I found this amazing photograph of the Gottlieb and George Eyerman Quarry at 5100 Virginia Avenue. It seems to have been open from the late Nineteenth Century; wages were 25 cents an hour in the early Twentieth Century but it was “steady work,” according to job announcements. The Eyermans also owned a quarry on South…
Historic Photographs of the Workhouse
It never ceases to amaze me that there was once a gigantic quarry along the riverfront just to the east of South Broadway, more or less where Interstate 55 now cuts through. It was the Workhouse Quarry, and for around a century inmates broke up rock for use in the roads around St. Louis just…
Church of the Annunziata
Founded in 1929, the Great Depression and then World War II held up the building of the church of the Annunziata out on Clayton Road at Cella Road in Ladue. It’s in what I would call the French Romanesque Revival, and it cut a beautiful profile on a snow-covered Saturday when I visited. The church…
Ladue Middle School
Originally built as a junior high school for grades seven through nine, the gymnasium and lunchroom for Ladue Middle School has always impressed me. Designed by Murphy and Mackey, a notable St. Louis architecture firm, it opened in 1958 at a cost of $1,523,618. Designed for 1,000 students, the building has been altered over the…
Salem United Methodist Church
I’d long spotted Salem United Methodist Church just north of Highway 40 at the Lindbergh Boulevard exit, so I decided to look more in depth about its history. It turns out its story goes way back to the first decades of the Nineteenth Century in St. Louis. Founded by Dr. Ludwig Jacoby in 1841, its…
Bellefontaine Cemetery in the Snow, January 2025
It’s always fun to go to Bellefontaine Cemetery after it’s snowed and I wasn’t disappointed this time, either. I’ve visited in the snow in January of 2013, in February of 2015, in March of 2021 and in February of 2022.
Tamm Avenue Between Wade and Lloyd Avenues
Continuing south past St. James the Greater, we can see the original church below, which I suspect was one of those standard rural school-sanctuary combos we see throughout the Archdiocese. And I think we see the storefront above on the right below in the historic photo down the hill from the church. There are many…
Tamm Avenue Between Clayton and Wade Avenues
Passing by the intersection of Tamm and Clayton Avenues, we are now come upon Victoria Avenue. There was another mine just to the east of here. The Hiram Roberts Mine had a 75-foot shaft into the earth in order to reach clay deposits in 1911; houses now cover the site. For whatever reason, there is…
Tamm Avenue between Oakland and Clayton Avenues
I realized I have never looked at Tamm Avenue, the famous street that passes through Dogtown just south of Forest Park. Of course, there were clay and coal mines in the area, but really, according to my sources, they were mainly east of Hampton Avenue. But not all, and one mine, the Gittens Mine, which…
Two Unique Buildings, Indianapolis
The former Deutsches Haus, renamed the Athenæum during World War I due to anti-German sentiment remains a landmark in the Lockerbie or Germantown neighborhood of Indianapolis. There was some major restoration going on around the front of the building when I visited, so these historic photos show what it looks like overall. It’s perhaps a…