Leaving behind the steel mill, I headed north on Maryville Road. I had no idea where I was exactly, but later analysis of maps revealed I was in the northeastern reaches of Granite City. Like so much of the Metro East, you can be driving along and it’s suburbia, and then there’s just farm fields…
Category: Metro East
Across the river in Illinois
Checking In on the Metro East: Granite City Industry
After leaving Madison, I wandered over into Granite City, where I soon found myself on East 23rd Street, and lo and behold, there was TMS Services. I went to their website, and after reading their “About Us” section I still have absolutely no idea what they do. I guess it looks like they probably scrap…
Checking In on the Metro East: Venice into Madison
On a lark I decided to see what was happening over in the Metro East, so I headed over the McKinley Bridge and first passed through Venice, Illinois. The first stop is a building that has long been many of my friends’ favorite, with its cool central pavilion, the Venice Recreation Hall. After that is…
Former Granite City Moose Lodge
I took a look at the old Moose Lodge on State Street this last weekend when I was over at GCADD in Granite City. It’s an impressive building, and like many fraternal organizations, it looks like it might have had storefront space on the first floor with the meeting rooms on the second or third…
Jerseyville, Jersey County, Illinois
Jerseyville, the county seat of Jersey County, is out in the country north of St. Louis, but I still lumped it in with the Metro East due to its proximity to the city. The courthouse, the third one on the site, was designed by Henry Elliott of Chicago. Erected in 1893, which the front façade…
Christ the King Chapel, Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, Revisited
I decided after last week’s snow storm it was the perfect time to go back and visit the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, which I featured most recently back almost exactly a year ago. And just like last year, just as I left the house early in the morning, a light snow began…
South Riverfront Near the Wreck of the Intrepid, October 2021
I went down to the South Riverfront bright and early on Saturday and cut through the flood wall. The sun was shining across the Mississippi River. The water level is still low, but I think it has been rising a bit since the last time I looked. I had come to see if I could…
Packers By-Products, National City
More land clearance is happening over by the old National Stockyards, where Armour, Swift and Hunter once slaughtered livestock by the millions for over a century. They’re all demolished now, but one business and its buildings is still standing, at least for now. That was the Packers’ By-Products building, with its infamous doors labeled “Blood”…
Our Lady of the Snows, Mosaics
I’ve looked at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows over in Belleville twice over the years, first in 2014, when I looked at the Mary Chapel, and then again in 2015, when I looked at the Christ the King Chapel. I also wrote a short article about it for St. Louis Magazine. But…
B&O Railroad Roundhouse, Cone Yard, Revisited
Oops! It turns out the old roundhouse in East St. Louis was demolished sometime in the last decade, and all that is left are the concrete foundations, and the rapidly filling pits where the locomotives once drove in to be serviced. The roundtable had already been filled in completely years ago. It turns out this…