I had a bunch of maps saved up that I had some purpose for that I forgot, so I thought I would present them here for your enjoyment. The first two are related to Mill Creek and Chouteau’s Pond, and demonstrate how important the body of water was to early St. Louis. Remember, all images…
Category: Central
Posts about Central St. Louis
The Old Dairy
I stumbled across some old photographs by William Swekosky of the noted ruined stone house on Missouri Avenue in Lafayette Square, which I have looked at extensively over the years, particularly in July of 2018, but I briefly glanced at it back in May of 2022 when I was examining some new in-fill. What is…
Crunden-Martin, Destroyed
“It’s Thanksgiving, so the fires will be starting now,” someone remarked on social media–I recall reading somewhere. What a far too accurate portent. I woke up on Black Friday, and sadly, they were right. Crunden Martin, that stunning abandoned warehouse/factory complex I’ve looked at around a half dozen times over the years, was being consumed…
Norbury Wayman Map of St. Louis Additions and Subdivisions
Norbury Wayman was a historian and artist who researched and chronicled much of St. Louis and its built environment. I’m presenting here his additions and subdivisions of the city maps, which are incredibly useful for anyone looking to see when different portions of St. Louis were platted. Above is an overall map, and below are…
Darst-Webbe
Darst-Webbe, which like many housing projects in the United States, is spoken about as a single complex today, but like Pruitt-Igoe on the Near North Side of St. Louis or Cabrini-Green in Chicago, was really two different projects originally. It was built on the grounds of the neighborhood annihilated in the 1940s between Soulard and…
St. Raymond’s Maronite Cathedral
St. Raymond’s began in 1912 a short distance from St. Anthony the Hermit. And like its predecessor, it was inside an old house; in this case it looks to have been a Second Empire duplex shorn of its Mansard roof. The interior of what looks to be a large expansion out the back of the…
St. Anthony the Hermit Maronite Church
Wait a minute, I said to myself, the home of William D’Oench, one of Eberhard Anheuser’s early business partners, has the same address as the early Maronite church of St. Anthony the Hermit. It sat in the neighborhood we looked at the last couple of days. And yes, it was not hugely common, but down…
Clinton Peabody, Yesteryears, Part Two
Continuing our tour of the Near South Side streetscapes demolished in the 1940s for the Clinton Peabody Housing Project, we move over to Dillon Street. William Swekosky seems to have been drawn to St. Ange Avenue, with its strong mix of different architectural styles predating the Civil War. This was actually the suburbs before the…
Clinton Peabody, Yesteryears, Part One
As I began to research the business community in pre-Civil War St. Louis, the addresses of some of the most important factory owners often seemed to come up in the later footprint of Clinton-Peabody. Certainly the Cracker Castle is a well-known example, but there are many more. It turns out that streets such as St….
Clinton Peabody, Today
Over the next week, we’ll be examining the Near South Side, the area seen above around 1961, and how it has changed over the last eighty years due to government urban renewal plans. Clinton Peabody, built in 1942 on the Near South Side, is being demolished. Long known for crime and entrenched poverty, it will…