Vinyl, Everywhere

I was giving a tour of Parkway South to Found St. Louis on Friday before the Homecoming football game and was startled to discover every horizontal surface has now been covered with vinyl tiles. What is up with that? Ever heard of texture? It didn’t used to be like that.

History of Cass Bank, Part Two

Now we come to the Cass Avenue Bank location that has been in the news, which was built in 1927, showing how quickly the institution had grown in twenty-one years. A severe, late Beaux-Arts building, it served as the headquarters of Cass Bank until 1974. This was near the Carr Square and Old North neighborhoods,…

Essen Log Cabin, Reborn

There’s some good news to report for a change, since it seems like it’s been a lot of bad news lately. A log cabin, that was literally stolen and thankfully recovered, has been rebuilt in the new Village Green Park in Wildwood a decade after its theft. The Essen Family were longtime settlers in West…

Old Potters’ Field Interment, Mount Lebanon Cemetery

Thirteen years ago, Toby Weiss of BeltSTL and I looked fruitlessly for the location of the reinterment of the St. Louis Potters’ Field, moved to Mount Lebanon Cemetery in 1950. This time, I came up with the ingenious idea of simply calling the cemetery on the phone, now owned by Alexander-White-Millen Funeral Home, and a…

End of Corpus Christi, Jennings

“That’s weird,” I remarked as we headed up Jennings Station Road to check up on the old factory on Xograph Avenue, “we should be seeing an old church I check up on occasionally.” After our visit to Xograph Avenue, we came back to the site of the former Corpus Christi Church, which I first visited…

Demolitions Coming, Former Marillac College

UMSL is planning on demolishing some of its buildings on the south side of campus, many of which I have documented before. On the chopping block is the building above, the former Franciscan monastery which I looked at back in June of 2011; it has spectacular stained glass windows which I assume will go in…

Demolition, Wellston

They seem to be demolishing one of the landmark buildings in the Wellston Loop, on the County side of the strip. The sign high up on the tower says Plumbing Supply Wholesale Distributors, but I don’t think that’s the original tenant. Anyone remember what this building was?

Balson Avenue East of University City High School

I never give University City enough of its due. I headed down Balson Avenue east of University City High School, itself a work of art, and checked out some of the amazing single family, two family and four family houses a look. The architecture of these houses are just stunning, at a time, from my…

Champ

I am pleased to announce that I have achieved an accomplishment few if any other person has ever reached. I have photographed all the houses in a single image of an entire city. Welcome to Champ, whose residential neighborhood is reached by driving through what is essentially the parking lot of a large church. And…

Stupp Brothers

Like many industries, Stupp Brothers moved out to more suburban surroundings in the Twentieth Century after being located in the city. The story of the Stupps is fascinating, having been founded in 1856 by Johann Stuppd and his sons The company is still privately held and has built steel components for bridges, pipelines and even…