Holiday parades are a time-honored tradition, and Evansville’s have held a special place in the city’s history.
The city’s Parks and Recreation Department attempted to lift people’s spirits during the Great Depression by staging the first Saint Nicholas Parade in the 1930s. Assistance came from the Works Progress Administration, a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1935 New Deal.
When the WPA stopped supporting the parade after 1940, residents formed the Knights of St. Nicholas and raised more than $15,000 — around $320,321.56 in today’s dollars — to continue the parade. Members’ identities remained secret, and an oath kept it that way.
“Members running the event were also carefully blended with non-members to maintain their anonymity,” says Willard Public Library archivist Hannah Thomason. “It shows an economic improvement in the area for the WPA to pull back and citizens be able to step forward and create such an elaborate event.”
Evansville held its community-supported Saint Nicholas Parade on the morning of Nov. 21, 1941. The event symbolized the end of one national crisis while, unknown that day, the country headed toward another. Seventeen days later, the U.S. joined World War II after Japan’s Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Photos captured by E.W. Newman Co. in Willard Public Library’s archives show floats parading through Downtown Evansville. Tractors were used to pull 40 floats — manned by more than 100 people swathed in sequins, pearls, gold buttons, taffeta, silk, and metallic thread — representing songs, moments of historical significance, toys, and holiday-centric themes. A “queen,” chosen by her peers, would ride on the float for each local high school wearing a custom gown splashed with the school’s colors.
Hat and coat-clad revelers lined the streets along a route that started at North First Avenue and Franklin Street and wound its way through a Downtown street pattern that since has changed. After crossing Pennsylvania Street — the West Side precursor to the Lloyd Expressway — the parade route snaked through Downtown via Court, Sycamore, Main, and Locust streets before culminating in front of what was then the four-story Keller-Crescent Printing Company building at Locust Street and Riverside Drive.
“The Saint Nicholas Parade was designed to be an immensely joyful celebration,” Thomason adds — a theme that remains in use today. Just like the mid-century event helped the city rise from the gloom of the Great Depression, Evansville’s modern parade is emerging from the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. After a five- year hiatus, a Christmas parade returns to North Main Street on Nov. 24. Floats will pass under the Jacobsville neighborhood’s new “Welcome” arch and continue north, with the parade ending at Garvin Park.
