Odds and Ends

When I’m out and about, I sometimes snap pictures of interesting buildings that later expand into larger posts, but other times, I can’t figure out what to do with them. These photos are “outtakes;” buildings that are worth publishing but didn’t grow into anything else. Above, this is an old warehouse complex on Texas Avenue in Fox Park that has a fascinating history. If you look closely, you can clearly see that the one story warehouse has enveloped two Greek Revival row houses that probably date to just after the Civil War.

Below, this stout house in the Romanesque Revival style sits at the corner of Victor and McNair, cater-cornered from Blues City Deli in the Benton Park neighborhood. I like this house because it reminds me that while Benton Park is famous for its Second Empire and Italianate houses, there are also houses from later periods of architecture.

Below, this row house in the Compton Hill neighborhood has an interesting story. When I first photographed it, there were two neighbors attached to the west, and I used the photo I took of the three on my Central St. Louis neighborhoods page. At the time, I used the official City name for the neighborhood, the Gate District, but now I use the historic name, Compton Hill, for the area.

This next beauty sits at South Jefferson and Shenandoah on the edge of the Fox Park neighborhood, and is the home of the Concrete Ocean art gallery. I think it’s such a great use of the space on the busy thoroughfare, as it’s hard to have a normal commercial space where the traffic is so heavy.

Heading down to Lemay, this tavern sits on South Broadway. Originally probably a building from the Nineteenth Century, it received a Streamline Moderne update, probably in the 1930s or 40s.

Below, I snapped these two houses, both rare examples of wood frame buildings in the Marine Villa neighborhood on the north side of Gasconade just east of South Broadway.

Heading up north, to the southeast corner of Raymond and Academy avenues, we see the home of Edward Frederick Lasar, a German American industrialist who owned the Lasar-Letzig Manufacturing Company, which produced wire and other ornamental ironwork. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery. He was also a Free Mason, and I have to wonder if his membership in that fraternal organization influenced the unique appearance of his house. Of course, the nature of his business also provided him with easy access (and wealth) for the construction of a unique home such as we see below. Also, the greater West End is filled with fascinating and one-off houses designed by the top architects of St. Louis, so that could simply be why Lasar had such a cool residence. I wonder if there is a central staircase under the small cupola.

Here is a photograph of Edward Lasar.

Edward F. Lasar, from Walter B. Stevens. St. Louis, History of the Fourth City, 1764-1909. St Louis: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. 1909.

Also, I snapped this picture of some nice sturdy houses in Dutchtown while engaged in my Beauty of Dutchtown series, but now I can’t remember where they were.

Below, the Washington Hotel was a residential hotel where William Lemp Jr. lived for a time after his divorce from Lillian Handlan. They had been living in Adam Lemp’s old Italianate country villa, and he eventually evicted her by not paying rent to the brewery–essentially not paying rent to himself). The hotel is now an apartment building.

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