Next, on my tour of the area damaged by Paul McKee’s Northside TIF, I headed towards what was left of St. Augustine. Illegal dumping is very common in the blocks where houses once stood but were demolished after brick theft destroyed homes. This private club is still going, I think. The tower of St. Augustine’s…
Tag: Demolition
Twenty-Three Years of Paul McKee: St. Louis Avenue in JeffVanderLou
Turning right from Garrison Avenue onto St. Louis Avenue, we pass by the abandoned Grace Lutheran, and then past the Lindell Park subdivision, which has avoided much of the Northside TIF purchases. But east of here, there are vacant lots of many former McKee buildings, some of which were demolished now close to twenty years…
Bartmer Avenue Between Hodiamont and Hamilton Avenues, West End
I’ve looked at Bartmer Avenue in the Chamberlain Addition several times over the years, starting all the way back in April of 2012. This is Gamble’s Second Subdivision of Rose Hill, from 1871, which shows just how early this area was originally platted. We’re going to start at close to the city limits at Hodiamont…
Horton Place, West End
The Horton Place Addition was platted in 1887; city records do not preserve the name of the surveyor, though Julius Pitzman was active in the area at the time period. Sanborn maps split the one block (but very long) street into two maps. Above is the west end, and below is the east end. It…
Enright Avenue Between Hamilton Avenue and Goodfellow Boulevard, West End
I somehow missed this block of Enright, the former Von Versen Avenue, back when I looked at the street west of Hamilton Avenue back in December of 2025. There’s been massive amounts of demolition, and when you look at the Sanborn map above, imagine that most of that brick you see is in a landfill….
The Mallinckrodt Chemical Company in the Twentieth Century
The Twentieth Century dawned with Mallinckrodt expanding rapidly. While originally based along North Second Street, it had now reached North Broadway, taking over two long buildings that had once served as power houses for streetcars. The company could now boast over 1,000 products. My favorite are the buildings labeled “cocaine” and “opium.” Edward Jr. had…
The Mallinckrodt Residences
As the Mallinckrodt family’s fortunes grew, so did their houses. Emil’s farm house wasn’t too shabby, and seems to have survived into the Twentieth Century. A Greek Revival center hall house, it acquired a Queen Anne style front porch in the late Nineteenth Century. It was demolished at some point, I estimate, in the early…
The Rise of Mallinckrodt
The St. Louis giant of Mallinckrodt Chemical began as a farm on the North Side, near the present day intersection of North Broadway and Salisbury Street. Emil Mallinckrodt, a native of Dortmund, and his wife Emily Vallmau owned a farm along the road that was then known as Bellefontaine Road, with their three sons Gustav,…
Normandy High School and Viking Hall
The former Eden Seminary and then the old Normandy High School was in the process of being torn down in 1953 when it was captured in the photograph above. It had used the old seminary build since 1923. The new Normandy High School, designed by William B. Ittner, opened later in the 1920s, was constructed…
End of Autumn 2025 Odds and Ends
Here are some leftover photos from the last six months. Above is a Falstaff sign in Benton Park. Above, looking down a street in what I think is Kingsway East towards the Chase Park Plaza, but I can’t be sure. Above is the Missouri Athletic Club, which I snapped while sitting at the light at…