Lick Run, which we looked at yesterday, empties into Mill Creek, the industrial spine of Cincinnati. Not surprisingly, it has been heavily modified, altered and polluted by humans over the last two hundred years. There is something sublime about the giant swath of hundreds of miles of railroad tracks that you can see fleetingly while…
Tag: Chicago School
Lake Sherwood
Note: The streets around Lake Sherwood are private. I recently was invited to visit Lake Sherwood in Overland, which is an artificially created lake created by the Laughlin Family. Henry Laughlin had originally acquired the property that was the headwaters of the River des Peres–yes the same River des Peres that empties out into the…
Looking Out the Windows of the Alverne
It’s hard to believe considering how long suffering the Alverne Building was, that I was able to stand on the top floor recently and deliver a lecture. It’s now renovated into some interesting apartments, including some two-story ones, and the problem with the building having some small windows that couldn’t be altered in order to…
Northeast Side of Crunden-Martin, October 2021
I photographed the east side of Crunden-Martin back in the summer of 2020, and not much had changed. The hulking buildings are still vacant, and are built of a sort of pale red brick. A portion of the terracotta cornice, which may have been white or cream-colored when it was originally installed but has turned…
South Side of Crunden-Martin October 2021
It’s been almost exactly a decade since a fire ripped through one of the massive buildings of the Crunden-Martin complex in December of 2011. I came back in January of 2014, and little had changed since the conflagration except some of the scorch marks had been washed off the outside by the rain. By August…
Moss Avenue Between Western Avenue and North MacArthur Highway, Peoria
Moss Avenue is a historic district that stretches along the bluffs near Bradley University northwest of downtown Peoria. I’ve broken up the street into two sections, first from Western Avenue to North MacArthur Highway/North University Avenue. There are a wide variety of styles, with everything from early Twentieth Century Colonial Revival to Shingle Style houses,…
Bellefontaine Cemetery, Nighttime
Jason Gray and I were recently given the opportunity to do some late afternoon and evening night photography at Bellefontaine Cemetery. Here are some of my shots. Jason did many more and better photographs that you’ll see in the future.
Bellefontaine Cemetery, Late Summer
I find someone new every time I visit Bellefontaine Cemetery, and recently I found the grave of William Russell, who was an important figure in early St. Louis history. While the limestone has been damaged by acid rain, you can still imagine how beautiful the sculpting would have been originally. The are cherub heads around…
Bellefontaine Cemetery, Summer 2020
Bellefontaine Cemetery has been a welcome respite this summer with so many other places closed. The self-guided tour is a great way to spend some time safely. James Eads’s monument looks very much like Verrocchio’s design for Piero and Giovanni de Medici’s sarcophagus in the Old Sacristy at San Lorenzo in Florence. Leonardo da Vinci…
Farrington Street and Laurel Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota
On the northwest corner of Summit Avenue and Farrington Street is this amazing Romanesque Revival mansion with some Renaissance Revival elements in the porches. They look like something I would see in Florence or other Italian cities. All of the mansions have their carriage houses on the back side of the property. Then we headed…