I spotted some of these old sidewalk medallions in Tower Grove East. The one above is interesting in that it has the address of where it was laid. You can read about granitoid sidewalks here. Below, we even have the date of the construction, which is 1909.
Hyde Park, 2011, From the Vault, Part Two
Here are more photographs from the vault. This is south of Salisbury Street in Hyde Park, I can tell. Things have gotten better with the filling in of vacant lots, but there have also been demolitions.
Hyde Park, 2011, From the Vault, Part One
I found some old photographs from Hyde Park that I took back in 2011 that I never used. I don’t know why, and apart from a few views, I have no idea where these photos are. I think the majority are along Salisbury Street or thereabouts. Things have changed dramatically in fourteen or fifteen years.
Anheuser-Busch Brew House, Night
I’ve photographed the interior of the famous 1891-2 brew house on the grounds of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, back in April of 2011 and then again in June of 2015. But I’d never done it at night, and it was interesting to capture the interior with only artificial light illuminating the mash tuns and brew kettles….
The Mallinckrodt Chemical Company in the Twentieth Century
The Twentieth Century dawned with Mallinckrodt expanding rapidly. While originally based along North Second Street, it had now reached North Broadway, taking over two long buildings that had once served as power houses for streetcars. The company could now boast over 1,000 products. My favorite are the buildings labeled “cocaine” and “opium.” Edward Jr. had…
The Mallinckrodt Residences
As the Mallinckrodt family’s fortunes grew, so did their houses. Emil’s farm house wasn’t too shabby, and seems to have survived into the Twentieth Century. A Greek Revival center hall house, it acquired a Queen Anne style front porch in the late Nineteenth Century. It was demolished at some point, I estimate, in the early…
The Rise of Mallinckrodt
The St. Louis giant of Mallinckrodt Chemical began as a farm on the North Side, near the present day intersection of North Broadway and Salisbury Street. Emil Mallinckrodt, a native of Dortmund, and his wife Emily Vallmau owned a farm along the road that was then known as Bellefontaine Road, with their three sons Gustav,…
Northern Reaches, Bellefontaine Cemetery, Late December 2025
Up near the northern fence line, we came across some of the oldest clusters of graves with a large number of limestone grave stones. We were very interested. We also saw some iconography we had never seen before, of a spirit floating over an opened gate, surely representing a soul passing through the gates of…
Mausolea and Tumuli, Bellefontaine Cemetery, Late December 2025
The Busch Mausoleum was looking beautiful with a cloudless sky framing it as we looked at some mausolea. The Farrar “mausoleum” actually holds a crypt below the floor of the colonnade. If you move the stone back, it slides on these tracks. Very nice. This is one of the oldest large-scale monuments in the cemetery….
Obelisks, Bellefontaine Cemetery, Late December 2025
Let’s look at some obelisks, which go all the way back to Egyptian architecture and religion. You can read about their religious significance in ancient Egypt here. The Romans were famous for stealing Egyptian obelisks and setting them up in temples in Rome, particularly at the Iseum in the Campus Martius. This obelisk group of…