McNair Avenue north from Arsenal in Benton Park is easily one of my favorite streets in St. Louis, and its variety of houses from different generations, along with the beautiful rehabs, make it truly unique. Second Empire houses of two or three stories sit next to Italianate and Romanesque Revival houses from the 1860s to…
McNair Avenue from Arsenal to Lynch Streets
Heading north up McNair Avenue from Arsenal Street there is a mix of older exurban houses, such as the one below, with an original alley house, with the later Second Empire examples. The remnants of a saloon sign is still visible on this building, where McNair doglegs at the intersection of Lynch Street. Due to…
Wisconsin Avenue and Environs, Benton Park
Update: I revisited Wisconsin Avenue in the spring of 2020. Heading away from Salena Street over to Wisconsin Avenue and other nearby streets, there are other Second Empire houses and storefronts. But again, as can be seen further down the block, there are later Twentieth Century buildings, showing that there were still empty or reused…
Senate and Salena Streets, Benton Park
Senate and Congress streets in Benton Park are perfect examples of my old maxim that the street grid of St. Louis were not designed by a central authority, but was laid out by private developers, even brewers such as George Schneider or Adam Lemp. As such, we have some bizarre “accidents” throughout the city, such…
Fremont School, Benton Park
John Fremont was apparently the first Republican candidate for president (he obviously lost, since Abraham Lincoln was the party’s first successful candidate for that national office). It is not surprising, with the strong German abolitionist population in St. Louis, that a school would be named for him. It is a classic example of a school…
Victor and Lemp Avenues, Revisited, Benton Park
For lack of a better way of describing them, there are a host of cozy little streets to the southeast of the intersection of Jefferson and Gravois. As is the same behind the other three corners of that bustling crossroads, many of the houses date back far in St. Louis history, to around or just…
Farmington, St. Francois County
You might not care about Farmington, far to the south in St. Francois County, but it is very important to the St. Louis region, actually lending its name to the official name for the combined census region according to the federal government. It also has an incredibly beautiful Beaux-Arts courthouse, which is not a standard…
Fredericktown and Mine La Motte, Madison County
Fredericktown is the picturesque county seat of Madison County, Missouri, south of St. Louis quite a ways in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. It was the site of a Civil War battle due to the nearby lead mines needed to create bullets during the conflict. The courthouse sits in the middle of the town…
Demolition, Lansdowne Towers
Update: See the first two towers completely demolished here. They’ve begun to tear down the Brenton Tower, one of four public housing apartment buildings part of the Lansdowne Towers, located in the northeastern portion of East St. Louis. I’d been by here before, almost exactly two years ago, and one time since then (though I…
Benton Park, Revisited
I’ve photographed Benton Park before, once back in 2010, and then again in 2018, but I never get tired of how beautiful it is, as well as its history, both above and below ground. Below is the Friedrich Hecker Monument, stripped of its bronze details by vandals. The new fountain will keep the water from…