Moving away from the riverfront in Carondelet, we now move to the former Phelan-Faust Paint Manufacturing Company. It was acquired by Valspar Paints of Minnesota in 1973. Francis Phelan, the founder, was born in 1854 and founded the Phelan-Faust Company in 1902 in East St. Louis, where there was another plant. It matches up perfectly…
Tag: Carondelet
Titonix Lead White Factory
I found an old book at the library about Carondelet, and while it was filled with the normal stuff about French Colonial history–which is really cool–what I really found interesting is the industry. I like to think about Carondelet not as a quaint little French town, but rather as a big, brawny Brooklyn on the…
Minnesota Avenue Between Primm and Marceau Streets
Continuing south on Minnesota, we encounter more vernacular housing, with an occasional duplex, such as above, but also some very interesting wood frame construction, as seen below. As far as I can tell above and below, these were standard wood frame Greek Revival houses that received extremely awkward expansions to their second floors! The dormers…
Minnesota Avenue Between Schirmer and Primm Streets
I was checking out the new Sugarwitch ice cream sandwich store at the Ivory Triangle and then wandered over to Minnesota and headed south, checking out some of the cool buildings of Carondelet. We head south, and this building intrigues me; St. Boniface is just northwest of this Gothic Revival beauty, and I have to…
Virginia Avenue Between Koeln and Robert Avenues, West Side
Looking into a tip a reader provided me, I went and looked at a burned out hulk of a house down in Carondelet. It’s never good when a house sits in this state for any amount of time. I then headed around the corner and went up Virginia Avenue, which is a mixed bag of…
Former Carondelet YMCA
Designed by Study and Farrar, the former Carondelet YMCA, which has now moved across the interstate, opened in 1926. It’s a great example of architecture based off Hanseatic cities merchant houses of the Sixteenth Century as the Italian Renaissance finally began to work its way north of the Alps with the idiosyncratic style of the…
Fire, Vulcan Street, February 2024
Bad news from the 7700 Block of Vulcan Street in the Patch neighborhood of Carondelet. While several homes are still occupied and maintained, fire broke out in the early evening on January 31, gutting the two stone houses and spreading to the brick house next door. I even think this house below might be occupied…
South Broadway from Schirmer to Loughborough Avenue
With the old South Public Market on our right, we turn left onto South Broadway from Schirmer Street. Before we get to Steins Street, there is this impressive row of commercial spaces. Many of them were probably built as Greek Revival houses that were then converted into stores with long cast iron beams holding up…
Schirmer Street East of St. Boniface
The houses east of St. Boniface are very old, including these two above. Sadly, their neighbor to the east didn’t make it. It was a very old two-story half-flounder, and while it had some structural issues, I wonder how bad it had gotten. Development is slow in this neighborhood, unfortunately. There’s some nice wood frame…
Former St. Boniface, Winter 2024
The former St. Boniface, and now the former Ivory Theatre, has seen some theft of the metal on the upper portions of the two towers in the last couple of years. But I’m told that there are new owners who are taking care of it now, and hopefully they’ll have it back open soon. For…