By Mary Jane Bartlett Conrades
The Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood—I know it well—but I didn’t realize it had a name. Good! That’s better than “the Old Neighborhood.”
I grew up there on McPherson Avenue—6150 to be exact. My grandparents, Charles and Mollie Devlin Bartlett, bought the house in about 1914 when it was brand new. (They had moved from the area now known as Carr Square Village in a row house Mollie’s father purchased in the 1870s.)
How they appreciated living in the West End, out of the crowded city, in such a spacious new home! My father, Dan Bartlett, could walk to Washington University and he said there were so few buildings around that they could hear the lions roar in the Zoo. Since they didn’t have an automobile, they didn’t mind not having a garage. Public transportation was right up at the corner on Skinker. I still have a 1917 photo of 6150 with Grandma’s Service Flag with three stars in the living room window, proudly proclaiming that the Bartletts had three sons in the Army.
After the war, when I came along, we all lived in that big house: my uncles in the third-floor rooms and the rest of us (including my two great aunts) on the second floor with one bathroom. Hard to realize nowadays—but I don’t think that any of our neighbors had more than one bathroom. All the houses had ash pits in the yard where trash was burned and coal chutes to deliver the coal to the coal bins in the basements.
In 1925, with my little sister on the way, my parents made the wise decision to rent a flat down the street at 6047 McPherson, and there we stayed till 1932. Captain John McCarthy and his family lived upstairs, and when he was made Chief of the St. Louis Police Force, we really celebrated. My three-year-old brother was invited to see Chief McCarthy sworn in and, by request, sang “The Maine Stein Song” to the courtroom. (It was Danny’s specialty.)
I made friends with all the neighbor kids who all went to St. Roch’s Grammar School. My special friends were the Quirks who lived at 6049 McPherson. In the summer we cooled ourselves off by running through the sprinklers on the lawns and jumping on the back of the Polar Wave ice truck to beg pieces of ice to suck on. At night before bedtime we played Rock School on our steps, Tag, Red Rover, The Farmer in the Dell, etc., etc. The Good Humor man with his ice cream wagon would con my father into buying ice cream bars on a stick for the whole gang gathered in front of our house. The organ-grinder man’s little monkey collected coins in his tiny cap. The hot-tamale man shouted his wares at night, and the watchman knocked his club against the curb in front of the house to say, “All was well.”
On my birthdays in August, the Quirks and we would put on a backyard show. (We were deeply influenced by the Muny Opera and the stage shows at the Fox.) This yearly occurrence included singing and dancing and a Charlie Chaplin movie that my father rented. Mrs. Quirk made crepe paper costumes and we would rehearse for weeks! Pop put up Japanese lanterns all around the yard and had the boys in the neighborhood give out ice cream cones—to keep them from making fun of our show and otherwise causing trouble.
My brother and sister and I attended Hamilton School through the eighth grade. It was quite a walk, but we actually came all the way home for lunch. On bad days we took our lunch and ate in the gymnasium. When we were old enough to handle the financial responsibility, we were given twenty-five cents to buy our lunch at the Blue Moon Cafe on Delmar. If we managed to save five cents by not ordering mashed potatoes, we spent it on penny candy at Cohen’s Drugstore on the corner of Delmar and Hamilton.
The River Des Peres ran along the east side of our block and sometimes it smelled to high heaven. We kids called it the “River DeStink.” None of us were allowed to go down the street that far, of course. Then the city decided to enclose the river and pave over it to make Des Peres Avenue. It was a thrilling event when the workers dynamited some of the buildings and half of Voges Drug Store on the east bank fell into the riverbed. We loved the drama.
In the 6000 block of Kingsbury west of the river (or Des Peres Avenue) were several small stores. Our grocery store, Jake Mauer’s, was on the south side. Jake was the kindly butcher who would put up with our coming by after school and charging sodas to our parents’ accounts. Schattgen’s Bakery was there too, which had wonderful damson plum coffee cake in the autumn. I think there was a beauty shop alongside. Baeppler’s Drug Store was across the street on the west corner. (We only patronized the one on Skinker and McPherson.) In the very early days before they covered up the river, Miller’s Grocery Store occupied the northeast corner. Miller had the sorriest looking delivery wagon with the most woebegone horse. It looked as if it would tip over any minute.
When my great aunts died in 1931 and my uncle moved to Detroit, my father bought 6150 McPherson from his mother and the five of us moved back up the street. St. Louis summer heat always has been perfectly awful, and in the evening all the families on the street would either sit on their front porches or pull lawn chairs onto the grass to catch any breezes. A lot of memorable visiting went on back and forth, of course.
We were allowed to play our games in the street—Kick the Can, Tap on the Ice Box, Hide and Seek, etc. With the windows open everyone had his radio on, especially on the nights of prize fights. Once in a while some of the families would be listening to Father Coughlin preaching from his Church of the Little Flower in Detroit.
The streetcar ran down Skinker Road and I can still hear the nighttime conductor clanging the foot pedal to announce a stop at the corner. I understand Washington University is rehabbing the old Parkview Apartments there. They were thriving when I was young, and some of the neighborhood boys would play on their elevators. My hide would have been tanned if I had tried anything so naughty.
Weddings at Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, usually on Saturday nights, were a big attraction to the girls. Of course we would attend, sitting inconspicuously in the back row to admire the bride—but also feeling sorry for her because she had to stay with one man the rest of her life. We personally were in love with a raft of movie stars—mine was Nelson Eddy. If our parents didn’t catch us, we would hang around the corner drugstore and read movie magazines in front of the rack.
Our two movie theatres were the Pageant and the Tivoli; the Varsity was a later addition. When I was older, my parents used to let us join the Quirks to walk up to the Tivoli. There were always double features and it only cost 35¢. If we had time we used to go into the Tivoli Apartments and ring all the doorbells and run.
Another one of the summertime attractions in the area was the Vegetable Man, Mr. Deuser, who came from a rural truck farm in the wilds of Creve Coeur. He drove a marvelous truck in which the customers could enter up little steps with the produce displayed on either side. I can still picture my grandmother hearing Mr. Deuser’s call, grabbing her pocketbook, and rushing out to the sidewalk.
My family wasn’t Catholic, but my sister and I joined the Girl Scouts at St. Roch’s. Miss Veslage was our long-suffering leader who took us caroling at Christmas and camping on weekends. We even delivered copies of the Ladies’ Home Journal to the soldiers at the Veterans’ Hospital.
These were Depression days, but none of us were conscious of any deprivation. Occasionally, men would knock on the back door looking for work. Grandma and Mother would fix them a plate of food and have them do a little job in the yard. Hamilton School had a sewing class for us to make clothes for “poor children.” We used a fleet of the old pedal sewing machines and, although we tried very hard, I now feel sorry for any children who had to wear what we kids made.
I could go on reminiscing forever. After all, I lived on McPherson until I was married in 1948 and my mother and father didn’t move until 1971. We never had a garage and I am an expert in parallel parking. It was a wonderful place to grow up in and I guess it still is. I hope someone is still playing Rock School on the front steps and hopscotch on the sidewalk.
Photo Captions in Original Issue:
- Francis Brennan, Jimmy Sprick, Dan, Jack and Jane McEnery, and Nancy Quirk were some of the McPherson children.
- Missouri History Museum — River Des Peres collapse 1931.
