Who doesn’t like a giant dam? Melvin Price Locks and Dam opened on October 10, 1989, replacing the aging Lock and Dam No. 26, which had major structural deficiencies. Dams have been getting the photographic treatment since at least Margaret Bourke White, which you can see here. The dam is so massive that it is…
Tag: Alton
Henry Street, Alton
Back to downtown, we see how Alton has beautiful Italianate houses of the merchants and other businessmen close to the river where riverboats and then the railroad flourished. Many are rehabbed and we even have an apartment building that would look at home in Southwest St. louis thrown in. This is a very green house….
Former Union Brewery and Environs, Alton
The former Union Brewery owned by the Yaekel Family, was built beginning the 1840s, before Pearl Street, which runs by the complex, was even laid out. The owner’s house, seen above and below, was one of the first buildings built in the complex. Later known as the Bluff City Brewery, the building below in the…
East Twelfth Street, Alton
The wealthy seemed to live on the flat plateau due north of downtown, while the working class lived in the curving ravines to the east. East Twelfth Street has some spectacular houses, along with some more middle class houses. This house below, Italianate to a certain degree, also has an over the top front portico,…
Public Square and Thereabouts, Alton
I made it back up to Alton for a little bit and checked out Public Square first. Easton Street, named after the founder of the city, intersects the square, and I suspect that originally it was planned to be a grand expanse surrounded by stores and whatnot. Instead, it is a quiet residential park, with…
East of Downtown, Alton
Heading east on Fifth Street from Easton Street (named after Rufus Easton, the founder of Alton), we see some very early housing. We then angle onto the diagonal Court Street, which mysteriously exists for only about three blocks. We then hop onto Fourth Street as we head out of town. I really like this two-car…
State Street and Environs, Alton
Working my way around on Mill Street over to Carroll, I saw some of the wide variety of houses on the steep slopes of the bluffs to the west of downtown Alton. Below is looking up William Street. Finally, I turned up State Street, which is the main artery up to the bluffs above the…
Alby Street, Alton
I made it back out by the Henry Watson House, this time with the sun out, but now with a pesky overhead wire in the way! I had photographed it way back in January of 2009 on a cloudy day. Apparently the house was damaged by fire. Watson owned two quarries; I wonder if one…
Downtown, Alton
We’re going to swing back through Alton for a few days. Like Hannibal, Quincy or even Cairo, and a bunch of other towns, I can’t help but imagine that except for a few twists of fate, Alton could have been the center of a metropolitan area of two million people, or at least maybe a…
Alton Steel, Incorporated
Alton Steel is an interesting story that is a twist on the standard narrative of a legacy company going out of business, leaving behind a massive ruin for decades. It is actually the employee-owned successor company to the historic Laclede Steel Company, founded in 1911. When it went broke, it was owned by the Akin…