Recent progress in the archives has uncovered some more
photographs from the earliest days of St. Joe’s back in the 30’s and 40’s. They have been added to this next part of the
online exhibit together with items from the 1950’s.
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The
Catholic Radical Alliance was founded in April 1937, as a branch of the
Catholic Worker Movement, which was founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. A group of Catholic religious and lay had
been meeting at the Pittsburgh Lyceum to discuss the contemporary economic and
social problems. On the 19th of April
that year, Father Rice gave a lecture titled “A Detailed Plan of
Immediate, Practical Action.” According
to the Pittsburgh Catholic (22 April
1937) “an animated discussion followed the presentation of the program. …
Blanks were distributed for the signatures of those willing to enlist in the
work outlined in the program and a large number signified their intention of
taking part in the plan.” Rice said that
“The plan is one suited for immediate action.
It is above all a positive thing.”
The outline of the plan included “the starting of a House of Hospitality
where the poor may be fed, clothed and instructed – not along the lines of
organized charity, but in accordance with the Charity of Christ.”
The
immediate and practical action couldn’t come too soon. Contemporary accounts of men and families
losing their homes show a very desperate situation. An
editorial published in the Pittsburgh Catholic recounted how a physician had
his automobile seized by his landlord as collateral after running late on his
rent. His patients couldn’t pay him and he was two months late on his rent. Distressed at losing his automobile he fought
the three constables and was struck over the head. He then retrieved a pistol and shot them and
then himself.
“Minor
these things may be in the mind of the law, but they may be catastrophes in the
lives of those affected, usually the
victims of misfortune, the poor, the friendless, the defenseless. Unpleasant and distasteful are the many acts the “Minor judiciary" are
ordered to do; tasks that the individuals and the officials of the corporations
that invoke their services would be
ashamed to perform.” (Jan
19, 1939)
On May
6, 1937 the Pittsburgh Catholic reported that the CRA was looking for a
location “in a central part of the city.”
This led the CRA to a failed butcher shop at 901 Wylie Avenue in
Pittsburgh Hill District. According to Msgr. Rice, the property was owned
by Epiphany Parish just down the street.
Father Thomas Lappan pastor at Epiphany and spiritual director of the
Saint Vincent de Paul Society arranged the lease to the CRA. The Society even donated $300 to cover the
rent. The first men to pass through St.
Joseph’s enjoyed hospitality with rats whose exact size is lost in Irish
hyperbole.
The butcher shop was very small, however,
and the
supply of physical space in the shop was inadequate to meet the demands made of
it and attention was turned to a large abandoned orphanage on Tannehill Street,
which was described in the last exhibit.
There are no photographs known to exist of or in 901 Wylie.
Lives
and Times of St. Joseph House of Hospitality: 1940’s, continued.
Ferguson ladles out some soup, while a guest casts
an eye at the camera
Father Rice checks in to see how everything is
going, but no one seems to notice…
Men study their soup. Father Rice said that in those days men like
those shown here depended on the food they received at the House to stay alive.
Some of the men in the last photo above can be
seen standing outside the north entrance of the House on a dreary day.
A candid photograph of men standing in the
basement of 61 Tannehill St.
In 1940 the 15th Decennial Census was taken. According to the enumeration data for St.
Joseph’s “Flophouse” of Hospitality the average man was just over 44 years old,
had a sixth grade education, and was unemployed for three and a half years,
with one man being unemployed for fourteen years. Three eighteen year olds are the youngest
men, and the two oldest were born three years after the Civil War ended. 114 are African American and 159 are
White. Sixteen are divorced, 49 married,
195 single and thirteen widowed. 252 are
unemployed. Of these 94 had been
employed in the steel mills and many more in related industries.
Improvised tables work very nicely.
Dorothy
Day of the Catholic Worker Movement visited the House on 12 June 1941. She wrote that all they had to eat was “parsnip
soup and sassafras tea for a week, than which there can be no more mortifying
diet.” One of the volunteers, William Lenz, took exception to her
characterization, saying she exaggerated the situation. “But it was pretty bad”
she concluded.
Father Rice poses with two staff members in front
of an impressive range.
Guests and House staff were never too far
apart. It takes a lot of teamwork to
prepare 1,000 meals a day.
Everyone and their skills were welcome at the
House of Hospitality
Lives
and Times of St. Joseph House of Hospitality: 1950’s
As
America prospered during the post-war years, the population at the House
changed. Unemployed, homeless and
hungry, gave way to disabled, homeless and hungry. A major shakeup occurred in 1952. In New York City the grave diggers union went
on strike. Cardinal Spellman, once
anticipated to be the first American Pope, put seminarians to work digging the
graves, which prompted Rice to call Spellman a scab. Rice had bit off more than he could chew, and
was sent “up river” to an ecclesiastical backwater by Bishop “Iron John”
Dearden. In that year Monsignor Paul
Bassompierre, or Bassom, was put in charge.
Bassom was the Spiritual Director of the St. Vincent De Paul Society,
and a very shrewd accountant. Monsignor
Bassompierre remained as director until 1984.
Monsignor Bassompierre says Grace before the men
break open that gigantic watermelon.
The St. Vincent de Paul Society had worked
closely with St. Joe’s from it’s earliest days.
This photo shows the Society building, and some of its employees, in the
late 1950s.
A grand old photo of Harry Allen. Cooking at St. Joe’s required the genius of
improvisation.
Sometimes items are
found in the archives that don’t have much to do with St. Joe’s. Here is a photo of Bishop Sheen when he
visited Pittsburgh in 1959. Standing to
his left is Byzantine Bishop Elko, whose installation Sheen was attending. One time Rice criticized Sheen for something
he said, but there’s no record that Sheen noticed…
This must have been
a personal photo belonging to Msgr. Bassompierre
More soup.
A guest of the house looks into the outside
world, and perhaps thinks about something that happened a long time ago