Sixty years ago this week, a story that inspired a Hollywood movie was unfolding in South St. Louis. On the morning of April 24, 1953, a gang of bandits from Chicago attempted a heist at Southwest Bank at the intersection of Southwest and Kingshighway.

As the bank’s alarm sounded, officers Melburn Stein and Robert Heitz were first on the scene, Heitz heading to the side entrance while Stein went for the front door. A shootout followed, wounding Heitz. When bullets whizzed above Stein’s head, he ducked behind a newspaper vending machine outside. Read more »

In 1855, Ellen Gelling found herself far from home, penniless, and alone. A few years earlier, Ellen’s husband, her daughter Christina, and Christina’s husband had journeyed from their home on the Isle of Man seeking a new life in America. Ellen stayed behind with Christina’s grown daughter. When Ellen came over, she found that her husband and son-in-law had both died of fever. Christina, strained by the loss of her husband and father and saddened by her separation from her daughter and mother, broke under the emotional weight of her situation and was committed to the County Insane Asylum. Read more »

Thirty years ago, in 1982, I was invited to attend the Fasching Sonntag at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Baden. I had no idea what a Fasching Sonntag was, but it sounded like an interesting change from the usual date of dinner and a movie or concert. Read more »

A nickname can be a great indicator that someone, something, or someplace is unique. The place of which I speak, a portion of Olive Street (between Whittier and Pendleton avenues) and Boyle (perpendicular to Olive), has had not one nickname but three. This place was first known as Antique Row, the crossroads of America’s antique businesses. Then, in the mid-1950s, as the area was increasingly inhabited by intellectual bohemians and beatniks, its name evolved to become Greenwich Corners. In early March 1961, Alderman Joseph F. Read more »

Stories of social struggle in the city of St. Louis demonstrate the deep ties between civil rights and labor rights there. The study of history has often discussed the fights of working people for better wages, safer working conditions, and a stronger voice in the workplace as distinct and separate from the fight of African Americans for equality, justice, and civil rights. The truth is these two movements, black freedom and labor, are linked inextricably. Read more »

First Baptist is the oldest extant black church in the city of St. Louis. Its storied history dates to 1817 when two Baptist missionaries, John Mason Peck of Connecticut and James E. Welch, a native of Kentucky, arrived in St. Louis at the behest of the Baptist Triennial Missionary Convention based in Philadelphia. They were charged with establishing schools and churches with orders from the convention to pay particular attention to “the Fox, the Osage, the Kanses and other tribes of Indians.” Reaching St. Louis in December of 1817, they quickly set about fulfilling their mission. Read more »

March is National Women's History Month, and we'll be bringing you profiles of St. Louis women who have made history happen. This week's profile is about Susan Blow, credited with opening the first kindergarten in the United States. The following is an excerpt from Movers and Shakers, Scalawags and Suffragettes: Tales from Bellefontaine Cemetery, by Carol Ferring Shepley. Read more »

If you have ever gazed in admiration at the 38-foot mural “The Origins of Freemasonry” that spans the lobby of the New Masonic Temple at 3681 Lindell Boulevard in St. Louis, you have seen one of the few true fresco works in Missouri. The enormous mural was created in 1941 by Jessie Housley Holliman (ca. 1905–1984) and was dedicated by then-Senator and Free Mason Harry S. Truman. It is the only surviving mural by Holliman in a St. Louis public building.

Holliman, an accomplished artist, muralist, and art teacher, graduated from Sumner High School in St. Read more »

Each week during Black History Month, we will feature stories of African Americans who made History Happen—through the legacy of slave narratives, art and music, or activism in the civil rights movement.

William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown was born into slavery in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1814. Read more »

By Katherine Fischer (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006)

Reviewed by David Lobbig, Associate Curator of Environmental Life

Dreaming the Mississippi is Katherine Fischer’s passionate account of life on the ever-changing great river of North America. Read more »