I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I thought I would try to find anything I missed in Kosciusko, the only neighborhood in St. Louis with an official population of zero. As I’ve written about in a popular St. Louis Magazine article, the whole area was almost completely annihilated by urban renewal for a new industrial park that never materialized. I think I found one non-descript warehouse above that I’d never seen before that possibly predates the wholesale clearance of the neighborhood, and it’s hardly a gem!

I did make an interesting discovery; Schaeffer Manufacturing, the oldest continually operating company in St. Louis, now has its offices on South Broadway. Nicholas Schaeffer founded his company in 1839, and was even at one point a business partner of Eberhard Anheuser, whose brewery is just across the street. Its factory is still at 102 Barton Street after all these years.

Which leads me to this row of houses on Victor Street, which I’ve documented before in February of 2010 (third photo) and July of 2014 (fourth photo). Note that the street trees have been cut down.

These are the offices of another St. Louis mainstay, Hager Companies, which is just about as old as Schaeffer, dating back to 1849. The buildings back up to the Schaeffer buildings on Barton.

Sadly, an institution, Al’s Cafe, sits empty, having closed several years ago. Nothing has moved in and the building is vacant and vandalized.