Falstaff Brewery No. 10, Revisited July 2020

I came back to photograph the old Falstaff Plant No. 10 the second Saturday of July to see how it was doing. I always enjoy the Lemp and Anheuser-Busch breweries, but I like how the architecture of this plant contrasts so much from those two more famous institutions. I’ve also decided to go ahead and…

Salena and Cushing Streets, Benton Park

Just to the west of the old Falstaff Plant No. 10 and just south of Gravois there is an interesting pocket of house in the Benton Park neighborhood. Blues City Deli is nearby. What is also interesting is that there are some very old houses, including ones that probably date back to as early as…

St. Agatha’s Roman Catholic Church, Revisited

St. Agatha’s Roman Catholic Church is one of the more handsome religious buildings in the inner neighborhoods of St. Louis. As can be seen in this historic photograph below, it has changed little in appearance since the 1890s. Update: The configuration seen here was in fact very common in St. Louis, as the model was…

Narrow Streets South of Arsenal, Benton Park

Update: The house above was renovated and sold for a very high price in the spring of 2022. The renovation of the house in the fourth photo below was also completed. See them both in this post from May of 2022. Last summer I had taken photographs of the old Cave and Washington streets of…

Lindell Boulevard Water Main Break, Part II

There was another major water main break on Lindell Boulevard near, but not in the exact same spot as the one last summer at almost the exact same time of year. Hot temperatures do that to aging infrastructure. I went out yet again to get interesting insights into the construction of Lindell, and again I…

Former St. Adalbert’s Roman Catholic Church

At the corner of Woodland and Wren is the former Polish Roman Catholic Church of St. Adalbert’s in the Walnut Park neighborhood, now owned by Oakgrove Missionary Baptist. It is obvious, particularly because there is a formerly vacant lot, now filled with new in-fill on Woodland, that this is the second sanctuary of that church….

4,500th Post

A long time ago, perhaps 3,000 posts ago, I realized that if I wasn’t careful, I could make a really nice neighborhood look like a complete disaster, or conversely, with just a few strategic photographs, make a totally desolate street with only a couple of houses left look like it was completely intact. As an…

Former Nativity of Our Lord Roman Catholic Church

What is now the Celestial Temple of Peace at 5513 Oriole Avenue at the corner of Harney was originally Nativity of Our Lord Roman Catholic Church in Walnut Park. It was opened in 1904, and closed in 1982, its congregation processing to St. Adalbert’s at 5720 Woodlawn, which itself would later close and merge with…

Fireworks Stupidity and Perceptions, Old North

Update: Sadly, the house was not salvageable and has been demolished. The City of St. Louis Fire Department has an excellent and very well-updated Twitter account that I monitor on a regular basis to keep abreast of current events. On the night of the Fourth of July, the Fire Department always keeps a rigorous live…

St. Clair Avenue/Lincoln Trail, Revisited

There’s something fascinating about St. Clair Avenue as it comes up out of East St. Louis; as it hits the community of French Village, it starts the climb “up the hill,” which are really river bluffs (and carry both a literal and figurative connotation in the life and politics of the East Side), where the…