A little known fact: the grassy area around City Hall is technically Washington Square Park, and on its western side, in the former right-of-way of 13th Street is the monument to Pierre Laclede, which interestingly enough ignores the contribution of Auguste Chouteau. I didn’t realize this, but the dedicatory text doesn’t lie: this was installed…
Category: Downtown
Posts about downtown St. Louis
John Poelker Park
John Poelker Park, part of the larger Gateway Mall, is looking better than ever, clean and well kept, with a new fence installed around the central statue. While Poelker was the fortieth mayor of St. Louis, the statue commemorates firefighters, dedicated in 1994 and sculpted by R.R. Daus. I find it fascinating that while there…
American Legion Auxiliary Monument, Gateway Mall
I noticed this small monument a few yards away from the Schiller Monument a few weeks ago. It is the smallest memorial in the Gateway Mall, by far. You can read more about the American Legion Auxiliary here.
Police Academy
Constructed at a cost of $800,000 in addition to the $1,000,000 that the original police headquarters to the north, the police academy, gymnasium and garage was built in 1928. I wrote about the construction of the police headquarters at St. Louis Magazine back in 2014, and Mauran, Russell and Crowell were the logical architects for…
Last Survivor
This house from the 1840s on North Tucker is a survivor. It is one of what were thousands of houses on the north and south side of downtown that were demolished for urban renewal in the mid-Twentieth Century. Most of those houses were never replaced with anything except parking lots or junkyards. I travel to…
Lee Hotel
Designed by Alonzo H. Gentry, the Robert E. Lee Hotel at 18th and Pine streets lies only a few blocks north of Union Station and represented a new type of lodging in St. Louis. Opening in 1928, the Robert E. Lee was a simple, “no frills” style of hotel, and catered to businessmen who probably…
Central Post Office
It dawned on me that after I had posted about the major expansion to the Central Post Office, I have never actually posted about the original building, opened in 1935. I’d even featured the murals on the interior back in 2011. Designed by Klipstein and Rathmann, who also designed the Eighteenth Street Parking Garage from…
Eighteenth Street Parking Garage
I have to admit that I was tricked by this building the first time I saw it. I initially believed it was built as light industry, and was gutted for a parking garage sometime in the mid to late Twentieth Century. I was wrong! This was actually built as the Eighteenth Street Parking Garage, designed…
Plaza Square, New Paint Scheme
The Plaza Square Apartments, a major urban renewal project last century, have gotten a new paint scheme that have really jazzed them up. I’ve written in the past that I wasn’t the biggest fan of these buildings, but I have to admit I do like the new colors.
Ford Apartments
Designed by the famous St. Louis architect Preston J. Bradshaw, someone whom I’ve not looked at extensively, the Ford Apartments is an early example of a Modernist residential building in downtown St. Louis completed in 1950. In a dramatic turn away from the more ornate office buildings nearby, the Ford Apartments eschews decorative elements and…