Opened in 1911, Bryan Hill Elementary School serves the College Park neighborhood. Designed by William Ittner, it is squeezed into a narrow parcel of land, making photographs of the building difficult. Named after Dr. John Gano Bryan, a famous educator in the late Nineteenth Century, that appellation still does not explain the “Hill” portion. Perhaps…
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Adams Elementary School
Adams Elementary has a history that stretches back to 1878, when the school above was constructed in what at the time was a relatively isolated but not unpopulated part of the city. The current building was designed by William Ittner in 1899, which is fascinating because the school is not in any way a “traditional”…
Peabody Elementary School
Peabody Elementary School is another institution with a long history in the neighborhood just south of downtown that can be traced back to at least the 1870s if not earlier. At one point it became known as Clinton-Peabody, and as some readers might remember, it shared the name of the housing projects nearby. A new…
Friedens Cemetery, Late June 2026
In response to some concerns I heard about the condition of Friedens Cemetery, which I hadn’t visited since September of 2024, we took a look a week or so ago. While the grass looks to have been mowed relatively recently, there were a large number of tree limbs broken and lying on the ground. And…
Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, Alabama, Part Four
This will be our last day looking at Sloss Furnaces. The bridge above has an interesting story; it was built to take traffic above the giant piles of slag the furnace dumped on the ground (it’s been cleaned up, obviously). Above, as you can see, the ingots of pig iron, which is not pure enough…
Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, Alabama, Part Three
We continued on our way through the Sloss Furnaces, looking at the smokestacks for the massive boilers that burned the coke to produced the superheated temperatures that broke up the iron ore. I was curious how these molten iron cars look different compared to various parts of the country. They are of type not seen…
North Up Blair Avenue, Old North, May 2026, Part Three
Continuing north up Blair Avenue, we leave St. Louis Avenue behind and enter the northern portion of Old North St. Louis. Perhaps what is most notable is the number of trees and how much more shaded the streets are, and how many more houses there are. Many of these houses appear in Compton and Dry’s…
Former Lutheran Hospital, Spring 2026 and the Past
I think I’ve joked before with readers, and definitely with many of my friends, that I like the winter because the leaves are off the trees, providing clear views of St. Louis architecture in neighborhoods with mature vegetation. But I’ll have to admit, earlier this spring when the leaves started filling out on the trees…
The First SLU Medical School
Saint Louis University’s medical college moved from its main campus at Washington and 9th, which had been founded in 1836, to a new location at Myrtle (present-day Clark) and 7th. In 1854-55, SLU and the medical college separated, and the latter became the St. Louis Medical College. What is interesting are these two prints, above…