I have always been intrigued by this little building, sitting on a trapezoid of land at the northwest corner of Gravois and Victor. What is now a doctor’s office was originally the offices of attorney Paul J. Simon, who also served as a state representative in the 1970s. But there was a two-story building here…
Category: South
Posts about South St. Louis
Checking In on Southern McKinley Heights
I thought it would be interesting to check in on one of my favorite places in St. Louis, those narrow ancient streets of the old rural village at the northern end of the intersection of Jefferson and Gravois that is now the southern tip of McKinley Heights. I looked at Charless Street in June and…
Foundations, Benton Park
Alerted to a recent demolition in Benton Park, which is rare due to its historic district status, I went by to take a look. The property, owned by an infamous slumlord, was once a corner store with an alley dwelling whose collapse I covered back in May of 2019. It was in bad shape before…
Demolition, Old Bumper Plating
Some old buildings, due to their history, just need to be torn down. One case in point was a squat building at the southwest corner of Victor Street and Texas Avenue. As can be seen, a small duplex house was added on to by the Koken Barber Supply Company, where shellacking occurred for some of…
Dad’s Cookies
314 Day is tomorrow and I wanted to bring you a great story the day before about a St. Louis Institution. Everyone knows about Dad’s Cookies in Dutchtown, but did you know that it was originally part of a chain out of Los Angeles? They are the last store to survive after every other one…
Victor Street Between South Grand Boulevard and Arkansas Avenue
Victor Street, just east of South Grand Boulevard in Tower Grove East, is another well-kept secret with beautiful houses and an interesting apartment building in the Roehampton Addition. The house below actually sat abandoned for decades before being taken in court and is now being renovated by a responsible woman-owned development company. Other houses look…
Sidney Street Between Arkansas Avenue and South Grand Boulevard
Laid out in 1895 by Juliuis Pitzman, the Roehampton Addition possesses some of the largest and grandest homes in Tower Grove East in the blocks just to the east of Grand Boulevard. The addition is named after an area of Greater London southwest of the central city. The houses are large and eclectic, and while…
South Compton Avenue, Tower Grove East, Twenty Years Later
Back in 2004, Tower Grove East was not quite the same neighborhood that it is today, and many more houses sat vacant and crumbling. I found this random photo right before these houses would be renovated. What a difference twenty years makes.
Abandoned Grocery Store
As I drove southbound on I-55 recently, I glanced to my right and noticed a giant “LUNCH” sign on the Universal Food Market. I thought to myself, “Wow, they’re really going all-in on lunch.” Then I realized that it was a giant graffiti tag, and that the grocery store had gone out of business a…
Roof Collapse, St. Augustine’s
Sometimes there are things in life that are terrible, and no matter what you do, you can’t change them, and you just have to take it. I was driving north on the newly smooth Parnell, heading to St. Augustine’s to get some photography done for another project when the church came into view far in…