I first would like to invite readers out to my free lecture on the history of the Lemp Brewery tomorrow, at 11:00 AM, September 20, 2022 at the Missouri History Museum. Its architecture was born out of the designs of highly influential architects Edmund Jungenfeld; Theodore Krausch; Widman, Walsh and Boisselier; and Guy Tyler Norton. I will be…
Category: Central
Posts about Central St. Louis
Francis Preston Blair, Jr. Monument and the Lindell Entrance to Forest Park
Standing at the Lindell entrance to Forest Park, the statue of Francis Preston Blair, Jr. memorialized a Missouri politician that is not very well known anymore, but was once so prominent that he is actually one of two Missourians represented in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Here’s another great writeup about Blair, at a…
A Vanished Mansion at the Corner of Lindell Boulevard and West Pine Drive
These two houses along Lindell Boulevard just west of Kingshighway, which I looked at way back in March of 2008, used to have two neighbors just down the street, back when this was actually known and platted originally as Park Road, as I mentioned yesterday. Designed by the famed architecture firm of Barnett, Haynes and…
A Vanished Mansion at the Corner of Lindell Boulevard and Kingshighway
As I always tell people, if you come across a house that is much newer than all the houses around it, you need to be suspicious. Take 2 Westmoreland Place, built in 1895 by Henry Siegrist, an automobile lubricant executive on lot 33 of the Forest Park Addition. It passed through various owners before being…
Lindell Boulevard from North Boyle Avenue to Kingshighway
Proceeding further west on Lindell Boulevard, we see both well-preserved stretches of historic architecture and utterly obliterated streetscape. There are those stunning townhouses, which I would love to own if I didn’t have to worry about a car driven by a man-child flying into my living room every day. And then there’s the former of…
Lindell Boulevard Between Vandeventer and North Boyle Avenues
Heading west of Vandeventer, this stretch of Lindell Boulevard is perhaps the most devastated of the entire street in the Central West End. There is hardly anything left from the Nineteenth Century left on the north side. Even the AAA was once threatened with demolition for a drug store several years. Perhaps the most notable…
Lindell Boulevard from Grand Boulevard to Vandeventer Avenue
Ah, Lindell Boulevard! I avoid the street like the plague because it is such a dysfunctional street. Once a residential street lined with mansions, sometime in the Twentieth Century it became the busiest street in the city. The mansions were demolished, and it became lined with businesses, while the through traffic jumped over to Highway…
Two Unique Buildings, Olive Street Just West of North Compton Avenue
Often while sitting at the light at Olive Street and North Compton Avenue, I’ve looked to the west and seen these two buildings. I finally decided to take a look at them more closely. The first building on the right was actually the location of an western outpost of the famous Tony Faust’s restaurant. The…
Urban Density Surviving on Grand Boulevard
While all those demolitions are going on down south, there are actually a fair number of really nice buildings still standing just to the north, particularly on the west side of Grand Boulevard. Justine Peterson has a presence in one building, nice rehabbed above. There’s this spectacular Art-Deco storefront above, which is a rarity in…
No Encore for the Palladium
Alerted by friends, I discovered the Palladium, also known as the Plantation Club, has been demolished by the Veterans’ Administration. There had been some hope that the demolition of some non-descript warehouses on the north side of the John Cochran Veterans’ Hospital would suffice, but apparently not. It had been suffering demolition by neglect for…