This might be considered sappy, but in all seriousness one of my first memories of downtown St. Louis is walking across the skybridge from the parking garage into the old Famous Barr in the Railway Exchange Building during our first visit to St. Louis Centre. Fast forward almost forty years and St. Louis Centre has…
Category: Downtown
Posts about downtown St. Louis
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…
Odds and Ends
Occasionally I see some things around the city that make me chuckle or stop and just look. Here are a few from the last month or so.
Memorial, City Hall
Spotted recently on the north side of City Hall in downtown St. Louis.
Hôtel de Ville, Paris and St. Louis City Hall
One thing that annoys me about American architectural history and St. Louis architectural history in particular is that it is frequently written by people who have absolutely no background in European architectural history. Case in point, it is “common knowledge” in St. Louis that City Hall is based off of the Hôtel de Ville, the…
End of Summer Odds and Ends
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…
Downtown from the McKinley Bridge
The views of downtown from the McKinley Bridge are also impressive. The vacant Southwestern Bell building can be seen below, with the boarded up windows that were shot out by stray bullets earlier this year clearly visible. The Eagleton Federal Courthouse is to the west. Then there is the iconic Civil Courts building. The Stan…
Looking Out the Windows of the Alverne
It’s hard to believe considering how long suffering the Alverne Building was, that I was able to stand on the top floor recently and deliver a lecture. It’s now renovated into some interesting apartments, including some two-story ones, and the problem with the building having some small windows that couldn’t be altered in order to…
About That Sinkhole
Oh dear! The ground collapsed north of the main post office in downtown a couple of weeks ago. There are many things down there, including the old cellars of the Julius Winkelmeyer Brewery, which dated back to the 1840s (and used to frequently beat Adam Lemp out for first place in the city’s fair every…
Damage to the Spire, Centenary Methodist Church
It’s really sad to see this. I met the pastor and congregation of Centenary Methodist Church several years ago, and even wrote at article in St. Louis Magazine about it. The high winds of early July storm ripped off the steeple, and I don’t know what the status of rebuilding is. There are many churches…