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 on South Jefferson Avenue in front of the abandoned Lutheran Hospital, I felt a little relief. Thank God, I thought, now I don’t have to look at that sad slow motion train wreck.

Perhaps most sad about the situation is that I’ve received so many comments from readers about their fond memories of the hospital, from being born there or having worked there.

But just imagine the optimism, seventy-two years ago, when Lutheran Hospital was undertaking a gigantic new expansion that we now see sitting vacant and abandoned today.

It was an age of optimism in the years after World War II, and St. Louis had just “scored” its largest population in the 1950 federal census of 856,796 residents; one can imagine how badly the expansion was needed in the dense neighborhoods around the hospital.

And now, one can also imagine that the only fate awaiting these buildings is demolition.