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…
Category: Downtown
Posts about downtown St. Louis
Merchant Laclede Building, Revisited
The Merchant Laclede, or Merchant’s Laclede Building, depending on whom you ask, was another of the historic skyscrapers in the financial district of St. Louis, often forgotten in favor of the more famous Chicago School buildings to the west. It was built in 1886. It’s been simplified over the years, losing its pediment and conical…
Security Building, Revisited Again
I found some photos of the Security Building deep in the St. Louis Patina archives, and I thought they should see the light of day. The standard story always goes is that it’s the last, or one of the last Romanesque Revival skyscrapers in St. Louis before the coming of the innovative Wainwright Building, but…
Views of Central St. Louis from St. Louis University Hospital’s Parking Garage
I was checking out the beautiful Emil Frei & Associates stained glass windows in the chapel of the new St. Louis University Hospital, and when I looked out from my perch in the parking garage, I captured the stunning view of the skyline of the central corridor of St. Louis. Above is the Central West…
Union Station, Newly Opened
It’s hard to imagine Union Station as a new building, or to think of Market Street out front as a much narrower thoroughfare than it is today, but both were once true. The train shed was also full carriages, though of course the locomotives stayed outside, due to obvious reasons of not wanting to fill…
Old Post Office, Revisited
I realized recently I really hadn’t taken any good photographs of the Old Post Office ever, so I took a trip down late in the afternoon on a Saturday. The light was a little weird, but they turned out OK.
Former Stouffer’s Riverfront Inn
They sure had all sorts of great ideas in the 1960s about how they were going to revitalize downtown, and pretty much none of them worked. They’re either demolished, abandoned, bought out in corporate mergers or forgotten. Just look at all the vacant land in the heart of a major metropolis. The Stouffer’s Riverfront Inn…
The Old Cathedral, Interior
I already discussed the copy of the Velázquez two days ago, so we’re going to go around the church and look at some of the other works of art in the newly refurbished interior of the Old Cathedral. While the high altarpiece Crucifixion is not one of them, many of the others are gifts of…
The Old Cathedral, Exterior
I’m glad they didn’t tear down or move the Old Cathedral, but I wish they wouldn’t have left it so stranded in the middle of an interstate on one side, and an incongruous park on the other. Here are various shots of the exterior facade from different angles and croppings. It is the fourth church…
The Old Cathedral, Eighty Years Later
Right on the eve of the demolition of the Levee for the new Gateway Arch grounds the Historic American Buildings Survey photographed the Old Cathedral’s exterior and interior. By then the Old Cathedral was surrounded by warehouses, and very few people actually lived anywhere near the first church in St. Louis (it is a myth…