Joplin City Council hears details of city's Irish immigrants
Chad Stebbins, retired Missouri Southern State University department chair and author, told about the men who settled here as a place where pioneers and capitalists came to enrich themselves in a lead and zinc bonanza.
His remarks, along with those of community historian Brad Belk, were made to recognize Joplin's 152nd birthday on March 23.
Belk detailed some of the past observances for the city's founding.
'Thousands of people flocked to Joplin in the latter part of the 19th century seeking their fortunes in the mining fields,' Stebbins said. 'They came from all over the United States but also from Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Greece, Sweden and Eastern Europe. The immigrants from Ireland had the greatest impact on the new city.'
Daniel Sheehan
One whose story has been captured in Joplin's historical annals is that of Sgt. Daniel Sheehan, a Joplin police officer who local residents called 'Dad.' He was born in 1830 in Killarney, in County Kerry in southwest Ireland.
'We don't know when exactly he came to Joplin, but he did serve the city for eight years as a night watchman and a police officer. He broke up fights, he handled rowdy prisoners. He arrested men who were beating their wives and women who were involved in prostitution,' Stebbins said. 'He arrested those who drove their buggies too fast on Main Street. And, on one occasion ... he even had to shoot a rabid dog that was attacking a family.'
Sheehan was shot and killed July 19, 1885, the first of Joplin's law officers to to die in the line of duty. He was shot as he and two other officers worked to arrest a man who was wanted for selling liquor without a license.
'The man was arrested and jailed. But at 2 o'clock the next morning, an angry mob used a battering ram and broke open the front door of the jail. The man was taken to Second and Main streets and lynched from a tree,' Stebbins said.
Patrick Murphy
Patrick Murphy, who would come to be regarded as the 'father of Joplin,' was born in 1839 in Ireland and first settled in Pennsylvania. He made his way to Carthage in 1866 and opened a store on the north side of the square, Stebbins said.
After the discovery of lead on Joplin Creek, Murphy opened another store on the Carthage square and also made plans to establish his own town along with a business partner, W.P. Davis, called Murphysburg, west of Joplin Creek. At the same time, settler John C. Cox was laying out the town of Joplin to be located east of Joplin Creek.
'There was an intense rivalry' between the two towns, Stebbins said.
For a number of years, Murphysburg overshadowed its rival community, Joplin, according to the Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri. In 1872, Murphysburg was the larger and wealthier town, containing several stores, a smelting works built by Murphy and Davis and others, and the only newspaper in the county. But a year later, the two towns were incorporated as Joplin.
Murphy had built an elaborate home at what now is the southwest corner of Fourth Street and Wall Avenue. He opened a bank, which he called the Banking House of Patrick Murphy, about a block away. He later changed the name to Miner's Bank of Joplin. He had owned numerous businesses and made many investments over his life.
'When he died in 1900, the community mourned and businesses closed for the day. A procession stretched from his home at Fourth Street to Fairview Cemetery,' where he was buried, Stebbins said. Later, his remains were moved to Mount Hope Cemetery, a new cemetery in the early 1900s intended to become the final resting place of affluent Joplin and Webb City residents.
Thomas Connor
A third influential Irish immigrant has been known as Thomas Connor, but his actual surname was O'Connor, Stebbins said.
In 1871, Connor came to Joplin, where he later opened a saloon on Broadway in what is now East Town. He was drawn into mine ownership after he and his wife took drives on Sundays to view the mines established in the Joplin area, Stebbins said. He started buying up land and ended up with 6,000 acres extending into the Galena, Kansas, area. He would lease land to miners. His earnings from that endeavor reached $10,000 a week from mining royalties.
He soon bought the Joplin Hotel, which was located then at Fourth and Main streets. City leaders appealed to him to tear down the Joplin Hotel, which they considered old, and build another. He did so, but died before he got to see the hotel finished.
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When we need them, that's precisely where we go.' It's Memorial Day weekend, and Vers bar is buzzing with pre-Pride month energy, which is to say it feels a little like Christmas Eve. Owner David DeParolesa finds me in the happy-hour crowd, grabs us a couple of seltzers, and squires me into a spacious booth. 'Hi!' I say. 'Hi!' he laughs. Three years into this venture and the magic still hasn't waned. He's doing it—fostering the sort of community he dreamed of as a lonely gay kid growing up in a rough part of Boston. DeParolesa arrived in New York 16 years ago with just a suitcase, crashing with girlfriends on the Upper East Side. He discovered Hell's Kitchen by wandering into it, crossing Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue and Broadway and then feeling the air shift. Unlike in some other city neighborhoods, no one here shouted homophobic slurs at him. He could breathe. He moved in and hasn't looked back. 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A proposed redevelopment plan for the nearby Port Authority bus terminal might pose additional structural hazards. In this market, moving might not be possible. Some days are crushingly hard. 'A lot of what we fought for for many years, including generations before us, is being taken away,' Barnhart says. 'It's really disturbing that we can't offer people safety or even predict what might happen anymore.' So the team zeroes in on their locus of control. Downstairs, a math tutoring session is underway. A yoga class will convene later tonight. Gloved kitchen volunteers stand over huge bowls, hand-mixing ingredients for meatballs. Sunday dinner service begins at 6:00. Let it be known: Flex is a gay bar. It is a gay bar owned by gay men who seek to preserve and uplift gay culture. Co-owners James Healey and Jason Mann are telling me this in words. The neon lighting installation on the wall behind them—depicting a huge cock in money-shot mode—is telling me in inches. 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She had been familiar with Troy Perry, who was the founder of Metropolitan Community Churches. So we started talking. I invited her to church. She was pretty anti-church. This would have been probably, like, late '90s or 2000, something like that. But she came. She came one Sunday, and much to her surprise, I think, she got a standing ovation. People here, because of how we view the gospel as a radical social manifesto—that's what it's about—knew who she was and what she had done for us, and I think it kind of took her breath away, in a sense, surprised her. So she kept coming, and she was baptized here. There's a picture of her in this long velvet cape; that's how she dressed up for her baptism. It was on Epiphany Sunday. She looks like one of the Magi.' I get why Rivera stuck around and ended up running the church's food pantry: Rev. Pat is a baddie too. I come to learn she's been holding it down for this LGBTQ-affirming Christian congregation for 44 years, 32 in Hell's Kitchen. The church (part of a national fellowship) bought the building in 1993, when many members were still scared of the neighborhood. 'My partner—my wife—sat out front in the car overnight just to see what happened on the street,' Bumgardner says. 'And what we discovered was, it's just people trading sex for survival.' She took her findings back to the church community: 'It's not a big deal. You're safe. You're fine.' These days, she says, members are far more worried about resisting repression and bigotry. They're looking to church leaders not just for guidance on how to cope but what to do—it's just that kind of place. Bumgardner guides the flock toward tangible actions, things people can actually execute and show up for, such as letter-writing campaigns, local demonstrations like the upcoming Queer Liberation March, and support tasks for the church's food pantry and emergency LGBTQ+ youth shelter, both of which are named for Rivera. Reflection is helpful too, she says. 'I encourage people to think more deeply about how Hell's Kitchen could be a center for what New York is supposed to be. Like, the center of the world, where everybody has a place, can get their needs met, and feels safe—not because there are 10,000 police on the street, but safe because we value diversity and want to build a realm where it's possible to just be who you are.' After my meeting with Rev. Pat, I decide to check out the congregation at TMPL, a 49th Street gym unofficially known as the neighborhood's gayest fitness outpost. Here, members pay $200 a month for a nightclubby ambience, spa-like locker room amenities, and classes with coy, heretical names like 'Holy Water Resurrection,' which meets Wednesdays in the 25-meter saltwater pool. Culture + Lifestyle Lesbian Bars Are Back From the Brink An uptick in the number of spaces for queer women holds promise for the future CEO Patrick Walsh, who's presided over the TMPL chainlet since acquiring it from fitness titan David Barton in 2017, has other business interests too—namely, as a key early investor in Donald Trump's Truth Social platform, where the president has spent this Pride month fulminating against 'radical left Democrats' maneuvering to destroy New York City through 'Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men Playing in Women's Sports.' The muscled midday crowd streams through the TMPL entrance. I loiter on the curb rewatching Sylvia Rivera's ferocious 1973 speech at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally, in which she excoriates New York's gay 'middle-class white club.' That club feels literal here, complete with a juice bar. In a visibly queer neighborhood like this, it's easy to assume everyone's values are aligned, says four-year resident Connor Johnston, 32, an actor and writer originally from Oregon who video-chatted with me about his life as a proud 'Hell's Kitchen gay.' 'We don't say too much about politics because it's just…understood,' he intones. In the discussions he has had, he's been surprised to learn where some people stand on Trump, or on Palestine. 'It's strange,' Johnston says uneasily, then jokes, 'Should we do a wellness check? Maybe we should go around and be, like, 'We're all on the same page here…right?'' Even though some threads unite the LGBTQ+ community, class is one factor that plays into political differences. And in this neighborhood—the same one abandoned by shady landlords during the citywide fiscal crisis and 'white flight' exodus of the 1970s—median monthly rent climbed 8.3 percent year over year this past February to $4,550, outpacing the average Manhattan median rent increase of 6.4 percent. Meanwhile, median household income now hovers around $127,380, which is 60% more than the citywide median of $79,480. Hell's Kitchen is about 50% white, according to recent population figures, about 20 percentage points whiter than New York City on average. Johnston, who is Asian, is often struck by the homogeneity at neighborhood parties and bars: Is anyone else clocking this? In addition to more diversity, Johnston would love to see greater candor on these and other issues. Before even moving to Hell's Kitchen, he commuted in regularly from Queens for volunteer shifts on the Trevor Project's crisis hotline for LGBTQ+ youth, which, at the time, had a call center on 35th and 8th. In other words, sensitive conversations are kind of his specialty. (I too was a Trevor counselor.) Now that he lives here, Johnston has made dear friends within walking distance, plugged in with a local organizing group, and found the line between breezy belonging and social responsibility. 'It's not like, 'Okay, we did it. We made this area,'' Johnston says. He accepts that Hell's Kitchen will always be a project. 'I love her,' he says. 'I'll never leave.' As you head west through the neighborhood, Pride flags gradually give way to sweep notices—official warnings the city issues to unhoused community members seen camping on public property. In short: Move along or we'll confiscate all your stuff. The notices are a stark reminder that high rent costs drive homelessness, which climbed 53.1 percent in New York State between January 2023 and January 2024. Ninety-three percent of that surge came from New York City. Enforced by police with varying levels of aggression, encampment sweeps are the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit against the city, with homeless and formerly homeless plaintiffs alleging violations of constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure. And legal or not, many critics denounce the sweeps as cruel. I chat with folks in a sidewalk encampment on West 45th Street between 11th and 12th who've been hit with a sweep notice for the following day. Soon, they'll have to pack up everything in sight: clothing, personal documents, shelf-stable food items, tents, tarps, toiletries, blankets, umbrellas, books, some found objects (a vintage wall clock, a pair of subwoofer speakers) they could sell for cash later on. Then they'll have to scope out other spots on which to set up and sleep—that is, until the next flurry of sweep notices appears. Street displacement in Hell's Kitchen always ramps up during Pride season, they tell me, when business owners and partying visitors call in complaints to the city's 311 hotline. The New York City Police Department did not respond to an emailed request for comment on the timing of Hell's Kitchen sweeps. Commenting by phone, Hell's Kitchen City Council rep Erik Bottcher (D) tells me, 'We don't want the unhoused to be policed out of the neighborhood. Pride shouldn't be an excuse to sweep anyone out. We do want people to get connected to housing resources and services, and that's why we've been fighting to make sure that those are available.' By way of example, Bottcher cites a new 24-hour drop-in center on 52nd Street and 9th Avenue that provides case management, showers, hot meals, and more. Still, whatever the lattice of services, people continue to slip through. An encampment resident named Andre McLeod says he'd like to speak on the record. He notices me admiring his fit: a short-sleeve button-up that shows off his toned biceps, a trucker hat that reads 'King,' and layered silver necklaces that glint in the searing afternoon sun. 'To look at me, you'd never know,' he says. The Brooklyn-born 45-year-old explains he's had a number of occupational seasons in his life and an often comfortable ride: star quarterback in college, a pro stint playing in Italy, a role as national youth athletics coach and scout, and a brush with acting and modeling. Eventually he followed the men in his family and pivoted to construction with a focus in transport infrastructure: the Kosciuszko Bridge replacement, the 7 subway line extension. He ran into some hardships along the way—drugs and such. When the work dried up, he came to Hell's Kitchen, where he's been on and off the streets for five years, using his trade skills to teach others how to tie down belongings securely, how to stack stuff on wheels for quicker escape—a convoy of wagons and rolling suitcases and granny carts. The way McLeod tells it, Hell's Kitchen underwent a weird vibe shift during the pandemic. People got sucked into simulated realities on Facebook, began living through their devices like in The Matrix. Sometimes, for fun, he'll try to catch the eye of a stranger and toss out a few kind words as a pulse check: Yo, nice kicks! 'People don't even know how to take compliments,' he says. 'No energy, no personality, like a foreign city.' So he's grateful for the connections he has made out here, his circle of fellow 'urban campers,' at least two of whom are LGBTQ+. 'Midtown is my home, y'know? And this is my family,' he says. 'I genuinely care about people. I hope everyone makes it out.' McLeod's community also includes his hair stylist at Diamond Cuts Barber Shop on 40th and 8th; the old guy at the liquor store up the block; the neighbor in business attire who passes us across the street and catches this interview in progress. 'Hey, he's a nice guy!' the neighbor calls out to me, gesturing toward McLeod. 'He has lots of potential!' McLeod laughs from inside the tent I'll help take down the next morning, before the city can clear it away. 'God bless!' he shouts back. 'I know, man! I gotchu! ' Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest More Great Stories From AD Not a subscriber? Join AD for print and digital access now. Axel Vervoordt Crafts a Poetic Home in the Belgian Countryside For His Family The 15 Best Places to Buy Bedding of All Kinds What Makes a Space Gay? Unpacking Queer Interiors
