The stone is worn off and eroded too much, but this was once a Baptist church, that is now abandoned. Thick undergrowth, which has started to lose its leaves, obscure much of the complex. Sometime in the 1960s, they added on a Sunday School wing, it appears. The buildings, like most of the houses in…
Tag: East St. Louis
Churches of East St. Louis, Part 3
Update: The neighboring church was demolished by spring of 2019. The old parish school of St. Elizabeth’s is still standing, but it looks like it might be damaged as well. The stunning rectory is still standing, right next to the burned out church. The school building must have been even more impressive, before the rebuilding…
Churches of East St. Louis, Part 2
Update: Demolished by the spring of 2019. Christ Redeemed Missionary Baptist Church, formerly St. Elizabeth’s Roman Catholic Church, was gutted by fire back in January 2017. The heat of the fire is evident in the melted steel trusses. Such a sad loss.
Churches of East St. Louis, Part 1
Churches are a point of pride in East St. Louis, and they are often the last building standing in some neighborhoods. They are community centers, and provide hope in the thick forests of the city. This is Fifteenth Street Baptist Church.
War Memorial, East St. Louis
Update: It turns out this monument was hit multiple times over the last twenty years, at least. It was moved into storage in June 2018; the grassroots effort to replace it with a new monument in nearby Jones Park was successful and the new monument was rededicated on May 25th, Memorial Day Weekend 2019. Read…
Lansdowne Towers
Update: Several of these buildings were demolished. I stumbled across this public housing complex in northern East St. Louis. It is extremely isolated, and it was surprising to be driving around two story houses, and heavy undergrowth, to all of the sudden see these manila brick-colored apartments rise above the tree line. They are operated…
Rockwood Pigments East St. Louis Plant
Update: A valued reader provided the name of the company. The business has been renamed Venator, apparently, and continues in other locations. The buildings in these photos have now been demolished. East St. Louis used to be an economic power house, full of factories, stockyards and power plants creating a cloud of smoke that hung…
Revisiting Northern East St. Louis
Update: I went back in the late fall of 2018. I went back over to Exchange Avenue to see what has been happening on the border between the old stockyards and East St. Louis. Much of what I photographed in the earlier post is now gone. I saw some houses that were still occupied, but…
Olivette Park, East St. Louis, Revisited
I went back and checked out some of the wonderful old houses in the Olivette Park neighborhood of East St. Louis. I think the building below is at least partly occupied.
Visiting East St. Louis on the 100th Anniversary of the Riots
10th and Bond Street is where it all began, 100 years and two weeks ago. I went back and snapped these photos on the exact anniversary of some of the worse racial violence in US history. The oldest areas of East St. Louis are still mostly abandoned, with wide swaths of vacant lots. I am…