I noticed recently there are some great old survivors, and also some ghosts of the past along the west side of Indiana Avenue in Benton Park. I’ve circled three sites on Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis, and we’ll go left to right, south to north up Indiana Avenue. First up is this horribly crooked…
Tag: Benton Park
Sidney Street Between Missouri and Gravois Avenues
The rest of Sidney Street before we reach the intersection of Gravois and South Jefferson is an interesting mix of well-preserved buildings. West of Indiana Avenue, former Adele Street, is mostly parking lots, so we won’t dwell much down there. As can be seen in the photo below, it didn’t use to be that bad….
Sidney Street Between McNair and Missouri Avenues
Heading west from McNair Street looking at the south side of the street, we first see a corner store front, and then a group of houses in a variety of styles. I’m intrigued by the wing in the back in the photo below; I do not know which house it belongs to, but it shows…
Sidney Street Between Salena Street and McNair Avenue
Heading west on Sidney Street looking at the south side, we continue to see more of those “transitional” buildings where the Second Empire is slowly changing over to the Romanesque in the 1880s and 1890s. As can be seen in the details of what is now the famed restaurant Sidney Street Café, the ornament has…
Sidney Street Between Lemp Avenue and Salena Street, South Side
Sidney Street was one thoroughfare that has never changed its name over the years, but interestingly, Lemp Avenue, which is just to the right of the buildings above, was once known as Cambria Street. As I’ve mentioned before, in the 1880s, the City of St. Louis standardized street names along their Cartesian coordinates, and since…
Former St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church
Founded in 1891 and closed in 1993, the church of St. Agnes sits on a quiet stretch of Sidney Street at the intersection of Salena. It is currently vacant and has been for a number of years. It was designed by James McNamara, and if one looks closely, we can tell that this church was…
Odds and Ends
Update: Demolished in the spring of 2024. When I’m out and about, I sometimes snap pictures of interesting buildings that later expand into larger posts, but other times, I can’t figure out what to do with them. These photos are “outtakes;” buildings that are worth publishing but didn’t grow into anything else. Above, this is…
Monroe School
Monroe Elementary School is an early design by William B. Ittner from 1898 before the influence of English public (private) schools on his later works. You can see its similarity to Eliot School in Hyde Park. It sits on a dramatic site, most likely predating street grading. The central portal with a Syrian arch and…
Jefferson and Gravois, Revisited
I’ve looked at the intersection of South Jefferson and Gravois avenues in July of 2012, and I came back over the course of several months to photograph the crossing of two of the most important streets in the inner South Side. It’s come a long way from when it was a small exurban village surrounded…
Lemp Brewery, Early Summer 2020
Update: The malt kiln partially collapsed in August of 2020. Some of my favorite buildings at the Lemp Brewery, built over a time period of the 1870s through the 1910s, are from left to right above: the malt kiln and house, and the fermenting department. Above and below, the malt kiln was built in two…