I like a good mystery, and when I found a photograph of an unidentified residence on Miami Street by the dentist historian William Swekosky, my curiosity was piqued. Judging from the style of the architecture, which I would call Greek Revival, and assuming the street was correct, I narrowed the location down to the stretch…
Kennerly Avenue East of Annie Malone Drive, The Ville
Starting to the east of the houses you can see in the last photo of this post from November of 2024, we first see the two-family above. On the south side of Kennerly is the former Homer G. Phillips Hospital, which has since been converted into senior housing. It’s interesting to see how the four…
Garfield Avenue Between Billups Avenue and Annie Malone Drive, The Ville
Heading east, we look at more houses that we saw back in November, with the foliage and undergrowth died off for the winter. The house below has a huge hole in the roof; it surely is not occupied.
Garfield Avenue Between North Newstead and Billups Avenue, The Ville
I somehow managed to randomly end up going down the same street I had detoured down back in back in late October of 2024, which was Garfield Avenue east of North Newstead Avenue. How this happened I don’t know, but it is interesting to see how the street changed in just two months. The light…
Kennerly Avenue Shotguns, The Ville, Revisited Yet Again
I’ve long been fascinated with the long, shotgun wood frame houses scattered throughout all of St. Louis, largely because it seems that they’re sort of forgotten about. And I honestly think they were built as “temporary” houses, built out in the exurbs and country with that Nineteenth Century optimism that the burgeoning metropolis would eventually…
Out of Blood (and Money)
Update: All eighty employees were terminated at the end of February. The hospital surrendered its licenses and will not reopen. Absolutely no one was surprised that the new three bed hospital opened by Paul McKee failed only a short time after it opened, and years, I mean years after it was first proposed. Property taxes,…
Green Board-Ups, JeffVanderLou, Part Two: Dayton Street
As I mentioned yesterday, Missouri Preservation listed the “JeffVanderLou Green Board Buildings” as one of their 2024 Places in Peril. South of Cass Avenue, which I have erroneously included in my Near North Side neighborhood for years, is actually also part of JeffVanderLou, and the following photos are from the well-preserved (for now) 2800 block…
Green Board-Ups, JeffVanderLou, Part One
My friend Paul Hohman, a well known architect who specializes in renovations of historic buildings helped get Missouri Preservation to list the “JeffVanderLou Green Board Buildings” as one of their 2024 Places in Peril. JeffVanderLou, which I’ve featured many times over the years, in one of the more heavily demolished neighborhoods in the City, but…
In Search of Francis Saler and the Old St. Patrick’s
I’d been doing some research lately on the old St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, which was completed around 1845 (the parish was founded in 1843 and closed in 1973), making it the third in St. Louis after the Old Cathedral and St. Mary of Victories, a German language parish. A familiar name came up, the…
Cherokee Cave at the Saint Louis Science Center
If you’re looking to do something fun the day after Christmas with the family, take a trip by the Saint Louis Science Center and check out a cool exhibit from the permanent collections. In addition to some other cool stuff, including pieces from the former Museum of Quackery, there is a whole room dedicated to…