Electric Avenue
By Stefene Russell
Image courtesy of Scott K. Williams, Florissant, www.stlouistimeportal.com
The “Great White Way” once meant not just Broadway but illuminated streets in any city, usually in its theater district. Here, the Great White Way was Midtown, with its Princess, Empress and Liberty theaters. Grand Center was the big Midwestern stop-off for Barrymores performing Shakespeare or vaudevillian revues offering everything from unnatural sopranos to tap-dancing donkeys, but as you can see from the Halloween-colored postcard above, Sixth Street had its share of 10-cent theaters, too. What’s left of Sixth lies between Kiener Plaza and North Broadway, with the football stadium smack in the middle. It’s a little shocking to realize that this postcard is one of the few clues that the district existed. Gone are the starry theater facades, the velvet curtains and velvet seats, the heroes in greasepaint and yak-hair moustaches, the blazing white marquees.
