Hard Times - 1933

—Cherokee-Lemp Historic District —

One-third of the American workforce was unemployed. In January of 1933, anxiety about the economy led to panicked withdrawals from the banks. The anxiety grew into frenzy, and the withdrawals turned into a run on the banks. Banks all over St. Louis had to shut their doors. People feared reading the morning paper, afraid that it might report that the latest run on the banks had erased their savings.

By the Great Depression, this house, built in 1887, was already almost half a century old. It had been divided into three apartments. Machinist Herman Henning and his wife Margaret, who owned the home, lived on the second floor. The first floor was rented to Frank Zwick, a shoe worker, his wife Anna and their teenaged son. The third floor was home to a printer, Leroy Wacker, and his wife Emma. The families shoveled coal into stoves to heat their flats. All the residents were dependent on the outhouses in the back yard. Some things in the home had been updated. The original gas lamps were supplemented with new, electric light fixtures.

At that time, fewer than half the households in the neighborhood owned radios, then the latest in high tech communications. Those fortunate enough to have radios, invited friends and neighbors, so they could listen to Franklin Delano Roosevelt calm an anxious country with his remarkable inaugural address on March 4, 1933. In that era of despair, FDR stated, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In the new president's fireside chat on the radio, they could hear the president explain his plans to rebuild the soundness of the American banking system.

The following year, the Hennings had a $800 mortgage on this house — at that time a great burden for working people.

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