Much of The Hill’s modern character owes something to an organized neighborhood effort that, by TIME magazine’s account, took shape around 1970. At the center of that effort was a parish priest, Father (later Monsignor) Salvatore Polizzi, and the group he founded, Hill 2000.
A priest from St. Louis
According to his obituary in the St. Louis Review, the archdiocesan newspaper, Polizzi was born in St. Louis on November 8, 1930, to Vito and Rosalia (Randazzo) Polizzi. Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter ordained him at the Cathedral Basilica on March 17, 1956, and he was first sent to St. Ambrose as an assistant pastor. After serving at St. Catherine of Alexandria in Riverview Gardens from 1959 to 1964, he returned to The Hill. He later earned a master’s degree in urban planning from Saint Louis University.
Founding Hill 2000
The Review states that at St. Ambrose, Polizzi founded the Hill 2000 organization and created Hill Day. No source we reviewed gives an exact founding year. The neighborhood association’s own history says the group grew out of residents learning to act together against threats such as the construction of Interstate 44, which began in 1971. A 2003 Southeast Missourian feature put it this way: Polizzi “founded what would become today’s Hill 2000 Inc.”
An early outside portrait came from TIME magazine. In an April 29, 1974, article, TIME described Polizzi, then 43 and associate pastor of St. Ambrose, and a nonprofit development corporation he had helped organize. TIME did not name the group, but said it had existed for four years and counted about 1,100 of the area’s 1,500 families as members.
What the group did
TIME and later sources describe a wide-ranging agenda:
- Housing: buying vacant houses, fixing them up and reselling them at low cost to young couples, while keeping a waiting list of Italian families who wanted to move in (TIME).
- Jobs and youth: finding 60 jobs for residents and running a summer youth program that paid students $1 an hour to spruce up the neighborhood. Those students painted fire hydrants and trash cans red, white and green (TIME). Read more in why Hill fire hydrants are red, white and green.
- Fighting threats: leading opposition to a drive-in theater and to a plan to put industrial waste into an old clay mine (St. Louis Review; TIME).
- The highway: working to keep I-44 from isolating part of The Hill, including raising money for the Edwards Street bridge (St. Louis Review; hillstl.org).
TIME reported that much of this was funded by roughly $50,000 earned at an annual summer festival that drew 100,000 visitors. Today the Hill 2000 Neighborhood Association hosts the Italian Heritage Parade and Festa, which First Alert 4 reported held its 157th edition in 2024.
A wider career
Polizzi’s influence reached well beyond The Hill. The Review lists his appointment in 1979 as director of the archdiocesan Office of Urban and Community Affairs, 17 years as chairman of the city’s Land Reutilization Authority, and service on human rights and development boards. He became pastor of St. Roch Parish in 1981, where, the Review says, he remained for the rest of his life. Pope John Paul II named him a monsignor in 1986.
His death
Polizzi died on April 24, 2023, at age 92, at the Mother of Good Counsel Home, according to the Review and KSDK. His funeral Mass was held May 2 at the Cathedral Basilica, with burial at Calvary Cemetery. Joe Vollmer, the Ward 5 alderman at the time, summed up his legacy for KSDK: “He is what turned it into the community that it is.”
For more on the neighborhood’s past, see our History of The Hill timeline.
Sources: St. Louis Review, KSDK, TIME, Hill 2000 (hillstl.org), Southeast Missourian, First Alert 4 (KMOV)
