Several weeks ago, I wrote about Bamberger’s Grove at my regular St. Louis Magazine weekly column. As I also wrote, Adolphus Busch later bought the Grove and donated it to nuns, who opened the House of the Good Shepherd, who opened a school for girls.
Here are a couple of extra maps that didn’t make it into the article, including the Sanborn map, which shows the chapel in the center of the complex, where the different parts of the House came together in the quadripartite chapel.
Also, below we see the plat map, showing how the 1970 redevelopment into the shopping center chopped into the blocks to the west, presumably destroying some residential buildings. Gustine Avenue still curves around the parking lot, held up with a retaining wall filled with rubble from the old convent.
It met an ignominious end in 1969.
Intresting, I never would have guessed these bldgs were there! As a kid, I remember that plaza as a run-down outdoor mini mall with a Kmart that faced other smaller stores facing away from the parking lot.
Do you know who it was sold to when they moved to Florissant? In a newspapers.com article it said they were leaving behind a lot of furniture and statues.
It was sold to a developer who turned it into a shopping center. You can read more about its history in my article here:
https://www.stlmag.com/history/bamberger-avenue-grove-picnic-ground/
I assume that sculpture and other works of art from the convent are out there somewhere.
I use to ride my bike to the convent to pickup a brown box tied with string which contained the hosts for Holy Family Church for communion.
Ah, interesting–did they produce hosts for a large number of parishes in the City?
The attached story mentions some of the statuary destined for missions in Mexico.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/26673702/convent-of-good-shepherd-closes-in-st/
Interesting! Thanks for sharing.
Was there an underground tunnel that connected it to the hospital?
I was 13 years old when I was placed by the courts in this facility. That would have been around 1962. I lived there for 18 months before going back home. The nuns were rigid but not brutal. We worked half a day and went to school half a day.
I lived in a large apartment with maybe 12 other girls ( I can’t remember). There were 3 or 4 other apartments ( maybe more) and each apartment had a group mother.
If I remember right I was in Loyola Hall and my group mother’s name was Mother Charles. At the time it was the most stability I had ever had and I appreciate that hard but crucial time in my life.
For some reason I felt to look it up today and see if it still existed.
Thank you sharing! Rarely do we get the perspective of the women who actually lived there.
Hi Katherine,
My mom also spent some time here. Would you be willing to answer some questions for me?