Abandoned McDonald’s, Weldon Spring

Let me ask you something. When was the last time you saw an abandoned McDonald’s? I learned from an industry insider that McDonald’s corporate policy is to demolish a closed store as soon as possible, in order to not damage the brand name. But in a twist of fate, due to this McDonald’s being attached…

Suspicious Fire at Jamison Memorial Church

Something suspicious is going on in St. Louis, with back to back fires on Friday and Saturday nights over the Memorial Day weekend. The first casualty was the Jamison Memorial Church on Washington Boulevard at North Leffingwell. One of my sources had alerted me to its abandonment several years ago. I last looked at the…

5,500th Post at St. Louis Patina

Thinking back over 5,500 posts, give or take since some were lost when this website crashed a year ago, for some reason this post from February of 2015 popped into my head. It’s interesting in that my 5,000th post also dealt with a subject from the St. Louis Place neighborhood. I was always drawn to…

Gravois Avenue Between Taft and Beethoven Avenues

We’re almost to the end of the portion of Gravois in Bevo, as we approach the viaduct that takes the railroad over the street. Interestingly, there are a large amount of old wood frame houses surviving, often concealed by later brick storefronts built out to the sidewalk line. I like the very strange almost saltbox-like…

The Sheep House, Rural Pike County

The owners of this property have moved next door to a modern house, and left the original homestead standing. The sheep, and possibly a few goats in the far background, have now moved in. Down the road is the barn.

Fire Ravages South Broadway Row

Sadly, last week on April 26, this stunning row of buildings on South Broadway in the heart of Carondelet was heavily damaged by fire. The damage didn’t look too terribly bad from the front of these abandoned buildings, which I featured in a post back in March of 2021 (scroll down). The roof structure seems…

Pennsylvania Avenue, Tower Grove East, Revisited, Part One

Moving past the intersection of Gravois, Arsenal and Pennsylvania, which I’ve looked at in June of 2011, May of 2014 and 2019, we pass by the Grant School, which I looked at back in October of 2020, we pass through a very old section of Tower Grove East that I first looked at way back…

New Lease on Life

I was alerted by a valued and longtime reader to the recent commencement of major tuckpointing and masonry rebuilding of the beautiful Second Empire storefront at the diagonal intersection of Lynch, Ohio and Gravois in the Fox Park neighborhood, just to the south of St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Oratory. On-line City records show…