Spirit of The American Legion in St. Louis
National Commander Michael D. Helm helps hang a plaque on a newly renovated US Bank in St. Louis on Sept. 22. The plaque commemorates the May 1919 St. Louis Caucus, first national U.S. gathering of what would become the nation's largest veterans service organization. (Photo by Jeff Stoffer/The American Legion)

Spirit of The American Legion in St. Louis

A U.S. Bank branch in downtown St. Louis recently finished a major renovation, inside and out. The comparatively low-profile, single-floor building at the corner of Tucker Boulevard and Olive Street was constructed in 1984 in the shadows of high-rise apartment buildings, office complexes and parking structures.

Nearly 30 years after its emergence, the building had started “to look like a World War II bunker,” branch manager Mark Rosenkranz says. It was time for a major upgrade, including new drive-through teller bays, rebuilt exterior walls and roof, new flooring, modern design, décor and office areas. Gone is any resemblance, if ever there really was one, to a combat bunker.

The branch has had that new-bank smell since late August when most of the work was finished, but the grand-reopening ribbon-cutting ceremony was delayed until Sept. 22 when American Legion National Commander Mike Helm could be there personally to fit the final piece into the puzzle: a bronze plaque commemorating the site as the location of the May 8-10, 1919, St. Louis Caucus of The American Legion. There, on that date, approximately 1,100 veterans of the Great War drafted the organization’s constitution and its time-honored preamble.

“Simply put, the preamble that was approved here, at this spot, epitomizes everything that the Legion stands for today,” Helm said before joining bank officials in re-attaching the plaque to the building. “Thank you for respecting our place in history. Thank you for making a point to mark the spot where it all began.”

The Shubert Theater, which stood at the corner of Tucker and Olive when that first generation of Legionnaires filled it in 1919, is many decades gone. Other businesses, including two financial institutions

previous to U.S. Bank’s arrival, occupied that particular corner of downtown St. Louis over the years. Various engraved recognitions of The American Legion’s U.S. birthplace came and went, some of which are now assembled or replicated on a towering American Legion monument topped with an eternal flame at the city’s nearby Memorial Plaza.

Mercantile Bank, which occupied the corner of Tucker and Olive for years prior to its acquisition by Firststar Corp., had attached a plaque to its outer wall to identify the spot as the historic home of the St. Louis Caucus. That plaque, which also identified the location as a Mercantile Bank, disappeared after the buyout and was not replaced until after U.S. Bank obtained Firststar.

The missing plaque came to the attention of former U.S. Bank district manager Dan Bolin, an Army veteran and Legionnaire. One day, a longtime customer of the bank came in and asked, “What happened to our plaque?”

Bolin was able to get a new plaque ordered for the bank’s façade. In 2009, it was attached to the building by Clarence Hill, national commander of The American Legion at the time. And when the plaque had to be removed last fall for the renovation project, then-National Commander Daniel Dellinger performed the duty and handed it over to Missouri Department Adjutant Lowry Finley-Jackson for safe keeping. “We had a ceremony to take it down and give it to The American Legion,” Rosenkranz said. “We respect the organization. We respect its history.”

“This is the birthplace of The American Legion in America,” said Department of Missouri Commander Dennis Woeltje, who was joined at the ceremony by many Legionnaires from the city and state, including American Legion Past National Commander Joe Frank. “The Legion was formed to take care of wounded veterans. It is still that today. The VA situation today shows that (the Legion) is continuing that relevancy.”

At the ceremony, Helm described the preamble to The American Legion constitution as “the heartbeat” of the organization. “It was here, in 1919,

where so much of what the Legion continues to stand for was created.”

Helm, who once met Hamilton Fish, a founder who attended the St. Louis Caucus and was primary author of the Legion’s preamble, led the crowd in reciting the words that begin every Legion meeting, in chorus, before re-attaching the plaque to the bank.

Inscribed on the plaque are the following words:

SITE OF THE SHUBERT THEATER

AND

THE ST. LOUIS CAUCUS OF THE AMERICAN LEGION

May 8-10, 1919

To commemorate the founding, on this site in 1919, of The American Legion.

Here, where once stood the Shubert Theater, 1,100 World War I veterans, fresh from victory in Europe and dedicated to the memory of those who did not return, completed the task they had begun in Paris in March 1919. Recognizing the historic significance of this site, U.S. Bank and The American Legion have joined together to preserve in the minds of the people the memory of this place, and to commend to posterity the service and sacrifice of all American veterans.