Standing at the Lindell entrance to Forest Park, the statue of Francis Preston Blair, Jr. memorialized a Missouri politician that is not very well known anymore, but was once so prominent that he is actually one of two Missourians represented in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Here’s another great writeup about Blair, at a…
Tag: Forest Park
St. Louis Award, Forest Park
Donated in 1965, this sculpture commemorates the St. Louis Award. It sits behind some bushes close to the World’s Fair Pavilion and the northeast entrance to the Zoo.
Friedrich Jahn Monument
The Friedrich Jahn Monument is on a stretch of road that was removed in the 1990s during renovations of Forest Park. Jahn founded the movement for gymnastics in Germany, and there were many such Turnvereinen in St. Louis. Most are now closed, but they were once a formidable social and political force in St. Louis.
Joie de Vivre by Jacques Lipchitz
Located north of the skating rink, this sculpture, Joie de Vivre, or “Joy of Life,” is a work by the famous French Cubist sculptor from 1927, and is one of seven copies. It is really wonderful that we have a work by this artist in St. Louis on public display. It is meant to be…
Forest Park Visitors’ Center, Revisited
I photographed the Forest Park Visitors’ Center way back in September of 2012, on what was a cloudy day. I went back on a sunny day and captured these pictures. There were more beautiful flowers out front here, as well. This is an interesting building, which started as a streetcar shelter, suffered a fire, and…
Current Affairs This Summer
I went by the Theophile Papin House on the last Saturday of June. It’s being demolished. It’s sad, but honestly, it had been so heavily altered that it wouldn’t really have been feasible or worthwhile to restore it back to its original appearance. It would have been an ersatz structure. During demolition some interesting stone…
From the Vault: Saint Louis Art Museum, February 2014, In the Evening
These photos were dug up from back in February of 2014. I had not gotten around to using them, so here they are for your enjoyment. I also took some down around the Grand Basin, as well.
Edward Bates Monument, Forest Park
I had never photographed the Edward Bates Monument in Forest Park until late December; it sits in a traffic triangle at the north end of Art Hill. He is an incredibly important figure in American history, having served as attorney general for Abraham Lincoln, after practicing law in St. Louis as early as 1816. He…
Korean War Memorial
While checking out the Vandeventer Place gates for the third time, I finally took a look at the Korean Veterans’ Memorial, which was dedicated in 1989, replacing an earlier vandalized monument. The large stainless steel sculpture is a sundial keeping with the theme of an earlier floral clock. There is an inscription in Latin, “Diem…
Vandeventer Place Gates, Revisited Yet Again, December 2019
I was drawn back on a late December day to the Vandeventer Place gates in Forest Park. I’ve photographed them twice before, once back in 2012, and for the first time back in 2007, when this website was less than a year old. Every time I go back I see something new, and something beautiful.