We’ll head inside the Chapel of the Risen Christ at Resurrection Cemetery now, going through doors with Emil Frei & Associates stained glass. As mentioned yesterday, the chapel was designed by St. Louis Design Alliance and built by BSI. And as I mentioned before, the huge sweeping roof, as well as other elements, are based…
Category: County
Posts about St. Louis County
Chapel of the Risen Christ, Resurrection Cemetery, Exterior
A valued reader alerted me to the recent completion of a new religious building, the Chapel of the Risen Christ in Resurrection Cemetery in Affton. Please ignore the KPLR broadcast antenna in the background. Heavily influenced by the Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut by Le Corbusier in 1950, this chapel was constructed by BSI according to designs by…
Former Normandy Hospital South
It’s hard to keep track of all of the names of the hospital at the intersection of Dougherty Ferry and Des Peres roads, but it was born in 1974 as Normandy Hospital South. Nearby Interstate 270 was actually still known as 244 at the time, and the interchange was only half complete, with nearby Big…
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Des Peres
Please join me on July 24 at 6:30 at the Central Library in downtown St. Louis for a lecture about my new book. Please register here. St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in the 1960s still sat at a relatively peaceful intersection, but change was happening rapidly around Manchester and Ballas roads. West County Mall would soon…
Des Peres City Hall, Former Lutheran Children’s Home
Please join me on July 24 at 6:30 at the Central Library in downtown St. Louis for a lecture about my new book. Please register here. Today, Des Peres City Hall sits in a verdant park, but originally its building and the surrounding grounds was the Lutheran Children’s or Orphans’ Home. The last of what…
The End of the Former Orthwein Estate
The “old estate” I was referring to back in September of 2018 was the Orthwein property in Huntleigh, and since then the property was sold off and subdivided. Large McMansions have gone up on the western end of the property. It was by far the largest tract of undeveloped land in St. Louis County outside…
The Viaduct
The viaduct under the old Missouri Pacific train tracks has a date of 1930 imprinted in the concrete over its lintel, but there are huge blocks of granite making up parts of its core, so I suspect it is much older, and was merely repaired in the early Twentieth Century. The road goes down to…
Quinette Road
We’re going to dive into some pretty deep esoterica with our examination of Quinette Road, which was the original name for Big Bend Road between its modern day intersection with Marshall Road and Meramec Station Road. If you look at the old 1862 Hutawa Map, you can see the path of Quinette Road along the…
Des Peres Presbyterian Church, Frontenac
Constructed in 1834, the old stone Des Peres Presbyterian Church is rapidly approaching the bicentennial mark out in Frontenac off Geyer Road. Despite the roof collapsing in 1874 and a car crashing into it a few years ago, the venerable church has remained a beacon in the community. At one point it was threatened with…
Thomas Mason House
Little did I know growing up in West County and passing by this old stone house on Weidman Road just north of Manchester Road (itself an old Native American trail) that I was driving by one of the oldest European American dwellings in Missouri. Constructed around 1818 by Thomas Mason, it was on 400 acres…