“As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”

Luke 21:6

As some readers have helpfully informed me, I am far too stupid to understand the wisdom of the sages of the great American religion of Capitalism, and thus I cannot grasp why a parking lot is a better use of the land upon which the convent of St. Mary of the Angels once graced God’s creation for much of the last one hundred years.

Yes, there was asbestos, but it had to be removed anyway before demolition. Senior housing was built recently across Bellevue Avenue, and I can’t help but think that the old convent, renovated using Missouri State historic tax credits, could not have been been competitive as apartments.

But I can at least use the photos for scholarly purposes, utilizing these images for my understanding of how churches and their vaulting were constructed in the early Twentieth Century.

Christ and the Virgin Mary seem to throwing up their hands not in a blessing but rather in despair.

I was interested in what is happening on many of the streets around the hospital. The original early Twentieth Century housing stock is being demolished and replaced with new houses that are much larger than what they replaced. It’s weird thinking that the City of St. Louis actually has a better model in place to protect its historic architecture in many ways. It reminded me of the sad demolition of Concordia Hall by the hospital back in 2010.