The Sisters of Loretto have a long history in St. Louis. A previous location was down on Jefferson and Pine on land donated Anne Lucas Hunt in 1869 with the building completed in 1874. Later they moved out to the northwest corner of Lafayette and Louisiana avenues into what looks like a large mansion already…
Category: Central
Posts about Central St. Louis
Jefferson Avenue Pedestrian Bridge
Speaking of pedestrian bridges, there actually was at least one that I learned about from Vivian Gibson, author of The Last Children of Mill Creek. It’s been demolished, obviously, but it once took pedestrians over the Mill Creek railyards in the alignment of what was known as West Jefferson Avenue (really the original path of…
Suspicious Fire at Jamison Memorial Church
Update: A church burned in Soulard a week or so after this fire. Its cause was not determined to be suspicious. Something suspicious is going on in St. Louis, with back to back fires on Friday and Saturday nights over the Memorial Day weekend. The first casualty was the Jamison Memorial Church on Washington Boulevard…
Former St. John’s Hospital
I stumbled upon these photographs of the two former locations of St. John’s Hospital (now known as Mercy Hospital St. Louis, located at the northeast corner of I-270 and Highway 40), and I couldn’t help but want to share them. The image above shows the building at the southwest corner of Lucas and Jefferson avenues….
South Kingshighway and Gibson Avenue, The Grove
Heading north up what is actually the old orientation of Kingshighway before it was swept to the northwest to create the cloverleaf with Highway 40, we see that the normal streetwall of this part of the Grove is two or three story buildings, not six or seven. The old Lambskin Temple. a Masonic building, has…
Those Apartment Buildings, The Grove
Those apartments. Sitting right at the t-bone intersection of South Kingshighway and Oakland Avenue, they’ve gone through quite the rigmarole over the last decade. Simply put, having viewed them up close, they are clearly not beyond saving, and while they’re not in the greatest location, sitting right at one of the most congested sections of…
End of Winter 2023 Odds and Ends
The old Soulard Branch of the St. Louis Public Library has had several uses over the last decade besides the commercial space facing 7th Boulevard. There was “The Library” and then “The Archives.” They’re both gone. Below, in McKinley Heights, I still can’t believe that Second Empire house below is sitting vacant; the property values…
Henrietta Street and Environs, Compton Hill
I am still trying to understand the so-called Gate District, which I still stridently refer to as Compton Hill, its historic name. I wrote an article about it back in 2020, but one thing I can’t do is go back in time and see the area before redevelopment began. Was it as bad as claimed,…
Pershing Place Between Euclid Avenue and Kingshighway
In between Euclid and Kingshighway, Pershing Place takes on a distinctively different character, with much more emphasis on English influences in architecture. Interestingly, the lots on the north side of the former Berlin Avenue, which Pershing Place once was before World War I, were actually platted as part of the larger Hortense Place addition. There…
Pershing Place Between North Taylor and Euclid Avenues
Laid out originally as Berlin Avenue, the private street that stretches from North Taylor Avenue to North Kingshighway is cut in two by North Euclid Avenue. We’ll look at the street in two parts. I don’t think Pershing Place was laid out as a private street, and its original name of Berlin Avenue seems to…