Month: January 2013
Cupples House
I forgot how amazing the Samuel Cupples House is; perhaps because it’s now on a pedestrian mall in SLU (admittedly justifiable due to the poor treatment of pedestrians in America), it’s just not a place I would accidentally drive by with out-of-town visitors. Perhaps what is most interesting of course is that it was once…
Pius XII Memorial Library, Saint Louis University
I’ll admit it; I wasn’t a huge fan of the Pius XII Memorial Library on the campus of Saint Louis University. But up close, I discovered there is a simple beauty to the straight lines that repeat throughout the facade. Influenced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the first floor seems to dissolve, leaving the…
Saint Louis University Law School
I really dislike the bland, monotonous facade of the building at the northeast corner of Tucker and Market Streets–what should be one of the most important addresses in St. Louis. SLU’s law school is updating the building from Modernist to Post-Modernist, and we’ll see how it turns out.
Italianate and Second Empire on Compton Avenue
I’ve always been mystified why there’s a stretch of Italianate/Second Empire houses on Compton Aveneue just south of I-44; the houses were all built between 1883 and 1885, but the majority of the houses around them date from 1915 to 1931. I looked to the Sanborn maps, and discovered that much of the area around…
Modernist Four Family Apartment Buildings of St. Louis Hills
I know sometimes four-family flats in St. Louis have bad reputations, but the form of architecture was built in St. Louis well into the 1950’s and 60’s. Particularly in the Holly Hills and St. Louis Hills neighborhoods, there is a plethora of interesting and unique (or sometimes ubiquitous) examples of this St. Louis staple. Red…
Holly Hills Boulevard
What can I possibly say about the ensemble of stunning early Twentieth Century houses that line Holly Hills Boulevard north of Carondelet Park? They’re amazing, and you should go check them out yourself if you can.
Delightful Eclecticism, Southwest Sides of Carondelet Park
Update: I went back and looked at Loughborough Avenue again in 2018. It’s hard to quantify much of the housing on the southern edge of St. Louis; it’s all sorts of different styles, and there’s not really one single style that predominates. Large turrets, like you might see in houses in Clayton, are common on…
Carondelet Park
Update: See my return to the park in October of 2018. Added Photo of former statue of DeSoto in July of 2022. Carondelet Park is the third largest park in St. Louis, and the anchor of the southern end of the city around Holly Hills and Carondelet; it was established in 1876, shortly after the…