A tree fell in the forest and I wasn’t around to hear it, so to speak. As a couple of my readers know, I lived in Baltimore, Maryland, from 2004 to 2005 in the Hampden neighborhood, a former mill town north of downtown along the Jones Falls. One of the most prominent landmarks in the…
Downtown Granite City, Spring 2024
I was visiting Granite City to see another amazing GCADD exhibit, so I thought I would photograph the downtown again, it having been five years since the last time. Everything looked the same, but there were some differences. For starters, the Moose Lodge has been demolished. The steel mill is still there for the time…
Suspicious Fire, Former Federal Cold Storage Company
It wasn’t publicized in the news, but if you were watching the St. Louis Fire Department’s Twitter feed, you noticed a passing reference to a firefighter being injured fighting a fire in a warehouse on the Near North Riverfront. This is the former Federal Cold Storage Company, which was part of a general trend of…
Grandview Drive, Peoria Heights
Straddling the city of Peoria and suburb of Peoria Heights, Grandview Drive offers panoramic views of Lake Peoria, a widening of the Illinois River as its wends its way through the prairie, buffeted by bluffs to the west. Originally envisioned in 1894, construction began in 1903 and was completed several years later. Laid out like…
Washington, Illinois, Spring 2024
At the intersection of Holland and South Main streets is an ensemble of Victorian Period houses in Washington, Illinois that I have revisited over the years, the first time in 2009 and the second time at least in 2022. This first house is on the northwest corner of the intersection. On the southwest corner is…
Around the Family Farm, Spring 2024
I checked up on the family farm east of Peoria in Central Illinois the last weekend of April, and things were looking good even if the fields were very wet, delaying spring planting. It was very windy, and it was alternating sunny and cloudy all day long. No longhorns could be spotted at the neighbor’s…
Water Main Break, Hyde Park
A massive, thirty-six inch water main burst at the intersection of North Blair Avenue and Penrose Street in the Hyde Park neighborhood just down the hill from the Grand and Bissell watertowers (standpipes, technically). Obviously, while the standpipes are long out of use, the water line system still uses a route that once passed through…
The End of Rock Alva
Thanks to a tip, I learned that Rock Alva’s last central portion (the majority of the estate had already been sold off) was recently sold and subdivided off into a small housing development. The only building to survive is the stable, where the Griesediecks used to skeet shoot. I do not know what its future…
Lost Weldon Spring, Part Three: A Quarry and A Cemetery
Heading north of Highway 94 in search of more cemeteries acquired by the federal government for the uranium processing grounds, we should have known taking the “Lost Valley Trail,” really an old farming road, was going to set ourselves up for an interesting day of exploration. First up, I noticed a break in the rocky…
Grand Motel, Closed and Burned Out
Back in January of this year, the now-closed Grand Motel was severely damaged by arson. It is actually very sad because the new owner was planning on renovating the buildings for a homeless outreach center. I saw her on the news, and her heart was in the right place. I don’t know what will happen…