I’ve looked at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows over in Belleville twice over the years, first in 2014, when I looked at the Mary Chapel, and then again in 2015, when I looked at the Christ the King Chapel. I also wrote a short article about it for St. Louis Magazine. But…
Former Scruggs Methodist Memorial Church
Originally founded in 1872, Scruggs Methodist Memorial Church moved to the corner of Cook and Spring in 1877. The current Colonial Revival church was opened in 1929, and closed in 1998. I just realized I remember the original steeple being extant until only recently. City permits reveal that it was most likely removed in 2016,…
Fanning Elementary School
What’s now Fanning Middle School, and what will soon be a vacant building, was originally an elementary school. It’s one of the most interesting and architecturally rich of the schools designed by William B. Ittner in 1907. Clear views of the school are now blocked by some strange looking trees, but it’s a mix of…
Former Harris Teachers College
Normal schools, where teachers were trained to teach in primary school education, were located throughout the State of Missouri. My own alma mater, Truman State, was long a teachers college. Harris Teachers College, built according to plans by William B. Ittner in 1905, was the location of the white teachers’ college in St. Louis. The…
Wyman Elementary School
Designed by William B. Ittner and built in 1901, Wyman Elementary School sits on a quiet dead end block of Theresa Avenue south of Park Avenue, just east of Grand Boulevard and Gallaudet School. Despite the installation of some extremely ugly front doors, the building is in good shape and still functions as a part…
Farragut Elementary School
I couldn’t help notice the similarity between David Farragut Elementary School in the Greater Ville neighborhood and Franz Sigel down in McKinley Heights. Both were designed by William B. Ittner, though Farragut opened in 1905, a year before Sigel. Both are named after Union commanders: Farragut, the first full admiral in American history, and Sigel,…
The Greater Ville, January 2020
I was in the area of the eastern Greater Ville, and a found new surprise while checking on some updates. This amazing Greek Revival country house shows that there was plenty of early development out in the Grand Prairie near Fairground Park long before the “suburban” housing stock was built in the early Twentieth Century….
Around Ashland Avenue, The Greater Ville
Two years ago, I wrote the following about the houses above that I photographed on a cold, gray morning: “And then, there is a small pocket of Modern bungalows, which if this neighborhood’s trend continues, might very well have been part of a quarry operation or always open space before these were built around or…
B&O Railroad Roundhouse, Cone Yard, Revisited
Oops! It turns out the old roundhouse in East St. Louis was demolished sometime in the last decade, and all that is left are the concrete foundations, and the rapidly filling pits where the locomotives once drove in to be serviced. The roundtable had already been filled in completely years ago. It turns out this…
Historic American Buildings Survey: The Clemens Mansion
It seems like it’s been far longer, but it’s coming up on three years since fire gutted the James Clemens Mansion, resulting in its final demolition. But back in November of 1960, Paul Piaget photographed the mansion when it was still part of a religious complex as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey, cataloged…