Constructed in 1927, the Winston Churchill Apartments are located at the northeast corner of Cabanne Avenue and Belt Avenue. Like many of the large apartment buildings I’ve been looking at in the West End area and neighboring streets, this was another upscale address that replaced what had originally been suburban frame and brick country and…
Category: North
Posts about North St. Louis
St. Louis Avenue Between North 23nd and North 25rd Streets, South Side
Moving west of North 23rd Street, we see much less lavish homes. And if we look closely many, but not all, are actually two-family houses. I always joke in St. Louis architects designed multi-family houses to look like single families. Of course, there are obvious multi-family apartment buildings like the ones below. But as I’ve…
St. Louis Avenue Between North 22nd and North 23rd Streets, South Side
While I’ve looked at St. Louis Avenue numerous times over the last eighteen years, I’ve never actually published any photographs of the south side of the street in St. Louis Place (except for ones that have all been demolished and this one weird one). We’ll start at North 22nd Street and work west. First up,…
History of Cass Bank, Part Two
Now we come to the Cass Avenue Bank location that has been in the news, which was built in 1927, showing how quickly the institution had grown in twenty-one years. A severe, late Beaux-Arts building, it served as the headquarters of Cass Bank until 1974. This was near the Carr Square and Old North neighborhoods,…
History of Cass Bank, Part One
Perhaps you’ve been watching the news and heard a lot of coverage of the old Cass Bank building being in the crosshairs of demolition, and then at the last second it had been been saved. I thought it would be helpful to readers to explain what is going on. Cass Bank is still in business…
1400 Block of Newhouse Avenue, Hyde Park, Revisited
I walked down this stretch of Newhouse Avenue back in January of 2018 so after looking at the damage at the old Friedens Sunday School Hall, I thought I would take a look at how the block was doing. There had been continued abandonment and deterioration. The building below hasn’t seemed to have changed at…
Friedens Sunday School Hall, Gutted by Fire
I’ll be upfront with you all and say I’m going to be reporting a lot of bad news in the coming weeks. First up is the former Sunday school hall for the now destroyed former Friedens German Evangelical Church, which had fallen victim to a fire in January of 2025. The hall, I believe from…
Carr School, Before Demolition
Well, I heard in the news that the old Carr Elementary School, which has been abandoned since in 1983, is being demolished. By then, the neighborhood it served had largely been annihilated by urban renewal. I detailed the historically rich story of the Carr Square article in two parts, here and here, for St. Louis…
Chief O’Brien Grave, Calvary Cemetery
We were wandering around Calvary Cemetery when we found this unique monument to Chief of Police Martin O’Brien. In 1919, he was wounded while chasing two “highwaymen” who had just robbed a jewelry store. He sounds like a much more hands on manager than many leaders nowadays.
St. Mark’s, Six Months After the Fire
I thought I would check up on how the former St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church was doing six months after the severe fire that struck in the depths of winter. The answer: not very good. There has been little change other than the dramatic growth of plants, trees and other vegetation up the sides of…