Continuing and ending our end of the month look at Mississippi River towns north of St. Louis for the time being, we come to the Quad Cities, and first we will look at Davenport, Iowa. Of course, Davenport, and Rock Island, Illinois on the opposite bank (which we’ll look at in a few days) are…
Tag: Art-Deco
High Street, Revisited, Jefferson City
Starting at Broadway Street and heading east or more southeast on High Street, we first see the Roman Catholic Proto Cathedral of St. Peter, just across the street from the Missouri Capitol. A proto cathedral is a former cathedral; the present church dates from 1883, and it was the seat, or cathedra of the diocese…
Former Sixth District Police Station, Walnut Park
Plans for a new “Angelica Street” police station were announced in 1929, as the eponymous building at Angelica and 9th streets was in danger of being outside the boundaries of the Sixth Precinct as the city grew to the west. The Police Board budgeted $150,000 for the new station at the corner of West Florissant…
Former Police Headquarters
After featuring the Police Academy, I realized I had never shown the old Police Headquarters at the southwest corner of Clark and Tucker. It is now only partly occupied, with evidence storage, from what I understand, and that was told to me over a decade ago. It could have changed since then. You can actually…
Police Academy
Constructed at a cost of $800,000 in addition to the $1,000,000 that the original police headquarters to the north, the police academy, gymnasium and garage was built in 1928. I wrote about the construction of the police headquarters at St. Louis Magazine back in 2014, and Mauran, Russell and Crowell were the logical architects for…
The Never Built Central Tower
St. Louis had a couple of skyscrapers planned in downtown St. Louis, but thanks to Andrew Raimist, to whom full credit is given for this post, I learned that there was a forty story tower planned on Broadway, that would have slid right in between the two large buildings above where the small building on…
Kansas City, Baltimore, Dayton, Louisville and Indianapolis Skyscrapers
Rounding out our survey of early Twentieth Century centerpiece skyscrapers, we look at a couple more, starting first on the other side of Missouri in Kansas City. The Kansas City Power and Light Building, built in 1931, was the tallest building in Missouri until 1976. Designed by the Kansas City firm of Hoit, Price &…
Carew Tower, Cincinnati
The Carew Tower cuts a thin profile in the skyline of Cincinnati, not far from the Union Central Tower. It was named after the department store that was demolished to build the Art-Deco building in 1931. Designed by Walter William Ahlschlager, a Chicago architect, and William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich of New York,…
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….
Spires, Skyscrapers and American Skylines
I was thinking recently about how Western Civilization cities are defined by their skylines. In Europe, major cities were dominated by the spires of their churches and in their cathedrals. Take the city of Cologne; if you look above there is sort of a gentle pyramid shape formed if you follow the lines over the…