Brick will never tell you lies, and if you look closely at this fascinating house on what was formerly Armstrong Street, we realize that there was once a front porch (as well as a small side porch, according to Compton and Dry). Greek Revival houses are incredibly rare in St. Louis, and city records state…
Month: June 2018
Schnaider’s Malt House
Designed by Frederick Wolf and Louis Kledus and opened in 1876 (just missing an appearance in Compton and Dry), the Schnaider Malt House is a remarkably well-preserved example of a late Nineteenth Century brewery building with most of its structures left intact. As the Sanborn Map below shows, by 1908, its purpose was only to…
Lafayette Avenue, Revisited in Between Compton and Jefferson Avenues
Update: See a comparison of two storefronts from the summer of 2019. I also looked at the south side of Lafayette Avenue in this area in the late summer of 2021. I find Lafayette Avenue in between Compton Avenue and Jefferson an interesting stretch of street; it was clearly once a very important stretch of…
The Southern Grove, In Transition
The south side of the Grove, or Forest Park Southeast, or whatever you want to call it, is one of those areas that has been isolated for a very long time. It was a small settlement, out the railroad tracks and the Market Street Road, or Manchester Road as we call it nowadays, and even…
4533 Clayton Avenue
As Barnes and Washington University Medical grew rapidly after World War II, they built and purchased Modernist buildings that were going up in the central corridor of the City, along streets such as Lindell Boulevard and Forest Park Avenue. Old mansions came down, and new office buildings went up. This building demonstrates how steel-reinforced concrete…
Central Institute for the Deaf
People have been hyperventilating for years that this wonderful Spanish Colonial Revival building, which was built for a school that served the deaf, was going to be torn down. It is obviously being renovated right now, so everyone can calm down.
Residential Survivors, Clayton Avenue
The giant megaplex of hospitals that now make up one of the most prestigious and effective medical communities in the world was once a wealthy and upper middle class neighborhood. A few of those houses still stand, though they are owned by either BJC or Washington University. They are interesting survivors.
Old Kingshighway
A long time ago, Kingshighway went straight north, and then doglegged right in front of Barnes Hospital, before turning right in front of Forest Park (did you know technically there are a couple of acres of Forest Park east of the current curved alignment to this day?). When Highway 40 was built, that giant cloverleaf…
Pennsylvania Avenue at Crittenden Street
Update: I revisited this block in April of 2023. Just south of this block, which I covered a couple of years ago, is the quiet 2900 block of Pennsylvania. Why is it so quiet? It intersects at Arsenal and Gravois, and you get about five seconds to go before the light turns red. But there…
The Magnificent Town Houses
This magnificent row of houses looks like many row buildings in St. Louis: like a cogent composition of a single palace or grand residence like you would see in the middle of a grand estate. But upon closer inspection, you realize there are multiple front doors. And my, what a beautiful set of houses this…