I was in the vicinity of the now-demolished neighborhood of Carrollton, so I thought I would swing by and see who things looked. First off, I couldn’t believe I had missed this giant domed bowling alley the other times I had come by. Located northwest of Lambert International Airport off Natural Bridge Road, the subdivision’s…
Tag: Deserted
North First Street, Laclede’s Landing
We come up the steep incline and reach North First Street, where the above photograph captures the street in 1968, right before the grand plans for redevelopment had begun. Interestingly, old fashioned street lights had already appeared. Below, on the southwest corner, a plaza that appears to still be incomplete replaced the vacant lot where…
Macy’s Closing at Chesterfield Mall
Back in May of 2020, I had predicted the shuttered Macy’s at Chesterfield Mall would never reopen after it closed at the beginning of the pandemic. It did in fact reopen, but now it is closing again, and reopening in a smaller version in the Chesterfield Valley. I would imagine that the remaining portion of…
Twin Silos
The question arose when we viewed the entrance gateway to this new development: was the name obtained a priori or a posteriori?
The Intersection of St. Louis and Marcus Avenues, July 2022
I decided to check in on the corner of Marcus and St. Louis Avenues, which I first looked at way back in August of 2009. You can actually see the building above in the last photo of that post, and the trim was painted white at the time, and the building on the left had…
I Know There’s A House in There
Earlier this year I drove down this block of Samuel Shepard Drive east of Compton Avenue and I spotted a house that I knew I had to photograph later. But when I came back last weekend, I couldn’t find it! “I know there’s a house in there,” I said to myself, and after looking more…
Old North, Revisited Winter 2022, North Eleventh Street Between Montgomery and Monroe Streets
I’ve long been intrigued by this corner storefront sitting right by the interstate. The black paint is the from the never-ending efforts of Operation Brightside to cover up graffiti. The city agency is currently winning at this address, but the tide of battle will probably turn the other way sometime this summer, and so on….
South Riverfront Near the Wreck of the Intrepid, October 2021
I went down to the South Riverfront bright and early on Saturday and cut through the flood wall. The sun was shining across the Mississippi River. The water level is still low, but I think it has been rising a bit since the last time I looked. I had come to see if I could…
Wells-Goodfellow, Autumn 2021, Part One
I got up bright and early on Saturday and thought I would check in on Wells-Goodfellow, a neighborhood that has long suffered from disinvestment, crime and the effects of decades of redlining. I always struggle with how to portray a community such as this: there are many parts of the neighborhood which look great, but…
Laflin Street, JeffVanderLou, Early Fall 2021
Update: I went back in the winter of 2022. I checked in on Laflin Street, which once had far more houses, including two more to the north of the one above. You can see them in this post from September of 2017 (third photo down). A year later, it became a dumping ground for a…