities, caused from deprivation.
While others had access, contacts, resources, money—-and still do, they lost hope. Like prisoners of war, who have been fenced off, thrown in solitary, tortured, and starved in so many ways—-all you have to do is drop a few pieces of bread in they’re midst. They have been setup to cannibalize and fight each other for the minuscule crumbs. Frankensteined and zombied a few will try to save themselves at the expense of others. They learned this from the wider society—but in an environment of few resources—this is the result.
Hopeless at being saved in they’re lifetime, they turn on each other—they no longer believe their leadership—or escape committee that has failed to release them from this ordeal. The urban Marshal plan like what was given to Germany and Japan was never given to black Americans in the USA. Like in 1940’s when American black GI’s had to go to the kitchen door to get food—German Prisoners of WAr got to eat up front. Old habits die hard.
In fact, most of the few leaders and educated were the only ones allowed to get out—leaving them. The leaders and those behind are both lacking the resources to help. The young look to the model of the Italian gangs, Jewish Gangs, Polish gangs, Irish gangs and German gangs—who made it out, and tried to copy some of these methods of surviving or freeing themselves. Could the general society survive under these conditions or worse for 400 years? They have people surrounding them who they are supposed to take the trash out for with immense resources comparably daily showing them what they do not have and will never have. A few gave up hope and history has shown they had good reason to give up hope. They took on the self focused, I am going to save myself at the expense of everyone else belief disease—-like in the general society.
They were just young urban capitalists in a society created War Zone, surrounded—who saw that forgiveness and kindness and non-violence—did not appear to work. They saw many A students getlittle or nothing. If they cannot get out they want to live a brief better life, get a few drops of water in Hades and die young and fast in the prison camp. The outside pressure ensures that they are not afraid of dying—they are afraid of living—seeing what the compression does to your loved ones over decades. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is not new.
Living under, other different rules—then the general society they responded differently—being at war with everything. They think everyone betrayed them.
They did not break into schools and commit mass murders—they seemed to be in an economic battle. They did cause allot of collateral damage—when they targeted adversaries. Living cinema.
People trying to survive in manmade depredated war zones——-have film noir cinema all around them. They are the movie. Ask those who went to Afghanistan or Iraq, except they had a green zone, pulled in and out of safe zones——and get to leave that zone or ghetto. They were funded with training, resources, college, and get to leave. These American black people, most of them do not get to leave, they do not have the resources —they are born into it, refugees, prisoners—in America. It took 50 years for some to crawl out into North County with the few resources that they had available. Some try to get out via the military—and come home in a body bag.
Life is a very different American cinema experience for them—real Noir. It was not God forsaken, it was an ordered result of Americans forsaking and creating a deprivation war zone for them—-they’re parents—they’re grandparents———and they’re children. It is the ultimate living American cinema.Living nostalgia.
Without the Rio and others you had to have the money to go all the way downtown. Everyone did not have money for cars. External segregated financial pressures just like in Warsaw during WWII, create ghettoes, and these just bring down movie houses.
The response to desegregation is blamed for closing many movie houses. We were not welcome and safe as minorities in most places. But at least we did not have to sit in the balcony.
Booker T Washington Theater never appears in listings. Hundreds of thousands of people continued to live in North St. Louis. A traditional minority neighborhood Mill Creek received the Civil Rights push back response. It was taken by force of emminent domain to create the site of the Gateway Arch, highway 40, St. Louis Univ got some area, and Grand Towers, and a Laclede town—-and 40 black churches and all their businesses, stability, and homes were raised to the ground. A different method than what happened in Tulsa, OK in 1920’s but the same result-devastation of the community. Compensation was little or nothing as everything was torn down starting in maybe before 1959. NAACP called it a “removal project.” So this is why “those people” were pushed to live there.
Josephine Baker lived in that neighborhood. Scott Joplin’s house was farther inland on2600 block of Delmar a streetcar ride from the Ragtime Turpin’s Rosebud Café. Turpin’s father Tom –honest John and brother Charles-owned the segregated Booker T Washington Theater opened in 1912 at 23rd St and Washington I think. Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters and many others performed there. Red Fox’s Sanford and Son fame was on Vandventer near the White Castle and Manchester. A large numbers of black men were used for years to haul cotton and other goods on and off paddle wheelers and steam ships down by the Mississippi river so an old black neighborhood was there. This area grew with the war factories in WWII, being 95% black. Mark Twain even comments about hearing the work songs on the levy; syncopated timing paralleling Negro spirituals, all the unique music precursors to blues, Jazz, soul, Rock N Roll, pop, modern Country music and rap-that speaks of not being very happy. A great deal of American cinema was informed by these urban events and people. Hard work, Christian values, forgiveness, patience over hundreds of years by the late 1960’s and 1970’s did not seem to change much in economic conditions in comparison to the general societies resources. The deaths of many non-violent leader proved change—was not coming for several hundred years. So starting in the 80’s-rap tells a negative story.
From the movies—they copy James Cagney and many movies of “gangs.” People who eventually made it out of the poverty from other out of favor ethnic groups who were inurban areas.Cinema influenced them a great deal.
Never used as a parking lot. It was next to Lombardo’s I went there in 1981. I lived in Walnut Park. I believe around 1976-1977 I saw the back door opened of the old RIO and I wandered in as a grade school boy seeking a little adventure. It was being used to store vending machines or vending machine parts. It was an old storage room, I did not see the rest of it.
People could go past the Katz drug store and Steak and Shake on Riverview, and past the old Howard Johnson’s near the Top of Tower to the Drive Inn during the summer. There was not enough money, assets, jobs, business ownership, promotions—income for these new frefugee families from mill Creek and elsewhere to support anything. Economic warfare has negative impacts.
You had to bridge the vast divide with money you did not have to go all the way up to River Roads in North County up West Florissant to see a movie or The Fox on the other side of town. You were not welcome at many places that might have been closer. There were once maybe 9 theaters around the North Grand area, near the Veterans hospital. Before The Fox was re-habbed it had cheap shows. People from the suburbs came to go to the Symphony across the street at night (before it was a movie palace) but most people from north of Delmar and Page, North St. Louis could not afford it.
The Fox theaterwas cheap on Saturday Matinee. Just like in North St. Louis it was old and falling apart. I think I saw “Snoopy Goes Home” or something there maybe around 1976-1977. It might have been $1 or $2 then.