Update: Demolished in 2016. St. Mary’s is still standing, watched like a hawk by Ameren security, and awaiting its fate. I honestly am surprised it hasn’t been demolished yet. Papin Street is pretty much Ameren turf now, so who would want to live surrounded by electric company trucks?
Tag: Frenchtown
Cyrus F. Blanke Building
Cyrus F. Blanke owned a tea and coffee company here in St. Louis. I’ve always been intrigued by his building, and its muted detail covered in off-white paint. Interestingly, the 1904 era Sanborn maps have a different owner in the building.
MacArthur Bridge Approaches, Revisited Yet Again
The infamous road deck of the MacArthur Bridge is rapidly disappearing, and with it any chance of it reopening to automobile or pedestrian traffic.
Interstate Disruption
Back in July, I looked at the well-preserved section of Frenchtown west of Soulard Market. I thought I would experience what is was like to take the 500 foot walk to the market from the neighborhood. This factory, now renovated into apartments, almost certainly was surrounded by houses or maybe another factory or two. It…
Markham Memorial Presbyterian Church
This former church seems to have sat on the former site of the Menard/Soulard Street Mission, which opened in 1875. I find the whole building confusing, as it was later a church. Built in 1896 according the National Register Nomination, the building now houses offices. I would be interested in knowing the real story behind…
West of Soulard Market
Just west of the Lafayette Avenue bridge that leads to Soulard Market, there is a small neighborhood of beautifully preserved houses. Whether it’s in Soulard, the LaSalle Park neighborhood, or the larger Frenchtown area may be debated, but not the importance that this section of the oldest remaining houses in St. Louis is still surviving….
Bohemian Hill, In Transition
Last week, I went to the grand opening of the new Fields Foods grocery store, which sits in the remnants of the Bohemian Hill neighborhood. Sliced, diced and demolished into a shadow of itself over the last seventy years, the neighborhood has lost much of any identity it once had. The first blow was the…
The Mysterious Kelly Street
I was walking along Broadway just south of Cerre Street, when I noticed this street sign attached to a light pole. After I perused the various maps from Nineteenth Century St. Louis, I could find no evidence that this street ever existed in this location, or that a street was here and later removed. Perhaps…
LaSalle Park, Frenchtown
Update: I went back in the spring of 2019. There’s a strange little pocket of what was once a much larger neighborhood south of downtown, which is nowadays called LaSalle Park, but was part of the larger Frenchtown quarter of the city. Apparently Ralston-Purina wanted most of the neighborhood demolished, and got its wish, but…
I Heard There Used To Be A City Here
I had a coupon for White Castle, so I headed over to the location on South Broadway, which is right in the middle of what could most diplomatically be described as a wasteland. Local historians claim tens of thousands of people once lived within a five minute walk of Gratiot, Cerre and their intersections with…