The St. Louis giant of Mallinckrodt Chemical began as a farm on the North Side, near the present day intersection of North Broadway and Salisbury Street. Emil Mallinckrodt, a native of Dortmund, and his wife Emily Vallmau owned a farm along the road that was then known as Bellefontaine Road, with their three sons Gustav,…
Tag: Americana
Public Lot, Calvary Cemetery
I thought I had photographed these monuments before, but it seems that I have never featured them before. The monument above commemorates two members of the Nimíipuu people who died in St. Louis in 1831. More commonly known by their French name, the Nez Perce, which means “pierced nose,” the delegation was one their east…
Des Peres Presbyterian Church, Frontenac
Constructed in 1834, the old stone Des Peres Presbyterian Church is rapidly approaching the bicentennial mark out in Frontenac off Geyer Road. Despite the roof collapsing in 1874 and a car crashing into it a few years ago, the venerable church has remained a beacon in the community. At one point it was threatened with…
Interior, Former Immaculate Conception, St. Henry’s
Just about everyone in St. Louis has heard now that the new pope, Leo XIV, served his novitiate to become an Augustinian here in St. Louis at the now closed St. Henry’s/Immaculate Conception at the intersection of Longfellow Boulevard and Lafayette Avenue. I’ve looked at the church twice, once back in February of 2011, then…
Tony’s on North Broadway
As we commemorate the closing of Tony’s yesterday, one of the most famous fine dining establishments in the history of St. Louis, I thought it would be fun to look back at their original location at 826 N. Broadway, in the heart of what was known as Commission Row. Today, the vendors who once crowded…
The Trophy Room
South St. Louis institution the Trophy Room, featured in such preeminent television shows such as World Wide Magazine by Pete Parisi, also has another claim to fame; examination of the eastern wall of the Second Empire saloon reveals much older roots. First, Sanborn maps reveal something interesting: there used to be a row of houses…
Bumpers in Trees
Tipped off by a source, I was guided to a grove of trees where bumpers were wrapped around trees decades ago, and now the trunks have grown around them, encasing them inside. Is there anything more American than this type of littering?
Eureka College, Central Illinois
I bet you always wondered where Ronald Reagan went to college, didn’t you? I’d driven by a million times but I finally detoured and photographed the leafy campus of Eureka College in Central Illinois. Unlike many other small colleges around the country, it is holding on and continuing to enroll students. Like any Midwestern university,…
The Day The Music Died
The plane carrying Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens didn’t make it very far, and it crashed in a field several miles north of Clear Lake. The local news has a good summary of the cause of the crash, so I won’t rehash it here. Unlike the freezing cold, snowy winter night of…
Surf Ballroom, Clear Lake, Iowa
Buddy Holly played the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis on April 15, 1958. Less than a year later, he, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens would be crisscrossing the Upper Midwest in the dead of winter, hitting small ballrooms such as the Surf Ballroom in the small town of Clear Lake on the shore of…