The South Broadway Athletic Club is a Soulard and South City institution, though if you know better, it’s actually on South Seventh Boulevard, one block west from its famous namesake.

The building served an earlier life as first the Russell Avenue Missions (despite the cross street being Shenandoah), an outpost of the Baptist Church, by 1896, offering Sunday school in the southern portion of the building. A bottleworks, eventually known as the Western Mineral Water Co., took up the last portion of the building to the south. By 1909, it become known as the Tabernacle Third Baptist Church. As longtime readers might remember, the former St. Matthew’s at 7th and Cave streets is owned by the Club, as well. The church was once the place of worship for the Lemps.