The Central Library has an extensive collection of rare books, many of which are extremely fragile due to age. But Special Collections also has books from the Twentieth Century that are in perfectly good condition,…
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Assorted Houses, Meramec Valley in Sunset Hills
These first two houses are off of Balmagoun Lane, laid out in the early Twentieth Century as the Sunset Hills area flourished as one of the first automobile suburbs out Gravois. I think this house…
Rock Alva, the Griesedieck Estate
I have become fascinated with the Griesedieck family, the “lost” brewing family of St. Louis. Everyon’e heard of the Busches and Lemps, but for much of the Twentieth Century, the three branches of the Griesedieck…
Cragwold, Revisited Christmas 2014
Seven years ago, I traveled to the southwestern corner of Kirkwood, where it abuts Sunset Hills to search for the home of Edwin Lemp, the last heir of William Lemp Sr. Edwin’s magnificent country house…
“Residential Security” Map, 1937
Prepared in 1937 and giving the housing stock of St. Louis a “rating,” this map is more a map of what is new, and what is old, than a map of quality.. Even in the…
Other Buildings at the Busch Estate
There are other buildings included in the Busch Estate tour that I didn’t talk about in my recent St. Louis Magazine article on the mansion. I forgot to take a picture of the pool house,…
Bauernhof, Grant’s Farm, Revisited
The Bauernhof at Grant’s Farm comes from German, meaning “farm court,” which refers to the walled, building-lined compound that still typifies many farms in Germany. The architecture is typical of Sixteenth Century German states, which…
The History of West Florissant Avenue
My colleague and former North County resident, Toby Weiss, wrote up this stellar summary of the history of West Florissant Avenue. She’s been photographing this street for years (I had the opportunity to join her…
Providence Fine Arts Center, Edmundson
We went a lot of weird places this last weekend, and this isolated corner of Edmundson where this stately church sits is another place off the beaten track we discovered. It is now the Providence…
Valhalla Mausoleum, Revisited
I was thinking those Norse warriors out front of the Valhalla Cemetery mausoleum weren’t there before when I visited in 2011! Does anyone know if these are original, and therefore probably being conserved offsite the…
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Image by Jennifer Silverberg
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