Darst-Webbe, which like many housing projects in the United States, is spoken about as a single complex today, but like Pruitt-Igoe on the Near North Side of St. Louis or Cabrini-Green in Chicago, was really two different projects originally. It was built on the grounds of the neighborhood annihilated in the 1940s between Soulard and…
Tag: Apartment Towers
Muscatine, Iowa, Part Two
Downtown Muscatine was really nice, with most of the storefronts occupied and many buildings looking like they had recently been renovated. As would be expected, there are a plethora of Italianate storefronts, as one often sees in cities along the river. The Laurel Building, below, was built in 1917 and was designed by William Hyland…
Lee Hotel
Designed by Alonzo H. Gentry, the Robert E. Lee Hotel at 18th and Pine streets lies only a few blocks north of Union Station and represented a new type of lodging in St. Louis. Opening in 1928, the Robert E. Lee was a simple, “no frills” style of hotel, and catered to businessmen who probably…
Ford Apartments
Designed by the famous St. Louis architect Preston J. Bradshaw, someone whom I’ve not looked at extensively, the Ford Apartments is an early example of a Modernist residential building in downtown St. Louis completed in 1950. In a dramatic turn away from the more ornate office buildings nearby, the Ford Apartments eschews decorative elements and…
Leveque Tower, Former American Insurance Union Citadel, Columbus, Ohio
Clocking in at 47 stories, the Leveque Tower in downtown Columbus, Ohio, is a standout example of an Art-Deco skyscraper that opened in 1927 as the American Insurance Union Citadel. It was built as a 600 room hotel with an attached theater. The architect was Charles Howard Crane, who was actually active mainly in Detroit….
New Wellington Apartments
I always find the random apartment towers of North County interesting. Why did they feel it necessary to go with such high density? I tried to find the backstory on this building but with no luck. Anyone remember?
Broadway Street West of 4th Street, Paducah
Retracing my steps back down Broadway Street to Fourth Street, we see a bank, perhaps the tallest historic building in downtown Paducah with some interesting modern additions… West of 4th Street is perhaps not as rehabbed as east, but there is just as beautiful of Victorian Period buildings from Paducah’s Nineteenth Century heritage. The Weille…
Crumbling Highrise Housing
We have a serious problem in this city with the growing obsolescence of buildings built in the mid-Twentieth Century urban renewal building boom. Built on blocks that once made up the former Mill Creek neighborhood, Heritage House is one such place. Perhaps you saw it in the news where all of the elderly tenants had…
Reading Road, Avondale and the Riots, Cincinnati
I’ve looked at Fourteenth Street NW before in Washington, DC, and probably elsewhere, so I was interested in what had become of Reading Road in the Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati. High up in the hills, there were two riots, one in 1967 and then less than a year later in 1968. The first one revolved…
The Terminal Tower, Cleveland
I want you to just take a look at the historic photograph above for a few minutes and just absorb what you’re seeing. In the background, Irish Bend and the Flats spread out in the distance, the engine house of the industrial heart of the city at its height can be seen, while in the…