It was a beautiful unseasonably warm day yesterday, so I headed out to Rockwoods Reservation. I had heard some reports of devastating flash floods washing out trails and bridges, so I was not able to access the mines that I had photographed back in 2013. You can just see them through the trees below off…
Tag: Caves
Benton Park, Summer 2019
Update: I went back to the area in the summer of 2020. Benton Park is such a beautiful neighborhood, with such an interesting and varied housing stock, which makes it one of my favorite neighborhoods in the city. These pictures are from the blocks just south of the park, around Withnell and Illinois avenues.
Lemp Lagering Cellar and Lines
This postcard must date from the early Twentieth Century because of the Art Nouveau borders on the pictures. But they are stunning, showing the tunnels that allowed beer to move between buildings, a later addition to the brewery. Likewise, the lagering kegs on the right are larger than I thought, and they stand on end,…
Fisher Cave, Meramec State Park
I’ve always been fascinated by the industry that occurred out in the countryside back in the day. The harvesting of guano, for the manufacturing of gunpowder, logically took place in caverns, and many subterranean spaces with active bat populations were located far from urban centers. Fisher Cave, in Meramec State Park, is one such site….
Home Brewery, Revisited
The current site of the Home Brewery isn’t very impressive; demolished for a parking lot and union hall, the land now sits empty. The caves, filled-in during the mid-Twentieth Century, surely still lie below the ground, filled with the rubble of the brewery they served. I would love to buy the land and excavate it…
Quarry, Rockwoods Reservation
Rockwoods Reservation, in far western St. Louis County, used to be the site of intensive limestone quarrying for the creation of lime. The mine is now closed off from visitors, but you can still get a sense of the massiveness of the mine from the large holes in the side of the bedrock. The bedrock…
Cherokee Cave Map
I have no idea where I found this, but looking around on my computer one day I found this fascinating map of Cherokee Cave, which was a tourist attraction up until the 1950’s when its public entrance was demolished for the construction of I-55.
Falstaff Brewery Plant Ten, Former Consumers/Griesedieck Brewery
Falstaff Brewery Plant Ten is a strange place, in that it has had numerous owners and brewers over the years. It’s actually sort of hard to tell how many it’s had. Also, I think many of the buildings around the brewhouse, once part of the brewery operation, are under different ownership than the main building….
Old Jefferson Bank and Trust Building, Corner of Jefferson and Washington
Nicknamed the Building that is Impossible to Photograph, this former bank building is now a government office. Reflecting the changing uses and architecture of the western edge of town, and perhaps replacing one of the structures demolished in the clearance of the Mill Creek Valley, it cuts a unique profile across the intersection. The blue…
Looking Down, Lemp Brewery
Rumor has it that there is a whole network of caves and sub-basements below the street level buildings in the Lemp Brewery complex.