The giant Romanesque Revival mansion above, sitting on the crest of the hill above Soulard on 13th Street, wouldn’t have been built when Compton and Dry was drawn in 1875. But some of the houses were already built, even if… Continue Reading
I call these houses the “mystery houses,” and I’ll explain why. They seem to appear on Compton and Dry from 1875, and if you look closely in the lower right corner of the image below, just below the letter R… Continue Reading
I realized I had actually visited the second location of the Carmelite Sisters of St. Joseph out in Ladue, which is where they moved when Soulard was becoming too industrial back in the early Twentieth Century. Or maybe I should… Continue Reading
McNair Avenue north from Arsenal in Benton Park is easily one of my favorite streets in St. Louis, and its variety of houses from different generations, along with the beautiful rehabs, make it truly unique. Second Empire houses of two… Continue Reading
Heading north up McNair Avenue from Arsenal Street there is a mix of older exurban houses, such as the one below, with an original alley house, with the later Second Empire examples. The remnants of a saloon sign is still… Continue Reading
Heading away from Salena Street over to Wisconsin Avenue and other nearby streets, there are other Second Empire houses and storefronts. But again, as can be seen further down the block, there are later Twentieth Century buildings, showing that there… Continue Reading
Senate and Congress streets in Benton Park are perfect examples of my old maxim that the street grid of St. Louis were not designed by a central authority, but was laid out by private developers, even brewers such as George… Continue Reading
John Fremont was apparently the first Republican candidate for president (he obviously lost, since Abraham Lincoln was the party’s first successful candidate for that national office). It is not surprising, with the strong German abolitionist population in St. Louis, that… Continue Reading
For lack of a better way of describing them, there are a host of cozy little streets to the southeast of the intersection of Jefferson and Gravois. As is the same behind the other three corners of that bustling crossroads,… Continue Reading
You might not care about Farmington, far to the south in St. Francois County, but it is very important to the St. Louis region, actually lending its name to the official name for the combined census region according to the… Continue Reading