St. Louis' Kerry Patch

Athlone Avenue in North St. Louis, which is named after an Irish town, is lined with stately residences from the turn of the last century. But less affluent Irish immigrants called the nearby "Kerry Patch" home.

William Marion Reedy, St. Louis' brightest literary light, was born in the Kerry Patch, the city's Irish ghetto, in 1862. A newspaperman by trade, Reedy also published Reedy's Mirror from the early 1890s until his death in 1920. During that time, the literary magazine gained a national reputation for publishing leading poets, including T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Vachel Lindsay, Sara Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Carl Sandburg and Edgar Lee Masters.

The accompanying image shows the plaza in front of St. John's Catholic Church on Chestnut Street downtown, where a Celtic cross was recently erected to honor Irish immigrants' contribution to the building of St. Louis.