Main Street in downtown Keokuk is also U.S. Highway 218, which is usually not the best arrangement as it brings heavy traffic that does not want to stop at local businesses, but still brings the negative effects of automobiles, particularly tractor trailers and their pollution. Nonetheless, Main Street is overall in good condition and has…
Tag: Beaux-Arts
The Union Electric Hydroelectric Dam, Keokuk, Iowa
We’ll get started with the major landmark in Keokuk. The Cahokia Power Plant was just one cog in a much larger machine that Union Electric didn’t build but purchased shortly after its completion at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Keokuk and St. Louis have more than one link, and the first we will talk…
Former Municipal Courts
The behemoth of the old Four Courts, named after the building in Dublin and demolished long ago, was based off the Tuileries Palace in Paris, as I mentioned a couple of years ago. Its attached jail was quite a work of engineering and architecture, with a huge half rotunda and tiers of cells. Replacing it…
St. Louis Medical Examiner, The Morgue
For years after the demolition of the old Four Courts the morgue was still used at the corner of Twelfth and Spruce streets (you can see in the 1920 photo below how the old courthouse has vanished). But finally in 1927, the City of St. Louis turned to its staff architect, L.R. Bowen of the…
After the Tornado: Union Boulevard
Heading north on Union Boulevard, we see the damage to Waterman Place; normally the house above and below are largely shielded from view but with the trees destroyed, they are exposed. Many of the windows on the Chesterfield, below, have been blown out; I have been told that throughout the area affected by the tornado,…
Saint Louis Art Museum, Nighttime
I was up at the Saint Louis Art Museum almost until close and snapped these photos with the night sky behind it.
Central Post Office
It dawned on me that after I had posted about the major expansion to the Central Post Office, I have never actually posted about the original building, opened in 1935. I’d even featured the murals on the interior back in 2011. Designed by Klipstein and Rathmann, who also designed the Eighteenth Street Parking Garage from…
Four Historic Districts, Bloomington, Illinois, Part One: North Roosevelt Avenue
I was up in Central Illinois, so I thought I would check out some of the historic districts in Bloomington that looked interesting. I’ve already checked out White Place, one of the other prominent historic districts, back in March of 2016. We’ll be looking at four in all, starting with the North Roosevelt Avenue Historic…
Lightwell, Carnahan Courthouse
I was in the Carnahan Courthouse recently on some unrelated business and I spotted an open window that looked into one of two lightwells for the building. I took these photos blindly, sticking my camera out the window. It’s interesting to see how the HVAC systems have been installed in the lightwell since there was…
Magnolia Avenue from Thurman Avenue to Klemm Street, Part One
Crossing Thurman, we see more apartment buildings and houses. This first one is perhaps more reminiscent of the U-shaped buildings of Chicago that are so prevalent, but not so much in St. Louis. But as I often remind readers, apartments in St. Louis, no mater how complicated they look, are usually just four- or six-family…