Here are some leftover photos from the last six months. Above is a Falstaff sign in Benton Park. Above, looking down a street in what I think is Kingsway East towards the Chase Park Plaza, but I can’t be sure. Above is the Missouri Athletic Club, which I snapped while sitting at the light at…
Category: Downtown
Posts about downtown St. Louis
Some Early Historic Maps
I had a bunch of maps saved up that I had some purpose for that I forgot, so I thought I would present them here for your enjoyment. The first two are related to Mill Creek and Chouteau’s Pond, and demonstrate how important the body of water was to early St. Louis. Remember, all images…
Demolition Commences, Former Stouffer’s Riverfront Hotel
Apparently it was a big deal when the Stouffer’s Riverfront Hotel opened downtown. Personally, I see it as a symptom of a larger problem: the belief that turning St. Louis into a giant showpiece of Modernist superblocks would save the city. I think we can all agree it failed miserably. One thing that always sticks…
Former Federal Building, 1520 Market Street
The former Federal Building, which is all that it was called when it first opened, relieved office space pressures from the Old Post Office, which actually again holds offices for the federal government. It’s interesting reading old newspaper articles at the time, because it was at the height of the dislike for the Second Empire,…
Ulyssess S. Grant Statue
Located at the northeast corner of Washington Square Park, the Ulysses S. Grant sculpture dates from 1888 and represents the most prominent future president to live in St. Louis. Sculpted in 1888 and dedicated in October of that year by Robert Porter Bringhurst, it also has a depiction of the Battle of Lookout Mountain, which…
Old Courthouse, Reopened
The Old Courthouse is looking great following years of being closed for the first renovation in decades. All exhibitions were removed and replaced with new ones, such as this one on the courthouse’s role in freedom suits and slavery. Of course, that story would be incomplete without including Harriet and Dred Scott, whose nationally influential…
Former Municipal Courts
The behemoth of the old Four Courts, named after the building in Dublin and demolished long ago, was based off the Tuileries Palace in Paris, as I mentioned a couple of years ago. Its attached jail was quite a work of engineering and architecture, with a huge half rotunda and tiers of cells. Replacing it…
St. Louis Medical Examiner, The Morgue
For years after the demolition of the old Four Courts the morgue was still used at the corner of Twelfth and Spruce streets (you can see in the 1920 photo below how the old courthouse has vanished). But finally in 1927, the City of St. Louis turned to its staff architect, L.R. Bowen of the…
Former Police Headquarters
After featuring the Police Academy, I realized I had never shown the old Police Headquarters at the southwest corner of Clark and Tucker. It is now only partly occupied, with evidence storage, from what I understand, and that was told to me over a decade ago. It could have changed since then. You can actually…
Municipal Services Building
Opened in 1927-8 to designed by the firm Study & Farrar, the Municipal Services Building is diagonally across Clark Street and Tucker Boulevard from City Hall. It is perhaps a building that is missed by many people, but is still used in part by the City of St. Louis. It is actually a collection of…