As we discussed yesterday, St. Louis as a railroad hub featured two railroad hospitals, which was fairly unheard of compared to other cities. The second one was operated by the Frisco Railroad, and was located on Laclede Avenue just east of Kingshighway. It is now a retirement home with a severely altered front door, which…
Tag: Central West End
Former Liberty Hospital
I always wondered what the long building on the southwest corner of North Taylor Avenue and Washington Boulevard was, and I finally figured it out. It was the former Liberty Hospital, constructed as an osteopathic institution in 1920 at a cost of $500,000, replacing another small location nearby. It was originally shaped like the letter…
Hortense Place
Platted in May of 1900 by Jacob Goldman, a Jewish businessman and banker who was kept out of other private streets and designed by Julius Pitzman, Hortense Place is one of the more interesting of its kind in the Central West End. The lots are huge, and it is perhaps famous for #13 above, where…
Other Fall Updates, Fires, Demolitions, Etc.
It finally happened, the Mullanphy Emigrant Home, which I last looked at back in June of this year, caught on fire and burned to the ground on the night of September 14th. There is certainly no grand conspiracy, but simply the fact that overnight lows reached 50 degrees, and a squatter’s fire probably spread out…
Former St. John’s Hospital
I stumbled upon these photographs of the two former locations of St. John’s Hospital (now known as Mercy Hospital St. Louis, located at the northeast corner of I-270 and Highway 40), and I couldn’t help but want to share them. The image above shows the building at the southwest corner of Lucas and Jefferson avenues….
End of Winter 2023 Odds and Ends
The old Soulard Branch of the St. Louis Public Library has had several uses over the last decade besides the commercial space facing 7th Boulevard. There was “The Library” and then “The Archives.” They’re both gone. Below, in McKinley Heights, I still can’t believe that Second Empire house below is sitting vacant; the property values…
Pershing Place Between Euclid Avenue and Kingshighway
In between Euclid and Kingshighway, Pershing Place takes on a distinctively different character, with much more emphasis on English influences in architecture. Interestingly, the lots on the north side of the former Berlin Avenue, which Pershing Place once was before World War I, were actually platted as part of the larger Hortense Place addition. There…
Euclid Avenue Between Lindell, Maryland and McPherson Avenues
I’ve always found it interesting how there is a quiet section of private streets off Euclid Avenue in the Central West End in between Maryland Avenue (which you can see here and here) in the south, and McPherson Avenue in the north (which you can see here and here). Above is the southeast corner of…
A Vanished Mansion at the Corner of Lindell Boulevard and West Pine Drive
These two houses along Lindell Boulevard just west of Kingshighway, which I looked at way back in March of 2008, used to have two neighbors just down the street, back when this was actually known and platted originally as Park Road, as I mentioned yesterday. Designed by the famed architecture firm of Barnett, Haynes and…
A Vanished Mansion at the Corner of Lindell Boulevard and Kingshighway
As I always tell people, if you come across a house that is much newer than all the houses around it, you need to be suspicious. Take 2 Westmoreland Place, built in 1895 by Henry Siegrist, an automobile lubricant executive on lot 33 of the Forest Park Addition. It passed through various owners before being…