The St. Louis Hill
About the Hill and the question of gentrification
General Background Information
The Hill in St. Louis, Missouri is a neighborhood located southwest of downtown St. Louis known for its presence of Italian culture. The Hill consist of Italian restaurants and the population of the area is predominately Italian. The name the Hill is the English translation of “la Montagna,” the name given to the neighborhood by the first Italian immigrants to settle down in the area. Italian immigrants came to the area in the 1880s to work in the clay mines and brickyards. At first the population of the area was mainly German and Irish immigrants, but by 1910 the population was 90% Italian (Mormino, p. 6). Despite the age of the Hill, the residents have been able to keep the Italian culture that makes the neighborhood special. Recently the question of gentrification has been circulating the neighborhood, whether it would be beneficial or detrimental. If the Hill is gentrified the neighborhood will suffer through a deterioration of Italian presence, the residents will be divided, and people could possibly lose their homes and/or place of business; all of which make the Hill a significantly intriguing area of St. Louis.
Italian Immigrant Influence & Contribution
If you visit the Hill, it’s hard to ignore the presence of Italian influence in the area. Streetlights have red white and green flags with “the Hill” on them, fire hydrants are painted red white and green, and almost all the restaurants have red white and green overhangs attached to the front of the buildings. The residents are beyond proud of their neighborhood. Rightfully so, considering everything them and their ancestors did and has gone through to create the environment of the Hill. The first Italian immigrants came to America because they were in search of better economic opportunities. Italy was going through a rough patch as a country, Julianne Haglof states, “.. entire districts were forced to migrate out of Italy to avoid starvation caused by overpopulation, agricultural depression, and poor living and working conditions.” Italy was going through the process of unification, then WWI, and then through the fascist regime all within about 50 years. The immigrants that came to America were eager for a new and better life, they wouldn’t let anything stop them. The men who came over first lived in rooms with four to nine other men (Crawford, p. 20). They would cook, clean, and sleep in these rooms, sometimes even taking turns sleeping in the beds. Once the men arranged for their wives and families to join them, the women were worked continuously at home cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children and animals, growing herbs and vegetables, and any other at home task. Italians weren’t ones to be leisurely, they saw leisure activities as things for rich people. Ruth Crawford quotes a visiting nurse that said, “You do not find the Italian mother gossiping on the back porch with her neighbor as you do the Jewish mother” (p. 20). The Italians were determined to succeed in America, so they worked for it.
The residents of the Hill weren’t always proud of their neighborhood. Before 1914 the neighborhood didn’t have plumbing, so waste and garbage would line the streets (Crawford, p. 20). It wasn’t till 1916 that streetlights and sidewalks were in place, but even than the pride the Hill has now was not present. During the 1920s the Hill really established itself and started to create the pride seen today.
Residents finally started to establish their new lives in America, creating more opportunity to focus on their community. Immigrants from Lombardy and Sicily ignored their lifelong rivalry and started to work together to do so. Rudolph J. Vecoli, while reviewing Gary Mormino’s article: The Playing Fields of St. Louis: Italian Immigrants and Sports, 1925–1941, talks about this rivalry coming together saying:
“Once divided by intense rivalries, Sicilians and Lombards now developed a symbiotic relationship, since the former were the manufactures and the latter the retailers of hooch. Bootlegging also brought unprecedented affluence to the Hill; moonshine paid for many houses as well as for the building of a new church.” (p.349)
The Sicilians would make the alcohol for the Lombards to sell to residents of the Hill and other areas of St. Louis. From the two groups working together they were able to build a church and better housing for the residents of the community.
Once the (St. Ambrose) church was built, the Hill was a new place. The church was the center of the community, the priests were like the leaders of the neighborhood and they established their own little form of government. The church building itself, is where any neighborhood meetings, political meetings, or religious meeting were held. They had turned a dirty and poor area of St. Louis into a self-sustaining self-governing (almost) city. This caused the neighborhood to be more secluded from the rest of St. Louis even more. The Hill was always secluded from downtown St. Louis culturally and geographically, and still pretty much is.
A bus into the city wasn’t available until the late 1920s and even than residents didn’t chose to leave, they liked their “little country town”, as lifelong resident Lou Cerutti described it to Gary Mormino. As much as the residents didn’t want to leave their neighborhood, they didn’t have to, they grew/cooked their own food, had their own church, and soon will have started their own family owned businesses/restaurants (like Imo’s pizza).
Change on the Hill
The Hill is known in St. Louis for their family owned restaurants. Many of the families that started restaurants on the Hill sacrificed a lot to do so. An example is Imo’s Pizza. What is now a large franchise spread throughout Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois was once a tiny pizza shop on the Hill. Imo’s was started by a couple named Ed and Margie Imo in 1964, it took them five years to save the $1,500 it cost to buy the first building.
All they started with was a used oven, two refrigerators and a $75 stove. They both worked tirelessly to get their new business up and running, “Ed continued to work as a tile setter slicing squares of linoleum by day and pizza by night. Margie answered the phones, prepped salads into cups, and worked the cash register — an old tackle box they repurposed.” (Imo’s pizza) Imo’s is the home of St. Louis style pizza, thin crispy crust with provel as the cheese instead of mozzarella, and pizza delivery. Now years later Imo’s has over 100 locations and is ran by Ed and Margie’s son. Since the expansion of Imo’s and it being taken over by the couple’s son, Imo’s pizza has not been the same.
Imo’s pizza has always gotten their ingredients from Ed’s brother Charlie, and most recently Charlie’s son Matt. Not too long-ago Matt was told by his cousin that Imo’s was no longer going to be using their ingredients for any of the restaurants. Not only did that cause drama within the Imo family, but within the community that has grown up eating Imo’s pizza. Since the top dog in the company wanted to make more money, people don’t get to enjoy the same original pizza they had loved for so many years.
What happened to Imo’s pizza relates to the Hill when looking at gentrification because they both are being adjusted for more money. With Imo’s and gentrification, they both have the “out with the old and in with the new” mentality because they’ll make more money off the new. Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College, writes:
“Gentrification is not a force of nature, an inevitable economic trend or a preordained social phenomenon. It is the result of decisions made by real people who run institutions, seek to make profits, and are motivated by greed and power. They include insatiable bankers, sleazy mortgage lenders, rapacious developers and landlords, compliant politicians, and indifferent government regulators.”
The only people to benefit from gentrification are the people at the top, never the little guy. The people that push for gentrification don’t care how it would change the history and interesting story of something, they don’t care to keep the parts that make things special. Imo’s pizza is now nearly everywhere, and the Imo family has made a lot of money off of the franchise; but no one knows the back story of Imo’s, no one knows the ingredients aren’t the same as the original pizza. Although what people don’t know won’t hurt them, it’s sad to think about how people don’t know they aren’t eating the original Imo’s pizza when they think they are.
Gentrification in different neighborhoods
Gentrification is not a new term in St. Louis, many places have gone through the process in different areas around the city. Susanne Cowen talks about how gentrification and pushing for neighborhoods for historic status affects the area and the people who live in those areas. She talks about the neighborhood in St. Louis known as Soulard. When Soulard was pushed for historic status, younger people came in to buy, restore, and sell the houses in the neighborhood. While waiting for the cities district plan to be approved, residents were starting to get divided between new and old/ insider and outsider. The process caused the neighborhood to struggle with their identity. New people that came in had a completely different point of view on the historical aspect then the long-term residents did. Cowen states, “… the involvement of institutional actors in historic-preservation processes may lead to certain community voices being amplified or silenced, ultimately influencing whose traditions and history are conserved.” (p. 17) She is saying that once a neighborhood is labelled historic by the city, it is unclear who’s view of history the neighborhood is trying to portray. The only thing that would actually benefit from this is the city, because they would end up making more money off of it in the long run. If the Hill was pushed for historical status, like Soulard, there’s no saying what exactly would happen but it’s hard to believe it would be different than what happened in Soulard. Younger people (new residents) would try to come in and modernize the area, while older people (long-time residents) would be doing everything they can to preserve the history embedded in the Hill. It would be a constant fight whether to modernize it, causing a divide within the community. The Hill was basically established off of two rivals coming together to form a sense pride and community in their ethnicity and culture, to divide them again would ruin the Hill.
Alex Baca and Nick Finio, writers for the Greater Greater Washington, write about a paper released by Quentin Brummet and Davin Reed that studies the effect of gentrification on the well-being of original residents and children economically. Unlike the Hill, the neighborhood studied already had a high mobility rate, but it was found in the study that with gentrification the mobility rate goes up 5% (Baca & Finio). That means 5% more of residents were being forced out of the area because they could no longer afford the cost of living. These people most likely end up living in another impoverished (if not more impoverished) neighborhood, turning it into an ongoing cycle. If the life-long/long-term residents of the Hill were forced to leave it would take away from the significance of the Hill. The majority of residents on the Hill have lived there for their whole lives, along with their ancestors since they came to America. Without the people and families of the people who originally came to the Hill from Italy the Hill would not be what it is today. If the residents and community were to lose their main source of Italian ethnic/cultural influence, the people, the Hill would no longer be the significant “Little Italy” that it has always been.
Conclusion
The history of the Hill is too interesting and such a big part of the neighborhood’s since of pride and community to change the area at all. If the Hill is gentrified there is no doubt residents will be forced out, causing even just a little bit of the history and culture of the Hill to disappear. The Hill is only significant because of its fascinating history and Italian presence. If these things were to fade once the Hill was gentrified no one would make money, there would be no tourist and no more community pride causing the neighborhood to cease to exist. The only people gentrification benefits are those higher up who are money hungry, like what happened with Imo’s pizza. Ed’s son was money hungry, he had to make as much money as possible by turning it into a franchise, using cheaper ingredients, and spreading Imo’s across three different states, every location having a different supplier. Like what happened in Soulard and at Imo’s, change (gentrification) isn’t always better for the majority. Gentrification is not what the Hill needs, all it will do is divide the residents, take away the rich history and culture, and cause people to lose their life-long homes or even businesses.
