- I'm Jim Kirchherr, and all
this summer "Living St. Louis" is looking back reviving
our "Decades" series produced at the end
of the 20th century. This time we're
going back 100 years. How will our 2020s
compare to St. Louis in the Roaring Twenties? Tonight on Decades: One of
this century's most colorful and storied 10 years: the 1920s. In St. Louis, it is
a time of heroes, whose stories are
broadcast far and wide and a time when the
local leaders decide that the modern city needs
to be building much more than a positive image. (gentle music) - [Narrator] "Decades"
was a co-production of the Missouri History Museum and the Nine Network
of Public Media. - It's convenient to start
the discussion of a decade with an image that
evokes that decade. But for the 1920s, which one? The flapper, the bootlegger, the stock trader, the
barnstormer, the movie star? Well, we decided to start
the 1920s St. Louis story with the young pilot who
became the most famous and admired man in the world and who took St. Louis
along for the ride. (faint airplane
engine puttering) It is hard for those who
weren't alive in 1927 to appreciate the Charles
Lindbergh phenomenon, to understand the
international acclaim and adoration given
to one individual who had nothing to do with
politics, had invented nothing, and done no great
humanitarian service. To understand just why
what Charles Lindbergh did was so much more than flying
solo from New York to Paris. - [Karen] I don't think there
ever was before or after an international hero
for a several-year period on the same status
as Charles Lindbergh. (people cheering) - [Jim] Everyone was clamoring
for a chance to honor him, to share in the glory, Paris, Brussels, London,
Washington, New York, but St. Louis had been
there from the start. And Lindbergh's flight, a risky,
even foolhardy undertaking, turned out to be the city's
greatest public relations event since the World's Fair, and it terms of return
on the investment, the greatest of all time. - St. Louis had been
kind of suffering from the fact that
they were no longer the fourth city of
the United States, and they were looking
for new claims to fame. And this was something that
put them on the map again. They were able to
capitalize on the flight in terms of publicity. Everywhere Lindbergh
went in the 48-state tour directly after the successful
transatlantic flight, he was arriving in the
Spirit of St. Louis and it was promoting
the city and the region. - [Jim] That was part of the
deal right from the beginning. St. Louis money would
finance this attempt to fly across the Atlantic
and win the Orteig Prize, and Lindbergh would
promote the city. The Chamber of Commerce
president Harold Bixby was an amateur pilot, and he
helped put the deal together. The city already had
a promotional campaign with the slogan "The
Spirit of St. Louis," and Bixby got Lindbergh
to paint the slogan on the engine
cowling of his plane. In hindsight, it
was a great move, but at the time there were those who thought the city was
putting its name on something that looked almost
certain to fail. And Lindbergh, in fact, got off to a very
bumpy, uncertain start, but then so did the whole
decade that he helped to define. (Roaring Twenties music) The 20s didn't
start out roaring. When the doughboys
came home from the war, they got their parades but not necessarily
their old jobs back. Just about the time
industry and agriculture had fully mobilized for a long
military conflict in Europe, it was all over. The soldiers came back to a
country in an economic slump, trying to re-adjust
to peacetime, economically,
politically and socially. Americans had followed President
Wilson into the world war, but many were not
willing to follow him into the world peace. The country debated and
then rejected membership in Wilson's League of Nations. The government was rounding
up socialists, communists, labor leaders and radicals. There were jailings
and deportations. Immigration was
cut to a trickle. It was all part of the
effort to Americanize and to purify the country. An important part of
that was Prohibition, even though in
cities like St. Louis it was making the
economic slump even worse. It hit particularly hard in
the Soulard neighborhood, where Mary Margaret
Ellis was growing up. - That put everybody
out of work, you know, because Busch's Brewery
was right down the street from where we lived. At nighttime you'd look down
there and it would be all dark, and when they were making beer
that place was just lit up like a Christmas tree. - [Jim] All of the breweries
did not completely shut down. Anheuser Busch had
both fought against and prepared for prohibition,
so that when it became law the brewery managed to
survive by making soft drinks, non-alcoholic beer,
yeast, and malt syrup. - Prohibition, it didn't
serve the purpose. People made home brew
and they did bootlegging. You could still go
to the corner saloon and get in the back door. - [Jim] Law enforcement officers were kept busy making
arrests for illegal sales and busting up some of the
larger bootlegging operations and dumping their
product down the sewers. But prohibition turned out to
be only a temporary setback for the local economy, which was soon recovering
and then booming. Two industries that
were really growing in St. Louis in the 20s were
the manufacture of automobiles and auto parts and
electrical goods. This was a time of new
products, new ways to make them and to advertise them to people who had more
money to buy them. - And this is really the basis of what a consumer
economy really is. And that's what you see
happening in St. Louis and in America in the 1920s. You see more consumer
goods being produced and more people being
able to buy them. The problem comes if
you get too overextended and you produce more
things than people can buy. And when you produce more
things than people can buy, then you run into things
called depressions. (loud thumping) - [Jim] It is the age of
the electric home appliance. The newspapers of the
day are filled with ads for vacuum cleaners,
refrigerators, and
washing machines as well as automobiles
and new houses. People may have been
making more money, but not that much more. It was in this decade that people were learning
to be modern consumers, the kind that were willing to
spend money they did not have. - People buy on the
installment plan. You look at store windows
and you see refrigerators and washing machines and
it's $10 down and $5 a month. And that's something that people hadn't been able to
do much in the past. So the credit economy, the consumer economy
makes it possible for people to have a
lot more consumer goods, but it also puts them in a
much more precarious position. And when you have a whole nation full of people that
are doing that, your economy is built on a
very shaky premise, really. - [Jim] The housing
market was changing too. Once, private homes like these were for the wealthy
who could buy land, hire an architect and builders. But that was changing from
the turn of the century on. By the 1920s, homes were
becoming more within the reach of the middle class as developers laid
out large new city and suburban subdivisions, and they were building
the houses themselves. It was getting to be like
the clothing business. You could go out and shop and buy a house
right off the rack. - The developer A.A.
Fischer made a claim that if you put all the
houses he had built in a row it would stretch from Forest
Park to the Mississippi River. And it was the scale that I think changed the
appearance of the community, because there were so many more similar
buildings being built. And partly this goes to the
wealth of the community. He wasn't building these
with his own money. He was borrowing
it from the banks. And the banks had enough money to lend it on this
kind of scale, and we see that scale enlarging
over the 20th century. (airplane engine puttering) - [Jim] In 1920, the
U.S. government announced that America had
reached a turning point. For the first time
in its history, half the population was
living in towns and cities. The census showed
something else. St. Louis, once the nation's
fourth largest city, had slipped to sixth place, overtaken by
Cleveland and Detroit. No one was shocked. Concerns about St. Louis'
slipping from prominence went back some years. The World's Fair was
one response to that. But in the 1920s,
government and civic leaders saw the need for
drastic measures, something more than any event
or image campaign could do. St. Louis needed a major
overhaul and modernization. Like an aging 19th
century house, it needed work from the
basement to the roof. - The city went way
out on a limb in 1923 and proposed
raising $88 million, give or take some change, for a whole variety
of public improvements all across the city, from downtown to the
furthest neighborhoods. It was completely
unprecedented in its scale, not just for St. Louis
but for any city. (gentle 20s music) - [Jim] Henry Kiel was
now in his third term as Mayor of St. Louis, one of the city's
most active boosters and talented campaigners. Now he was spearheading
the bond issue. In an effort to win broad
support, for example, $1 million was included
for a new hospital for the black community. The bond issue was backed
by government, business, and civic leaders, and St.
Louisans were convinced. They approved nearly every
proposal on the ballot by wide margins. - [Eric] And it resulted
in visible changes of a kind that we're
still familiar with today. There's considerable
repaving that's done. There's improvement of sewers. There's the widening
of major arterials like Gravois Road
or North Florissant that are really beginning to
carry a lot of motor traffic in and out of the city, in a sense the precursors
of our highway system. - [Jim] One of the
biggest projects took place along
the River des Peres where an army of laborers
would widen, redirect, and even put the
river underground. It was just one of the sewer,
water, and parks projects approved by the voters. Downtown, plans
were set in motion that would transform
the heart of the city. 12th and Market, already
the site of city hall, was firmly established
now by the bond issue as the new civic
center of the city. There would a be a
grand, ceremonial space and a brand new courthouse to replace the old domed
courthouse on Broadway. - Part of the controversy of the civil courts
building being put up was the worry about the fact that it would drag downtown
development too far west and would then blight
areas of part of downtown. So there's already a sense
of limited resources, not of a zero sum game yet, because St. Louis
truly is growing, but a sense that one
part of the city's gain may perhaps be
another part's loss, and that growth isn't unlimited. - [Jim] Work was started
tearing down buildings so that Market Street
could be widened to create the new Memorial Plaza all the way to Union Station. The Municipal Auditorium,
later named for Mayor Kiel, the Soldier's memorial,
Homer G. Phillips hospital. They wouldn't be
built until the 1930s, but all came from
the 1923 bond issue. And over the years,
it also provided money to replace all of the
city's old gas lamps with electric street lights. The passage of the bond
issue signaled to many that the turn of the century
dream was finally coming true. This was the "New St. Louis." (gentle music) (playful music) The year of the
bond issue, 1923, was the year young Charles
Lindbergh arrived in the city. He wasn't famous, St. Louis was. The city had a reputation
in the aviation world that went back to
the balloon races and exhibitions of
the 1904 World's Fair. When that was over, the city kept on drawing
aviators and crowds by staging races
and other events. In 1911, former
President Teddy Roosevelt came to watch one of them and ended up being
talked into the first presidential airplane ride
by one of the key figures in St. Louis aviation
history, Albert Bond Lambert. When America
entered World War I, the army needed airplanes and
St. Louis began to build them, the beginnings of
what would develop into one of the city's
major industries. When the war was over, there
were a lot of airplanes and a lot of men who
knew how to fly them. But other than mail
delivery and crop dusting, there wasn't much use
for these new machines. So aviators were by necessity independent owner-operators
known as barnstormers. They would fly from town
to town selling rides after they drew a crowd. - The way we did it is
somebody would wing walk. In other words, he would
walk between the wings, sit out on the outer struts
and then we'd fly over town. When we'd fly over town, why, people would all
look up and they'd say, "Where is that airplane going?" So they'd come out to the field and we'd try to talk
them into a ride. - [Jim] One popular daredevil
feat was the parachute jump. That was one of the tricks
of another young flyer whose nickname was
Slim, Charles Lindbergh, the son of a
Minnesota congressman. He learned to fly, got a plane, and started barnstorming
around the Midwest. - I think the fact that
Lindbergh became known as being from St.
Louis was an accident. He had come to St.
Louis in the early 20s. In 1923, St. Louis hosted
the international air races, and Lindbergh had an old
plane that he'd fixed up, and he flew in for
that to essentially see some of these major aviators
from around the world. - [Jim] Lindbergh stuck around, and he picked up
a job flying mail between St. Louis and Chicago. The city was drawing
all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. Aviation wasn't the
only area in the decade in which St. Louis was
building a national reputation. (Roaring 20s music) - St. Louis, it was really
a stopping off place for the musicians, and
just about every musician, if you didn't come by way
of St. Louis and stop, you would come by
way of Kansas City. And St. Louis, I think
was the most popular. And every renowned musician
that was born in the South at one time lived here
for a short period, if not a long time. - St. Louis exported
a lot of musicians, and St. Louis changed a lot
of musicians who came through, and so in a sense St. Louis
wasn't as much of a music city for going to a place and
seeing a lot music being played on a certain night, but what the influence
of St. Louis musicians all over the country
was tremendous. - [Jim] New music, wild dances, daring fashions and Prohibition. This was the Roaring Twenties. It wasn't just all the changes,
but the speed of change. Records, movies, and radio were spreading it all
across the country, so that what was happening
in New York, Chicago, or in the Hollywood of
Clara Bow, "The It Girl", could be recreated in
a Soulard dance hall. - You could make a dress
out of about a yard and a half of material. You just cut a straight piece
of goods and sewed it up, and then you put little
pleats all the way around it, and then of course they
were way up past your knees. If you had the money to buy one, you had a flask in your
purse with the booze in it. I don't think it was
naughty, it was just fun. - [Jim] But for
many men and women, the freedom of the dance
hall stood in stark contrast to their lives in the
modern factory and office. Things were getting bigger
and more mechanized. Craftsmen were being
replaced by assembly lines, inventors by research divisions. Workers were more likely
now to be a small part of a very complex
corporate organization. One of the most dramatic symbols of the changing world of
business and technology was rising in
downtown St. Louis, a structure that would
turn a full city block into a single address:
1010 Pine Street. The Southwestern Bell
Telephone company said its new headquarters would be a "Monument
to Communications," a "modern colossus built
upon human speech." It and the new courthouse would remain among the
city's tallest buildings through the 1960s. It was thoroughly
modern, outside and in. - Already at the time it was recognized as
a landmark building. But I like to think
that its landmark status when we look back on it
really has more to do with its general role in the
fabric of a growing downtown, that this is a new
way of organizing work and workers in small offices all connected to a
central management. - [Jim] There had been in St.
Louis two telephone companies, Bell and Kinloch, and they were
completely separate systems. You could only call
a Kinloch customer from a Kinloch phone, a Bell
customer from a Bell phone. In the 20s the systems
were united under Bell, and in 1926 telephones
with dials were introduced. That same year, the new
headquarters opened up. It wasn't in the
heart of downtown, but near the western edge where the new courthouse
would be built. Factories, warehouses, shops,
and residential buildings that ringed the city center
were being pushed out to make room for the
expanding business of conducting business. - The downtown of the
1920s that we're seeing is really the
culmination in some ways of this growing philosophy
of efficient, clean, sensible ways of
organizing our work lives and of the kinds of
technological devices, electricity, telephone
communication and so on, that actually allow those
visions to be realized. - [Jim] But there were limits
to what technology could do and what it couldn't do. There were no weather
radars or warning systems when a terrible tornado hit on a September
afternoon in 1927, cutting through the city from Forest Park
to Fairgrounds Park and then jumping the
river to the east side. 84 people were killed when it
smashed into homes, factories, schools filled with children, and Mullanphy Hospital
filled with patients. But the great tornado,
terrible as it was, would only be a
temporary setback to
the city of St. Louis. This would be remembered
as an era of building. In the 1920s, some of the city's most distinctive landmarks
were constructed. Through the years some have
prospered, others declined, but whether in use or disuse they remain impressive monuments to a decade that was
thinking big and looking up. (car whooshes) (gentle music) World War I didn't
only give America a lot of new airplane pilots. It also sent home a lot of
new wireless radio operators. There weren't any real
radio stations yet except for experimental
broadcasters like St. Louis University, but amateur radio
was a popular hobby. So when the first
licensed radio stations did go on the air
in the early 20s, there was already
a waiting audience. And in an age of
do-it-yourselfers, and with help from regular
newspaper columns, you, too, could experience this
amazing new technology. - The only thing I remember was building a little
old crystal set. I was one happy little kid. But it was nothing but a little piece of metal
and some wire, copper wire, and I just coiled it and you get it a certain
distance that way and close to that
little piece of metal. And close to the little piece
of metal was ground too. And when they come
together that way and you've got your little
thing sticking in your ear, it come on through. - [Jim] Almost immediately,
electronics firms were turning out more
sophisticated radio receivers and then bigger and
more expensive models that commanded a prominent place in living rooms
around the country. In a matter of just a few years, the whole country was tuning in to information, to music,
and to sporting events. Just as radio began
broadcasting the World Series to a growing national audience, it was the Yankees versus
the St. Louis Cardinals in 1926 and again in '28, helping to establish a
colorful and a lasting piece of St. Louis' national image. - Another thing to
remember, of course, is that St. Louis had
two baseball teams, and in the old pecking order, having two baseball teams
major league status, and they didn't
change for 50 years, was an important mark, I
think, of city greatness. Chicago, St. Louis,
Boston, Philadelphia, and New York between them
had 11 of the 16 teams. - [Jim] Radio, perhaps
more than any medium, could take a moment
and transform it into
a dramatic event. And it could transform
people into legends, even if all they did was hit
a baseball or fly an airplane. - Oh, that's my hero. And he was a tall, lanky
fellow with curly hair and shy and quiet. All the girls had
a crush on him. He was only 26
and he was a hero. He was getting ready to go
across the ocean all alone. (gentle music) - [Jim] He took off from
New York on May 20, 1927 in an airplane built with money
from St. Louis businessmen, so loaded with fuel that it
just barely got into the air. One pilot, one engine. No room for failure. - [Karen] I think
people forget what a complicated thing this
was for an individual to make a transatlantic
flight on their own. - [Jim] He had no radio
and was in total isolation, but word of sightings
of his plane spread by telephone and radio,
and people were tuning in to hear the unfolding
life and death story of the brave young man. 33 1/2 hours after he took
off, Lindbergh landed in Paris. A huge crowd was waiting, but in fact the whole
world now was waiting. (people cheering) - He received so many
thousands of gifts. People from all over the
country and all over the world were so inspired by
his accomplishments that you had individuals
that were crocheting mementos and sending them to him. (people cheering and applauding) - [Mary] When he came
back to St. Louis, they had a big parade
for him downtown and people were just wild. Everybody was wild
about Lindbergh. It was down on
Washington Avenue, around 8th, 9th
Washington Avenue, and people were all lined up
and they threw all of this ticker tape paper
out of the windows. And all downtown was just
like snowing with paper. And we got to see Lindbergh,
who was a big hero, and he was sitting on the
top of this touring car. - He was a young
man from Minnesota who took off from New York in
a plane built in San Diego, but St. Louis had put him there. Lindbergh belonged now to
the nation and the world, but St. Louis would
always have its name on one of the most celebrated
feats of the century. (gentle music) At the start of the the 1920s, the "Spirit of St. Louis" motto used as its symbol
the crusader king for whom the city is named. After 1927, the old
king on horseback had to make way for brave
young man in an airplane. That was a symbol
fit for a new age and for a city that now seemed
destined to be a part of it. Even after the stock
market crash of 1929, a lot of people
felt that enthusiasm and hard work and technology would soon have the country
flying high once again. (airplane engine puttering) (gentle music) We talk about decades because they're convenient
measurements of time, but they don't always work well as chapters in a history book. The 1920s might be an exception. 10 years between two
unprecedented events, the Great War and
the Great Depression. And the image of the 1920s has
grown to mythic proportions, in part because we know
this high-flying story is going to end in
a terrible crash. For "Decades,"
I'm Jim Kirchherr. (Roaring 20s music)
