A critical surviving component of the rapidly disappearing Bohemian Hill neighborhood was severely damaged by fire on January 15, 2024. While the front was clearly replaced in the early Twentieth Century, the building itself surely dated to well back into the Nineteenth Century. (Note: You can actually see the belltower of the church damaged in…
Tag: Frenchtown
Tenth Street Mall, LaSalle Park, Frenchtown
What we now call LaSalle Park, part of what I call the greater Frenchtown neighborhood, was originally just part of the greater urban fabric of what we now celebrate as historic Soulard. (Note that Rutger and Morrison were once named Autumn and Winter, respectively,) I still don’t know what the heck to think about this…
French Market Area, Revisited
I looked at the French Market area almost a decade ago in February of 2011 when there was a thick coat of ice on the ground in the area south of the elevated lanes of Highway 40 in the area that is known as Frenchtown. It was once a bustling area, anchored by the French…
LaSalle Park, Revisited
Update: I went back and revisited the Tenth Street Mall in the Winter of 2021. Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad they saved the houses left in LaSalle Park, which I’ve photographed before. But they did some weird things, like leaving these two houses above and below cut off from the street on a pedestrian…
Frenchtown Houses
Back in the 1960s, Monsanto and Ralston Purina worked with the city to demolish a huge swath of the historic housing in the Frenchtown neighborhood. They agreed to leave a little pocket for posterity. It’s a wonderful group of Second Empire and Greek Revival houses, as well as Italianate row houses. It makes me sad…
St. John Nepomuk Roman Catholic Church, Revisted
St. John Nepomuk sits just to the east of Tucker Boulevard, originally Twelfth Street, and possesses most of its original buildings, including a school building and parish hall, I believe. I was particularly interested in the building directly across the street, with the soaring Second Empire tower on the corner of Lafayette and Eleventh. I…
St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church
I came back by St. Vincent de Paul, which I had last photographed back in almost exactly six years ago (last picture). As luck would have it, the doors were open, so I was able to go inside the George I. Barnett-designed church, which is an excellent example of Neo-Classical architecture before Gothic Revival took…
Schnaider’s Malt House
Designed by Frederick Wolf and Louis Kledus and opened in 1876 (just missing an appearance in Compton and Dry), the Schnaider Malt House is a remarkably well-preserved example of a late Nineteenth Century brewery building with most of its structures left intact. As the Sanborn Map below shows, by 1908, its purpose was only to…
St. Mary’s, Rapidly Coming Down
Well, demolition certainly has been speeding up over at the old St. Mary’s. A giant, Tyrannosaurus Rex-like claw was biting away at the Modernist addition on the west on Saturday when I came by. You can’t see them, but there were two men in the doorway behind the claw. I don’t know if they were…
St. Mary’s Infirmary Coming Down
Long-suffering St. Mary’s Infirmary, is finally being put out of its misery. One half of the building, up to the central hallway, has been demolished. I’m sad, but realistically, it was in danger of collapse, and the city officials I know who made the decision couldn’t put off the emergency demolition any longer. Damaged by…