According to this tombstone-shaped plaque, the roots of Concordia Cemetery go back to some of the earliest burial grounds in St. Louis. Located off of what is now Bates Avenue, this cemetery would have been far out in the country. The star, of course, is the Walther Mausoleum, which could really be best described as…
Tag: Bevo
The Vanished Theaters of Gravois Avenue
There used to be so many more theaters in St. Louis, and they’ve mostly been demolished. Take the Granada, seen above, and then look below, where the theater and its entrance have been removed and turned into a parking lot for the apartment building that originally attached to the theater. It was fairly common for…
National Candy Company
The old National Candy Company factory sat empty for years, and was first the target of redevelopment for a charter school a few years ago. That never happened, so in a continuing trend, U-Haul got a hold of it and renovated it for storage, which I think is a perfectly fine reuse. It’s a great…
Gravois Avenue Viaduct
The Gravois Avenue underpass, started in 1940, is much deeper than its neighbor, the Chippewa Avenue underpass. Much like its neighbor, it was built to go under the Missouri Pacific railroad tracks, and was originally budgeted to cost around $600,000. It ended up costing $850,000. And similarly, the right-of-way and its bridge are now much…
Chippewa Avenue Viaduct
Two of the strangest lacunae in St. Louis built environment history are the Chippewa and Gravois underpasses that lead into the Bevo neighborhood. The first one, the Chippewa underpass, was clearly necessitated by the large amount of rail traffic on several lines that passed over the major artery in the mid Twentieth Century. Newspapers report…
Antebellum House, Ulena Avenue, Bevo
This house, heavily modified, was constructed in 1859, and is easily one of the oldest houses in the Bevo area, long before many of the streets in the area were even platted.
Schiller Avenue, Bevo
I always forget how much of the city is not red brick; large swaths are more of a buff color, and then there’s large sections of the city down Gravois that are wood frame. It honestly doesn’t hold up as well, and there’s way too much asphalt shingles one top of them. Schiller Avenue is…
Bungalows, Walsh Street, Bevo
I love the bungalows of the South Side down past Gravois and Grand. They’re all one story, with a front door and two to three windows. Each one looks like a little palace, with its own ornament and sense of style. Inside, they probably have very similar floor plans, but on the outside, they’re all…
St. John the Baptist, Bevo
Update: I went back and revisited the church in June of 2021. Opened in 1914, St. John the Baptist was the bulwark of the southwest side of the city. I believe the school associated with it closed several years ago. The church, just like its contemporary, Epiphany in Lindenwood Park and St. Ambrose on the…
Delor Street, Bevo
Update: I went back and revisited the area around Delor Street in June of 2021. See Delor Street west of Gravois in March of 2023. Moving away from “downtown” Bevo, the quiet side streets revitalized by Bosnian immigrants continue to show their charm. Bevo was never a wealthy neighborhood, and its housing stock is much…