Skyview Drive-In
There was something geometric and simple about the Skyview Drive-In on the hazy Saturday I visited. There are abandoned drive-ins scattered here and there throughout the Metro East, but this one is still in operation.
We Do Spreads
Supposedly Belleville has the longest Main Street in America. I don’t know if that’s true, but it does have some amazing surviving neon signs from the golden age of that advertising art, such as this example just to the west… Continue Reading
Return to Belleville this Week
The Hofbrauhaus is finally open on the western reaches of Belleville! All this next week and a little of the following I will return to the historic county seat of St. Clair County.
Just East of Grand Boulevard and Fairgrounds Park
The blocks east of Fairgrounds Park are in rough shape. I am concerned about the future of this portion of the city. It is near where Bob Reuter’s boyhood home is. There are a few pockets of houses left, but… Continue Reading
Missed Connections, Old North
Old North St. Louis is famous for the success up around the 14th Street Mall and rightfully so, but I do want to draw attention to the mess down near the new interstate bridge and the cut-off streets it has… Continue Reading
Under the Viaducts in the Mill Creek Valley
Historic photographs prove the valley between Chouteau and Forest Park Avenue was never some Lafayette Square-type neighborhood full of beautiful houses that deteriorated into a wasteland. No, it was always a gritty, industrial, traintrack-laced warren where coal dust and smoke… Continue Reading
Delmar Boulevard, First Half of 2019
I find it interesting that Delmar Boulevard is used as the great demarcation line for the discussion of race relations in St. Louis. For the most part, east of Kingshighway, it is a completely unremarkable stretch of street, with abandonment… Continue Reading
St. Agnes Home
Given by Elizabeth Moehring to the Carmelite Sisters in 1929, the St. Agnes Home opened in 1935 in the far northeastern corner of Kirkwood. It reminds me of an old monastery you might see in Normandy along the British Channel… Continue Reading
Vernon and Walton Avenues
Euclid Avenue, Springtime 2019
Things change, and things don’t from a year and a month earlier.