Please join me on July 24 at 6:30 at the Central Library in downtown St. Louis for a lecture about my new book. Please register here. St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in the 1960s still sat at a relatively peaceful intersection, but change was happening rapidly around Manchester and Ballas roads. West County Mall would soon…
Des Peres City Hall, Former Lutheran Children’s Home
Please join me on July 24 at 6:30 at the Central Library in downtown St. Louis for a lecture about my new book. Please register here. Today, Des Peres City Hall sits in a verdant park, but originally its building and the surrounding grounds was the Lutheran Children’s or Orphans’ Home. The last of what…
The End of the Former Orthwein Estate
The “old estate” I was referring to back in September of 2018 was the Orthwein property in Huntleigh, and since then the property was sold off and subdivided. Large McMansions have gone up on the western end of the property. It was by far the largest tract of undeveloped land in St. Louis County outside…
The Viaduct
The viaduct under the old Missouri Pacific train tracks has a date of 1930 imprinted in the concrete over its lintel, but there are huge blocks of granite making up parts of its core, so I suspect it is much older, and was merely repaired in the early Twentieth Century. The road goes down to…
Quinette Road
We’re going to dive into some pretty deep esoterica with our examination of Quinette Road, which was the original name for Big Bend Road between its modern day intersection with Marshall Road and Meramec Station Road. If you look at the old 1862 Hutawa Map, you can see the path of Quinette Road along the…
Des Peres Presbyterian Church, Frontenac
Constructed in 1834, the old stone Des Peres Presbyterian Church is rapidly approaching the bicentennial mark out in Frontenac off Geyer Road. Despite the roof collapsing in 1874 and a car crashing into it a few years ago, the venerable church has remained a beacon in the community. At one point it was threatened with…
Thomas Mason House
Little did I know growing up in West County and passing by this old stone house on Weidman Road just north of Manchester Road (itself an old Native American trail) that I was driving by one of the oldest European American dwellings in Missouri. Constructed around 1818 by Thomas Mason, it was on 400 acres…
Rutger Street, West of South Eleventh Street
I’ve looked at the greater Frenchtown area before, particularly the part known as LaSalle Park, a neighborhood left behind after the streets around it were annihilated in urban renewal. We’re going to look at one last remnant, the south side of Rutger Street in between South 11th and Tucker Boulevard today, seen above highlighted in…
Old Courthouse, Reopened
The Old Courthouse is looking great following years of being closed for the first renovation in decades. All exhibitions were removed and replaced with new ones, such as this one on the courthouse’s role in freedom suits and slavery. Of course, that story would be incomplete without including Harriet and Dred Scott, whose nationally influential…
Adam Lemp and the Western Brewery
Dear readers, I’m happy to announce that my new book, Adam Lemp and the Western Brewery is now out and available for purchase as a paperback and e-book. You can read about it at this link, and purchase it from my preferred local small business, Leviathan Bookstore. If you live out of town or are…