I’m constantly drawn back to this row of houses, owned by the State of Missouri. Elegant, neighborly, and still full of potential since the State has stabilized them, they need to be sold to the right developer. This is a… Continue Reading
I wrote about this desolate block of Samuel Shepard Drive last month, discovering that a daughter of the founder of the Veiled Prophet probably lived here. It is marked for demolition by the State of Missouri, which owns the properties… Continue Reading
I’ve long been intrigued by the dense collection of houses built just after the Civil War to the northeast of the intersection of Gravois and Jefferson. What fire insurance maps and Compton and Dry show as some sort of large… Continue Reading
Noted architect Theodore Rapp designed this row of small bungalows, each originally possessing a small hipped roof with alternating one or two pyramid roof ornaments. Each one is now slightly unique, after some owners tore off the hipped roof or changed… Continue Reading
It’s hard to tell what the bozos are doing up in the area marked for eminent domain. Here are s I think both of these houses will be demolished soon. North of St. Louis Avenue, there are still some very… Continue Reading
In the first year of this website, I visited the Scott Joplin House. I hadn’t been back on foot until last month; I drove through back in late July. Why is that? Scott Joplin is a fascinating character, and incredibly… Continue Reading
As I discovered over in Compton Heights earlier this summer, an old stone retaining wall can foster a fascinating story. Take this one, on the 2900 block of Locust. As can be seen in the Sanborn maps below, it was… Continue Reading
If you keep your eyes pealed, you start to realize Midtown still holds clues to its Nineteent Century past, before the neighborhood was taken over by auto dealerships and other businesses in an extension of downtown in the early Twentieth… Continue Reading
One of the august churches that gave this portion of Midtown the nickname “Piety Hill,” Jamison Memorial Church is the second congregation to occupy this church. Originally, this was the Episcopal Church of the Holly Communion, which originally built a… Continue Reading
Once what appears to have been the upper middle class of St. Louis in the early Twentieth Century, out the long, straight streets of the Grand Prairie, the West End now has increasing abandonment. The old houses are well-built, and… Continue Reading