There was a fire at the old DePaul Hospital/closed Northview Village on December 2, and the Fire Department described the damage as “severe.” This is a major development, as right after the failed nursing home closed, security seemed to be fairly tight, as at least one man was arrested for burglary within a week or…
Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker at St. Louis Dance Theater
As longtime readers know, I’ve been following and featuring the work of the Big Muddy Dance Company, which has recently been rechristened St. Louis Dance Theater. I had the opportunity to preview of their next performance, Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker, which features the work of Duke Ellington and a lesser known but critically important composer, Billy Strayhorn,…
Mullanphy Tenement, Revisited November 2024
It has been over a decade since I last visited the Mullanphy Tenement back in September of 2013 (I first visited back in the winter of 2009), and I was wondering what was happening with the historic building. The answer? Absolutely nothing! The famous “Buy/Sell/Trade” sign has disappeared, but other than that, it looks largely…
Bob Reuter’s Boyhood Home, Abandoned
I was scanning around on Google Satellite View and happened to go over Bob Reuter’s boyhood home on Bailey Avenue just east of Fairground Park. Even from the air, it was looking awfully “lush,” so to speak, which was a change from the time I went by back in August of 2013, shortly after my…
Lemp Brewery from the Air, 1930s
I really love this amazing aerial photograph of the Lemp Brewery, a decade after International Shoe had taken over. You can see how the shoe company had already added several floors onto a couple of buildings and altered the smokestack of the third boiler house or power plant to say ISCO. The railyard is still…
Yeats-Tutts House
Built by Thomas Yeats in 1830 and also known as Graystone Lodge, this house is one of the oldest in the City of Kirkwood. It was later bought by the Tutts family in the 1860s.
Around Grant’s Farm
At first, I was flabbergasted to find the site of the Joseph Sappington House to be an empty lot, but some quick Google research led me to discover that the log cabin has been disassembled and is going to be (has already been?) moved to a new location next to the Thomas Sappington House. I’ll…
Kassebaum House and Environs
The August Kassebaum House sits on Lemay Ferry Road just north of Butler Hill Road; it was built in 1907 at the unincorporated village of Mattese. Designed by William Wedemeyer, its advanced ornament and design shows just how wealthy Kassebaum had become as a merchant out in this isolated corner of South County. His storefronts,…
St. Paul’s Church and Cemetery, Oakville, and Environs
Let’s head south, deep into South St. Louis County and check out some very old historic sites. Our first stop is St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Oakville, which was probably originally a German Evangelisch church. There are multiple expansions here, including a Modernist sanctuary as well as an English Gothic Revival church building facing…
Lakeshire
I know an acquaintance who lives in the small South County city of Lakeshire, so I finally made it out there after becoming intrigued by its appearance through Google Street View. Apparently the town has restrictions that only ranch houses can be built, but that is only partially true as there is a belt of…