Munichburg Memories: The Southside Boosters

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The Southside Boosters

At the Old Munichburg Association’s January 2011 meeting, Phil Freeman and John Pelzer related how Southside business interests, when organized, can be very effective in accomplishing things.

Here’s some interesting history about the Southside Boosters, an earlier Southside business association, and its accomplishments, taken from Jefferson City newspapers before World War I. (Compiled by Walter A. Schroeder, 2/4/2011.)

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The Southside Boosters organized in 1912 to promote the Southside. They met in Friemel’s beer garden atop the hill across from present Central Dairy. According to the newspaper on July 12, 1912, they discussed creating a new bank for the Southside (which was done), securing a policeman for the Southside, and improving the Munichburg fire department next to the brewery on the corner of Dunklin and Washington (not done).

They pushed to have Dunklin become a through street from one end of the city to the other, by cutting down the bluff in the 300 block of W. Dunklin and putting a street down the steep hill past Jackson to connect with Lincoln University and Clark Ave. (done). The city postmaster had already approved a branch post office for the Southside and was waiting for the Boosters to find a location for it (done).

A committee was set up to attend all meetings of the city council “to see that the Southside is taken care of.” Indeed, the newspaper regularly reported on the Southside Boosters actions at city council meetings.

In August 1912, the newspaper reported that farmer Wm. Ahlers was ready to build a $4,000-5,000 building for a creamery in the Southside. Also the Kocher brothers were going to move their cigar factory at 311 Commercial to the Southside, where they lived.

In September 1912, the Southside Boosters contracted with Greater Parker Shows for a weeklong carnival on Dunklin and surrounding streets. Billboards throughout the county advertised it. The carnival attracted large crowds.

It had a brilliantly lighted midway with impressive store fronts for sideshows, all decorated with numerous electric lights; numerous bands, including one big concert band that, after its concert at 7 p.m. broke up into smaller ones; artistic dancers, like “Pharoah’s Daughter”; mysterious illusions like the man who ate rats; a Ferris wheel so high that you looked down upon the buildings of Dunklin Street; Chefalo’s ride through a death-trap loop on a bicycle and leaping 40 feet away, on the corner of Ashley and Jefferson.

The newspaper warned, “Don’t play or shake hands with Madame Electricia or you will get shocked.” And “There is something about a steam calliope that you can’t get away from—maybe it’s the noise!” “One of the female performers is from Columbia and boys from Jefferson City who frequent Columbia recognize her.” Some High Street merchants were chagrined that they were outbid for the carnival by the Southside.

In October 1912, the Boosters wanted a planing mill for the Southside “because there is so much construction going on.” (For those of you too young to remember, a planing mill sawed lumber to specifications.)

In November 1914, plans were announced for a theater at 113 E. Dunklin. It would cost $12,000-15,000 and have a seating capacity of 1,000-1,200, with a floor drop of one inch to one foot that “will allow for good view of the stage everywhere.” This theater building, which was built with a balcony and a decorative terra cotta facade, is still standing. It is the one that Coleman’s Appliance just moved out of.

The city newspaper carried an editorial on Nov. 20, 1914:

The Booming Southside

Ever since the Southside announced that it was going to boom and progress it has done so. Ever since the people organized a boosters club, the Southside organization has devised ways and means of making that section of the city the most important in the city. They want to attract people and so far have succeeded admirably.

The latest addition contemplated in that section of the city is a moving picture show, one of the finest in the west. That will attract people and when one attracts people he attracts business. The Southside is still boosting and if we know the people of that section of the city, they will continue to boost until they have arrived at the goal set for themselves.

In April 1915, the Southside decided it should have a “white way” like the one on High Street. [“White way” referred to the installation of electric lights along the streets and making them “white” at night.] To be along Dunklin from Madison to Broadway; 32 standards with 2 lights each, except at corners, where there would be 4 globes per standard. Next project would be to connect the Southside White Way with the High Street White Way along Madison Street.

The Southside asked that the Jefferson City street car company extend its line into the Southside proceeding up Monroe Street into the new Woodcrest subdivision (where Capital Region Medical Center now is).

And on and on . . .

Copyright 2011 by Walter A. Schroeder.

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Wouldn’t you like to help boost Jefferson City's historic southside neighborhood? Become a member of the Old Munichburg Association today!

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This is not a horror novel—far from it!

Following his popular memoir Buddy’s Stories, historian Walter A. Schroeder presents another warm and colorful collection of more than 90 essays about growing up in Jefferson City in the 1940s.

With humor and insight, Schroeder provides a personal glimpse into his family life and his experiences as a child growing up in Jefferson City’s Southside neighborhood—a Germantown district also called Old Munichburg. It’s a treasury of essays describing his childhood growing up under the same roof as his immigrant grandparents, parents, two brothers, and renters, and surrounded by a vibrant, supportive community.

In the title essay, Schroeder shares a whimsical story of the time when all the kids on the block saw the movie Revenge of the Zombies and spent the next week staggering around the neighborhood's sidewalks, arms outstretched, wearing vacant expressions—causing passing motorists to do double-takes!

Schroeder’s crisp details revive scenes of the past so we can better understand and imagine Jefferson City in the 1940s. As he explains, “In every generation . . . young people learn only the skeleton of the past. I want to put meat on the skeleton’s bones.”

This new book by Schroeder, a beloved Missouri geographer and historian, is not to be missed!

Published in 2023 by the Old Munichburg Association

304 pages; 85 photographs and illustrations; index

$25

Available at Downtown Book and Toy, J Street Vintage, and ECCO Lounge

Everyone has a story. This is Buddy’s.

Meet Buddy: a bike-riding, towheaded, everyday kid growing up on Elm Street during World War II. Everyone he knows is a proud American, including his German-immigrant grandparents. Life on the Southside isn’t rosy, but people do what they can to get by—and Buddy and his friends grow up learning to reduce, reuse, and recycle . . . to be self-sufficient . . . and to help others.

Generous with details, the geographer and historian Walter A. Schroeder—nicknamed “Buddy” in his youth—shares his personal memories of growing up in Jefferson City, Missouri. His descriptions will resonate with people who remember those simpler times, and they will cause others to reflect on what we lost as the years went by.

These 42 brief essays cover an array of topics about Jefferson City places, everyday life, the effects of World War II, and expressions of patriotism. How did families make ends meet? How did kids participate in the war effort? What was it like to have bread, eggs, milk, and coal delivered, to make sauerkraut in the basement, to be fitted for shoes with commercial X-ray machines? What did kids do for fun? How did the old Missouri River Bridge rotate, and what was it like to go to the dime store?

Engagingly written, enhanced by the judgment of a professional historian, and illustrated with 72 photos, maps, and scrapbook mementos, Buddy’s Stories is a vibrant perspective on Jefferson City history . . . and a fond commemoration of the way things used to be.

“I helped my grandfather make beer while Doctor Hill came to our house and brought my brother Walter Albert Schroeder into the world. He cost twenty-five dollars. My parents got a bargain, and I got a ‘buddy.’”

—Richard A. Schroeder, older brother

“This book is a real treasure. Buddy treats us to recollections of our community. It is as if he, Richard, and I are sitting together talking about the old days.”
—Thomas K. Schroeder, younger brother

Published in 2018 by the Old Munichburg Association

200 pages; 70 photographs, maps, and illustrations

$15

Available at Downtown Book and Toy, ECCO Lounge, Samuel's Tuxedo, Schaefer House, and Central UCC

Read the Book!

Southside Sketches: Essays on Jefferson City’s Old Munichburg
by Walter A. Schroeder

During his tenure as secretary of the Old Munichburg Association, Walter Schroeder “spiced up” his monthly mailings of the group’s minutes with brief essays on the district’s history. What began as a side project became a collection of essays illuminating the Southside’s history of organizations and people, and of its very environment. At turns humorous, nostalgic, poignant, questioning—but always keenly insightful—these “sketches” draw upon personal memories as well as archival research.

Schroeder shares detailed recollections about life before air-conditioning, shopping at mom-and-pop groceries, using sales-tax tokens, and many other memories of his youth. Other stories came from interviews with his mother and other old-time Southside residents, who spoke of visits by gypsies, the time a steamboat managed to dock some six blocks south of the Missouri River, and explorations of the area’s legendary tunnels and caves. Schroeder gleaned several other interesting tales from archival sources, including the German-language newspapers favored by the Southside immigrants—yet read by few today.

200 pages, paperback
OUT OF PRINT

Also by Walter Schroeder

Breweries and Saloons in Jefferson City, Missouri
by Walter A. Schroeder

Got Gemütlichkeit? The German immigrants to Jefferson City certainly did, and from the time they started arriving in the area in the 1840s to the present day, good-natured beer drinking among friends has fostered social connections, spurred economic growth, fed the city’s hospitality industry, and nourished a sense of ethnic identity.

Historian, geographer, and native Southsider Walter Schroeder grew up in the shadow of Capitol Brewery, a grandson of German immigrants and an enthusiastic supporter of Munichburg’s history and future. After exploring the written record, including old German-language local newspapers, as well as collecting oral histories from local residents, he relates what he has learned about the city’s breweries, saloons, beer gardens, and other beer-related history.

From the earliest years of Jefferson City, its ethnic Germans have run breweries, gathered in beer gardens, and established saloons, taprooms, and taverns. In these pages you will learn about the following and much more:

—The George Wagner Brewery, which started in the Southside of Jefferson City in 1870, produced an impressive seventy barrels a day, and was one of the first companies to freeze its own ice.
—The Capitol Brewery, which offered authentic Bavarian beer and dominated the region’s beer sales from the 1890s through the end of World War II, grew to become the city’s Coca-Cola bottler.
—The Franz beer garden in the 1870s occupied the hilltop that is today the home of St. Mary’s Health Center. It was a grassy, breezy gathering place for relaxing, dancing, and singing, offering a tremendous view of the young town—plus sausage, cheese, crackers, and freshly made Franz beer.
—The ECCO Lounge, the city’s longest-running taproom and restaurant, has roots going back to 1860, when it offered food, libation, and lodging to out-of-town farmers who had carted their goods for sale in the capital city.

Although “having a beer with one’s friends” is certainly no longer a way to profile someone as “German” in Missouri’s capital city, everyone with an interest in the art and history of brewing, the many stories of the city, or German heritage will enjoy this celebration of the city’s German immigrants, their ethnic beverage, and its magical capacity for bringing people together.

Published by the Old Munichburg Association.
Paperback, 50 pp., 38 illustrations, 6 x 9"
$8, plus $3 shipping and handling (please include $1.50 s&h for each additional book sent to the same address).

Note: The Breweries and Saloons book is available at the ECCO Lounge.