A Roman Catholic parish at 2900 Clark Street in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood, St. Malachy Church served a largely Irish congregation from its founding in the late 1850s before transitioning to serve St. Louis's Black Catholic community by the early 20th century. Operated by the Jesuit Fathers from 1941 until its demolition in 1959, the parish ran a school staffed by the Daughters of Charity throughout that period. It was razed along with the rest of the neighborhood during the Mill Creek Valley urban renewal clearance.
A Roman Catholic parish at 2900 Clark Street in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood, St. Malachy Church served a largely Irish congregation from its founding in the late 1850s before transitioning to serve St. Louis's Black Catholic community by the early 20th century. Operated by the Jesuit Fathers from 1941 until its demolition in 1959, the parish ran a school staffed by the Daughters of Charity throughout that period. It was razed along with the rest of the neighborhood during the Mill Creek Valley urban renewal clearance. History: St. Malachy Church was founded out of Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist parish — sources give founding dates of both 1858 (closedparishes.com) and 1860 (Daughters of Charity provincial archives), a discrepancy that hasn't been resolved. At its founding, the surrounding Mill Creek neighborhood was predominantly Irish, but by the early 20th century it had become the heart of St. Louis's African American community, and St. Malachy's congregation shifted with it. In 1941, the Archdiocese of St. Louis turned operation of the parish over to the Jesuit Fathers, who invited the Daughters of Charity, long established in the region, to open a school. The school operated from 1941 to 1959. First-person accounts preserved in the Daughters of Charity archives describe teaching in a "substandard building" with no textbooks, blackboards, chalk, or paper, and running a hot-lunch program partly supplied through WPA surplus commodities. Enrollment declined after 1947, when Archbishop Joseph Ritter — an early advocate for integration who acted years ahead of Brown v. Board — desegregated the Archdiocese's Catholic schools; a 1957 account in the collection notes that as families gained access to previously white schools, they began moving to better neighborhoods. In 1959, the City of St. Louis demolished most of Mill Creek Valley as part of an urban renewal program that displaced nearly 20,000 residents, and St. Malachy Church and its school were razed along with it. The main altar, stations of the cross, and organ were salvaged and relocated to St. Timothy Church, and the parish's territory was folded into St. Bernard parish. No architect for the original building has been identified in available sources.
