St. Mary’s of the Barrens takes its name from the prairie early settlers could not plow; instead, they turned to the loamy soil of the bottomlands along the river to farm. Established in 1818, the church also served alongside the oldest seminary west of the Mississippi. The Vincentians have long been associated with the church…
Category: Afield
Posts from further afield
North Walnut Street and Environs, Perryville
There’s always that one street (or two) that spurs off of the courthouse square lined with Queen Anne or other late Nineteenth Century styles, and in Perryville, it’s North Walnut Street. While most of the millwork has been lost, the houses still stand, and it’s an interesting street to visit.
The Streets Around Downtown, Perryville
Around the courthouse square in Perryville are an assortment of brick houses, which I suspect are from around the time of the Civil War or earlier. The houses are simple, with gable roofs and four bays wide facing the street. I suspect many were built by German immigrants. A highlight is the Faherty House, which…
Courthouse Square, Perryville
We’ll start our tour of Perryville in the courthouse square, with the Perry County Courthouse, constructed in 1904. The architects were Caldwell and Drake of Columbus, Indiana and the building cost approximately $32,000. It is on the National Register. And of course there’s a statue of a Union soldier in the lawn out in front….
Perryville, Perry County, Missouri
We visited the town of Perryville in Perry County last weekend to check out the area and in particular the Shrine at St. Mary of the Barrens, which we’ll look at later this week. It’s an interesting and extremely old part of Missouri, with origins dating back to 1820, right around the founding of the…
From the Vault: The Roof of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 2006
It’s hard to believe that just under twenty years ago I was allowed to run around on the roof of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and take these photographs. Above is looking west down Constitution Avenue NW and the National Archives and Federal Triangle. Above, this is looking east at the U.S….
From the Vault: Philadelphia, March 2006
I was digging around in the vaults when I came across some twenty year old photographs of Philadelphia. They’re so old that they pre-exist my move back to St. Louis from the East Coast and the founding of St. Louis Patina. This is about five cameras back and lots of growth in my picture-taking abilities….
Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, Peoria
I stumbled upon this Catholic church in downtown Peoria when I was visiting nearby. The parish dates from 1878 but the current church is from 1903. While it’s known as the Sacred Heart of Jesus, when looking at the cornerstone, it says Herz Jesu Kirche, so I will assume it was a German national church…
Family Farm and Environs, Early November 2025
I visited the family farm east of Peoria for the last time this year, but will be back up in the spring, as usual. The harvest has been over for weeks, so the landscape has been transformed to the fallow fields with its stark beauty. I photographed this corn crib to the northwest of the…
Moline, Illinois
Moline is contiguous with Rock Island, so we entered the former from the west. Moline is famous for being the home of several industries, including an elevator manufacturer and John Deere, which everyone has heard of. First up is the former headquarters of Montgomery Elevator Company, which is now abandoned. The tower functioned as the…