Update: Icame block in the summer of 2023 (second and third photos).

I discovered that one of the most compelling blocks in St. Louis, Minerva Avenue between Goodfellow and Hamilton, which I’ve featured back in January of 2015 and then again in September of 2019 was photographed by Richard Lemen back around 1925. You can see what it once looked like, around a century ago below, and what it looks like now above. I purposely allowed the wild, unkempt trees to intrude in my view in the photographs; their absence a century ago is a telling difference.

I can only imagine how this block once hummed with activity, and while a few of the identical row of four family flats are still occupied, there were probably once easily over one hundred people or more living on this stretch of Minerva. And hundreds of children would have passed by on school days, and hundreds more people would have gone to then-St. Barbara’s on Saturday and Sunday for mass. There are still storefronts up at the corner with Hamilton.

Hempstead Elementary is still sitting empty, and it seems like the plan to demolish it and build senior housing is no longer happening. Just as a reminder, these schools were built as reinforced concrete blocks, so just because the roof is gone in places does not compromise the entire structure.

I looked at Minerva between Hodiamont and Hamilton in January of 2015; there are single family homes on the far side of the hill heading down to the city border. While the church is still open, its school building is abandoned.

New St. Augustine’s, formerly St. Barbara’s, originally possessed a taller spire reminiscent of the “Cathedral” of St. Bartholomew of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. It probably was battered by the weather and removed mid century.

Finally, I was surprised to see that a house on the west side of Hodiamont Avenue that I liked a lot had completely disappeared down to the foundation. It was still standing in the summer of 2019, when I had most recently photographed it (last photo).