C.S.P.S. 125

Since 1887

History of Czech-Slovak Immigration into St. Paul's West End

Chapter the third: philosphical convergence
by Joe Landsberger

Our access to history, to our stories—has faded and been colored with time. Often we are presented with a conundrum: the philosophical divisions of our early Cech-Slovak immigrants. Catholics, Congregationalists, and free-thinkers built and gathered in landmarks and societies along "Fort Road" or West 7th Street: St. Stan’s, Cyril Congregational Church, the "Cech Hall". As we describe major Slavonic West End institutions, we wonder: if these divisions were so deep, why are these structures so close to each other? What happened when a Cech-speaking Catholic passed a Cech-speaking free-thinking neighbor on the street? At the bakery? At the grocers? At work? What if one was Bohemian and one Slovak?

My own family’s experience says probably not much: my great aunt Julia Dvořák was Catholic and her husband Joe Svobodný a free thinker, or maybe just unchurched. When Julia attended church, she frequented the nearby St. James, particularly for the West End Irish. But as Aunt Dolly says: "that wasn’t a problem".

At St. Stan's, Father Rynda was a good friend with Vaclav Pícha and spent many hours in discussion in the back rooms of Pícha’s Saloon, the first bar on the first floor of the C.S.P.S. Hall. Yet Rynda forbade his parishioners the same pleasure. IN 1893, the composer Antonin Dvorák stayed with Father Rynda, yet the major musical event was held in the C.S.P.S. Hall. So also, a major Congregationalist was instrumental in building the C.S.P.S. Hall and promoting Slavonic culture and language.

Could it be that this intellectual division that ordered lives did not restrict them, or their cultural acuity? Could this cultural, internal competition paradoxically have strengthened these very cultural institutions? Could choice of path have provided safety, as well as diversity, of exploration in cultural development? Did the Czechs and Slovaks learn a lesson of history, that the real philosophy was adaptation and application to their new Minnesota circumstances, their new world? Did the cultural mix through intermarriage develop a hybrid, the fruits of which we experience today as evidenced in its last strong institution, the C.S.P.S. Hall? C.S.P.S. Hall today is the longest Czech-Slovak-serving building in the United States, witnessing a convergence of these philosophies: whether free-thinking, Catholic, Congregationalist. So also, it now serves a new wave of Czech and Slovak immigrants, leases its building to other ethnicities, as well as to the broader West End Community.

Edited from and first published in Gateway to a New World, Building Cech and Slovak Communities in the West End, Joe Landsberger et al, Published by the West 7th/Fort road Federation, 2003.
Our Website histories:

Early "Bohemian" immigration | Establishing St. Paul's C.S.P.S.  | CSPS Hall's chronology |
Histories from the C.S.P.S. Centennial 1987 | Czech and Slovak Sokol Minnesota chronology |
History from the Sokol centennial 1982 | Immigrant philosophical convergence | Circa 1892 flag