PEORIA: ON A SLIPPERY SLOPE?

                         PEORIA:   ON  A  SLIPPERY  SLOPE?

                                       NORMAN  V.  KELLY

Born here in 1932 I guess I have as good a picture of Peoria, Illinois, the death of our downtown, and the current phase we are in as any other old citizen.  When I turned 50 in 1982 Peoria had already began its disappearing act. I witnessed these changes but I can tell you at the time we just thought it was some kind of progress, you know, “Out with the old in with the new.” I mean we saw a few very old businesses close, some businesses, hotels and other buildings we grew up with just disappear, some damn near over night.  In the beginning as we stood around watching wrecking balls tear some old place down the question was always the same. “I wonder what they are going to put in there?”

By the end of 1951 the answer was pretty damn clear to most of us and that was “Nothing.” I thought I would walk among the downtown streets and see if I can get you to understand what I mean.

 

First let’s slip back to 1937 because after a lot of study I think 1937 showed Peoria at what would appear to be among our best and typical years.  I tended to exclude the war years here in town with all the transients and war time production and madness.  1937 in Peoria was a stable period, our job situation was solid, great school and library systems and vice, gambling, prostitution and serious crime seemed to be well within acceptable parameters.

The city was moving north a bit even beyond El Vista which was the first sizeable addition with new houses being built all over the area and we had a distinct feeling of growing as a city and county. The City of Peoria was a whopping 12.28 square miles and our downtown was thriving with an incredible array of shopping opportunities. We had 258 taverns, saloons, bars dumps and dives and many of them were located in local neighborhoods.  To battle the saloons were 102 churches, adequate high schools and 24,000 active telephones in our homes.

Nine movie theaters entertained us, with the Armory  

and the Shrine and dozens of halls and entertainment places from pool halls to bowling alleys. Peoria was the center of all this activity and our downtown streets were crowded and places to spend your money were endless. We had 8 major hotels, and 13 others that were always full. And the final count was 48 but some of them of course were not places where you planned your vacation around. The riverfront welcomed thousands and our parks beckoned us and they were called “The Place Where Land and Water Meet.”  Our little town of Peoria was a convention city with a bawdy reputation, and a town that welcomed its visitors. 

The truth is WW11 was good to Peoria and considered a major liberty town.  The sad news was that of the 22,010 young people that went off to war 662 of them never came back home.

                                            THE  FITIES

By early 1950 there were a lot of old buildings that had been razed, but there were very few Peorians who were not glad to see them go. Hell, many of them had been vacant for years. People would gather behind the fence and watch these dirty old places fall into a pile of dust.  “Sidewalk engineers” we were called but the one building that stopped old kids like me was the fact that on Jan 5, 1952 the old Columbia Theater bit the dust.  It was truly a pretty filthy place but for all of us  Western fans it was a perfect place.  We paid anywhere from four cents to nine cents to get into the place and the long narrow, kinda smelly place was okay by us. There was a massive crowd, probably Harry Canterbury and his family as well were there when they began to tear down the Stockyards Hotel. Now this was a place of fine food and the rich and the ordinary folks rubbed elbows.  I forgot the date but it was around the time when there was a horrendous fire in a Pekin Distillery causing total destruction, you know I think it was in August.  Next was The Southern Hotel at 2125 Washington that became a hole in the ground.  This was a meeting place for all the stockyard people and it looked like a giant era in Peoria’s history was coming to an end,.