Tag: Alton
Old Monticello Women’s College
Founded by Benjamin Godfrey, a wealthy New England minister in 1838, Monticello Women’s College lasted until 1971, when it closed in a wave of all-female college closings. The current buildings were constructed in august Romanesque Revival style in 1890, until two years after the original buildings’ destruction in a great fire. A foundation now maintains…
Quarry, Alton
The massive caverns left behind by the mining and quarrying of stone throughout the St. Louis region never cease to amaze me. This quarry, just north of downtown Alton, is just one of many along the bluffs of major rivers.
Ruins, Alton Prison
These stark blocks of limestone, stacked upon each other as they have for almost two hundred years, remind me more of something I might see as part of a war memorial in Germany. But they are the stones that made up the first prison in Illinois, and later after the State moved its facilities to…
Alton Cemetery
Alton Cemetery, like many Nineteenth Century cemeteries around the United States, sits on rugged topography, utilizing land that otherwise was not suitable for building houses or businesses. Of course, in Alton just about everywhere above the first couple of streets along the river are steep. For comparison with another cemetery built on rugged bluffs, see…
Elijah P. Lovejoy Monument, Alton Cemetery
The Lovejoy Monument commemorates the career and death of Elijah P. Lovejov, the famous Presbyterian minister and ardent abolitionist. Having fled St. Louis out of fear for his safety, Lovejoy set up his printing press in Alton, but soon found himself under attack from a pro-slavery mob whose commercial interests were tied to slavery across…
Henry Watson House, Alton
I love this house, sitting high up on a hill near downtown Alton.