The Girl Who Owned DeBaliviere

In the 1920’s the five blocks of DeBaliviere were a distinctly different place, Families were raised in the apartments above the store fronts that filled the street then. One small girl of eight was living at 311a, above Charles Young’s grocery store. To Young’s on the south was Ted’s pool room, which was much later to morph into the Stardust Lounge. South of that was Garavelli’s lovely and elegant restaurant and the Garavelli’s Tap Room.

Our young friend’s free time was spent leading her little “gang” of neighborhood friends. Returning home from St. Roch’s School, she would rollerskate a circuit from home, around the block onto DeGiverville, up to Waterman, back east to DeBaliviere, in a triangle requiring no crossing of streets. On her way she would stop at Garavelli’s, where Joe, who called her “Jimmy,” would give her a treat from his side door entrance on DeGiverville, from the marble counter where he cut cheeses and meats for his famous sandwiches. She might go up the stairs to where the pie lady worked in the heat baking pies. This was during Prohibition when Joe Garavelli transformed his bar into a soft drink attraction and focused on making his restaurant one of St. Louis’ best.

Later she might skate to Petmueller’s Waterman Pharmacy at the corner of Waterman and DeBaliviere, passing the Chinese laundry and Schoenfeld’s shoe store (later the Apollo Theater), she might have looked across the street to see the a group of large sign boards. Next to it she remembers a “Putt Putt Golf Course”, and later, the Parkmoor Restaurant. Further north, near the intersection with Waterman was a Shell station which had a soda machine where the kids would collect bottlecaps to get a free soda.

Her block of DeBaliviere was home to what we would call “Mom and Pop” businesses, like Louis Lopresto’s shoe repair owned by a gentleman from Palermo, Italy. Velvet Freeze was near the Wabash RR where a “little man came out of a little house to lower the arm to pass.”

The children would sit on the fence right by the tracks. Another Italian family, Tony and Helen Viviano had a clothing store in the old hotel at the corner of Pershing where one could see people lounging on the porch and watching the trains.

She became a favorite of a Greek couple named Kollias who ran a watermelon garden in the summer on the east side of DeBaliviere at Pershing.

Steve Kollias’ restaurant was listed in many directories of that era, along with the fabulous Garavelli’s restaurant directly across the street. In the summer from her back porch she could see and hear the exotic birds that were presented in a huge cage at the rear of the main dining room of Garavelli’s, virtually in her back yard. From the front stairs, she could see the “touring cars” that brought the rich from Lindell and beyond to have Garavelli’s great food delivered to their cars, daydreaming about the day she would be in one of those grand cars. She remembers the incredible decor of Garavelli’s with its brass doors she thought were gold.