by Sonya Jongsma Knauss
Time to come out of hibernation. There really is nothing like sun on your skin and the gentle play of the spring breeze. It’s a kind of pure delight that reminds me of being a kid. I find I do some of my best thinking and writing while I am running through the streets and parks of Riverwest, though they’re not nearly as distraction-free as the cornfields I used to run past growing up.
Lakefront Brewery Cattail Ale, Ring of Fire Gallery move, Locust Street Festival Vendors, Riverwest Yogashala grand opening, 3rd Annual St. Patrick’s Beer Walk.
by Tom Tolan – Part 3 of 6 in a series
In the early 1960s, St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church — now St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church, at 128 W. Burleigh — was a relatively thriving parish, with a school attended by more than 1,000 children. Most parishioners were of German ancestry — many descended from “St. E’s” founders — or Polish families who had migrated from the east side of Holton. African-Americans were a definite presence, but they were less numerous in the parish than in the neighborhood. Fewer than 10 percent of the 1,056 pupils at St. Elizabeth’s in 1963 were black, and most of their families could be classified as middle-class.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of Riverwest: A Community History
by Tom Tolan
Part 2 of 6 in a series.
It is 4:30 a.m. on what will be a warm Friday in early autumn, 1920. Fourteen-year-old Clem Doberneck is one of the first in the neighborhood to rise. He eats breakfast with his father, who must catch an early streetcar to his job at the Miller Brewery, and by 5 a.m. is out of his family’s Booth Street house, beginning his morning rounds. From Locust Street to Reservoir Avenue, between Richards Street and the river, he walks from streetlight to streetlight, turning off the gas. Gradually, the sky becomes lighter….
A new year is a good time to take stock of what’s good and what’s bad in your life. For many people, one thing that’s good is this place we’re all in together. It’s where we live. It’s our neighborhood. So we’re devoting some space this issue to reflecting on the past year — in photos and writings — and on this place we live in together. Just what is it that makes a place a neighborhood? You may think it’s something as simple as location and boundaries, but even that can be complicated, as Dan asks in “Where is Riverwest?” Boundaries are fluid and changing; we decide what they are. You may think it’s the people that make a neighborhood, and that is mostly right. People have everything to do with a neighborhood’s character, which is why Riverwest has so much character. We live in one of the few diverse neighborhoods in one of the most segregated cities in the nation. But we still have a ways to go, as Tanya talks about in this month’s View from Here.
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