I’m always amazed by some of the beautiful storefronts on Collinsville Avenue, many featuring terracotta decorative elements that are still in good condition after decades of neglect. Update: The Murphy Building was torn down in May of 2015; almost none of the ornamental terracotta, including the two caryatids, was saved from the landfill. Sadly, the…
Tag: East St. Louis
Wendy’s, East St. Louis
For some reason, when they tore down the rest of the Wendy’s, they left the sign. On the other side it says “CLSED.”
Spivey Building, Revisited
Update: The Spivey Building is still standing; see more posts here. Read an article about it here from the Riverfront Times. I had the opportunity to photograph the long-suffering Spivey Building, supposedly the tallest building in southern Illinois. You can see previous pictures of the exterior and interior. I was concerned that there was some…
Bank Drive-In, East St. Louis
East St. Louis was still thriving in the 50’s and 60’s, and these really cool drive-up bank teller windows are evidence of that. Built along an alley behind the bank, you can imagine cars swinging into these spots, and then heading out into the traffic of a bustling downtown.
Some More East St. Louis
I find East St. Louis sad but interesting; between the vacant lots are often times very beautiful buildings. Churches are just as high quality as across the river, and they stand out amongst the landscape. There are also lots of well-maintained houses, standing proud amongst the weeds of nearby vacant lots. These two commercial buildings…
Armour Meat Packing Plant’s End Coming Soon
Armour Meat Packing Plant, June 23, 2012. Update: Finally demolished in the spring and summer of 2016. The roads shown in the maps were mostly built as shown. A couple of years ago, the new Mississippi River Bridge website published the following satellite image of the path of the Illinois approaches to the new bridge….
18th and Lake, East St. Louis
What happened to this neighborhood!? It looks like the houses were hit by tank shells, and the apartment buildings look like they were the scene of room-to-room urban warfare. I stumbled across this cluster of houses, scattered with older houses but also relatively recent apartment buildings, and wondered, “At what point does it get to…
Abandoned Factory, East St. Louis
Update: Readers helped identify this plant as having once been owned by Pfizer and that it once produced pigments. While it may have been operational in 2012, when this post was originally made, as of 2021, it is almost certainly abandoned. I continued down the hill and entered a neighborhood off of St. Clair Avenue….
St. Clair Avenue
I continued on Lincoln Trail westbound, and the signs started saying St. Clair Avenue; I figured that the road must continue all the way to East St. Louis. I passed the standard signs of late Twentieth Century abandonment: the destroyed motel, the desolate gas station, rows of abandoned ranches, some of them burned out. But…