Hey, office and flex space for lease! I revisited Crunden Martin to check up on the state of the buildings after the disastrous Black Friday fire. Yes, in case you were wondering, that sign is new. As I had appraised on Black Friday, the building that had already suffered a fire back in 2011 is…
Tag: Abandoned Buildings
The Old Dairy
I stumbled across some old photographs by William Swekosky of the noted ruined stone house on Missouri Avenue in Lafayette Square, which I have looked at extensively over the years, particularly in July of 2018, but I briefly glanced at it back in May of 2022 when I was examining some new in-fill. What is…
Crunden-Martin, Destroyed
“It’s Thanksgiving, so the fires will be starting now,” someone remarked on social media–I recall reading somewhere. What a far too accurate portent. I woke up on Black Friday, and sadly, they were right. Crunden Martin, that stunning abandoned warehouse/factory complex I’ve looked at around a half dozen times over the years, was being consumed…
Cabanne Avenue Between Goodfellow Boulevard and Porter Mall, West End
Two large wood frame houses greeted the visitor when they entered Cabanne Avenue back in 1909; they’re both gone now. I believe those wood frame houses were replaced by these apartments, which in turn were demolished, as well. This block is much harder hit by demolition and vacant lots. There are a few houses left…
Cabanne Avenue Between Goodfellow Boulevard and Hamilton Avenue, West End, Revisited
The fire insurance map above from 1909 captures an important moment in history for the West End; the neighborhood was still suburban in nature and it was a time before the apartment buildings would be built, taking advantage of the large parcels that once held stately wood frame houses built in the previous decades when…
Cates Avenue Between Goodfellow Boulevard and Porter Mall, West End
Moving one block north to Cates Avenue between Goodfellow Boulevard and Ruth Porter Mall, there are more houses still standing, but the Church of the Ascension, which we can see on the fire insurance map above, is nothing but a vacant lot now. Interestingly, while historically Cabanne Way doglegged behind the backyards, today the mall…
Clemens Avenue Between Hamilton Avenue and Porter Park, West End
We head down Goodfellow Boulevard from Walnut Park to reach the West End, one of my favorite neighborhoods in the City. It was incredibly rural, as Pictorial St. Louis shows, in 1876. But by the early Twentieth Century, it had filled in with posh wood frame and brick houses of St. Louis’s professional and managerial…
Emma and Lucille Avenues Between Mimika Avenue and Goodfellow Boulevard, Walnut Park West
We save what I found to be the most interesting part of Walnut Park, which is actually older but further away from downtown St. Louis. This is the Jennings Heights Addition, from 1888, almost twenty years older than the West Walnut Park subdivision to the southeast that we looked at previously. As can be seen…
Thekla Avenue Between Mimika Avenue and Riverview Boulevard, Walnut Park West
Thekla is an interesting street name and probably comes from an early saint, which you can read about here. In fact, most of the “east-west” streets are named after women’s given names. As usual, the houses on the first block west of Riverview Boulevard are in styles such as the Arts and Crafts style, as…
Harney Avenue Between Park Lane and Mimika Avenue, Walnut Park West
Harney Avenue is named after William S. Harney, a St. Louisan who served in the military but who also had some loyalty issues during the Civil War, apparently. It’s an interesting block, which again, makes me suspect that while this is the West Walnut Park Addition laid out by Julius Pitzman in 1906, makes me…