Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

Federal courthouse celebrates 100th birthday; President Taft was on hand a century ago

When government officials mark the 100th anniversary of the Melvin Price Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in East St. Louis today, the celebration won't come near the hoopla associated with the building's dedication.

On Oct. 25, 1909, President William H. Taft and many other bigwigs were on hand to officially open the new 67,750-square-foot courthouse and federal building, built at a cost of $266,000.

The day was called East St. Louis Celebration Day, and it started with a big parade, a luncheon and an automobile tour of the city before they got around to the speeches.

Today's ceremony will kick off at 2 p.m. with federal judges, government officials and representatives of the U.S. General Services Administration, which is responsible for the management of the building.

Andrew Theising, director of the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Institute for Urban Research, will talk about East St. Louis and the history of the building.

The building has remained much the same except for an addition built in 1990, which added more than 78,000 square feet at a cost of $5.3 million. An atrium, with artwork, connects the old and the new.

In 1909, public schools were closed as was most everything else.

"Circuit court adjourned for the day and the city hall and town in general were as dead as a door nail," the Belleville Daily Advocate noted. The East St. Louis Journal published 100,000 copies of a special edition devoted to everything connected with the day.

The parade took an hour and a half to pass the reviewing stand full of national officials, which included Vice President James Sherman, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives James Cannon and Illinois Gov. Charles Deneen.

There were senators, most of the state officials and more congressmen than anyone could count. Most of them were along for a riverboat excursion that Taft took down the Mississippi River for a conference in New Orleans.

The Daily Advocate estimated there were nearly 1,000 Belleville people in the crowd, with 400 in the parade, including a band and 100 students from the local high school.

For all the hoopla surrounding the president's appearance, the schedule called for the speeches to begin at 2 p.m., with Taft crossing the bridge at 3:45 p.m., speaking at 4 p.m. and arriving back in St. Louis by 4:30 p.m.

The Daily Advocate noted that as Taft crossed the Mississippi from St. Louis a signal was given to a fireworks man who began firing a 21-gun salute -- in the middle of Cannon's speech.

"Speaker Cannon hurried along with the closing sentences of his speech between periods of bombardment and in closing told the crowd good-by with the statement, 'That other cannon has got me beat,'" the paper reported.

The East St. Louis Journal didn't mention that but did quote him as saying, "Well, I guess that damn bomb is bigger than I am."

The Advocate representative was not impressed with Taft's presentation.

"Yesterday when he was expected to talk fifteen minutes he gave out a four-minute talk in a voice that was so hoarse that the stenographers sitting within 10 feet of him caught the words with difficulty," the paper reported.

The Daily Advocate did offer some grudging praise for the day.

"For a city like East St. Louis unaccustomed to handling such affairs the celebration was remarkable in its freedom from things that had been neglected and events that did not happen according to programme," the paper reported.