Ah, Lindell Boulevard! I avoid the street like the plague because it is such a dysfunctional street. Once a residential street lined with mansions, sometime in the Twentieth Century it became the busiest street in the city. The mansions were demolished, and it became lined with businesses, while the through traffic jumped over to Highway…
Tag: Grand Center
Two Unique Buildings, Olive Street Just West of North Compton Avenue
Often while sitting at the light at Olive Street and North Compton Avenue, I’ve looked to the west and seen these two buildings. I finally decided to take a look at them more closely. The first building on the right was actually the location of an western outpost of the famous Tony Faust’s restaurant. The…
Urban Density Surviving on Grand Boulevard
While all those demolitions are going on down south, there are actually a fair number of really nice buildings still standing just to the north, particularly on the west side of Grand Boulevard. Justine Peterson has a presence in one building, nice rehabbed above. There’s this spectacular Art-Deco storefront above, which is a rarity in…
No Encore for the Palladium
Alerted by friends, I discovered the Palladium, also known as the Plantation Club, has been demolished by the Veterans’ Administration. There had been some hope that the demolition of some non-descript warehouses on the north side of the John Cochran Veterans’ Hospital would suffice, but apparently not. It had been suffering demolition by neglect for…
No Encore for the Culver House
Back in April of this year, I wrote of the prospects of saving the Culver House from imminent destruction at the hands of the Saint Louis Symphony and its planned expansion to the east: “Someone with deep pockets needs to step up, or it will almost certainly be demolished.” There are now increasingly fewer residential…
Old Carter Carburetor Offices and Pythias Hall
I’ve looked at the old Carter Carburetor Plant on North Grand Boulevard before many times in the past, and it has been demolished and remediated for PCBs. But the office building for the company was located in the heart of Grand Center. Originally intended to be a skyscraper in 1925, only the first two stories…
Stephen Allen Bemis House
Update: The St. Louis Symphony announced the house, more commonly known as the Culver House, would be demolished for a planned expansion of Powell Hall in the spring of 2022. It was demolished as planned in July of 2022. This amazing survivor in Grand Center, just behind Powell Hall, used to be the home of…
Views of Central St. Louis from St. Louis University Hospital’s Parking Garage
I was checking out the beautiful Emil Frei & Associates stained glass windows in the chapel of the new St. Louis University Hospital, and when I looked out from my perch in the parking garage, I captured the stunning view of the skyline of the central corridor of St. Louis. Above is the Central West…
West Olive, Grand Center
Update: More like $500,000 to $1,000,000. They’re coming along on building the $300,000 houses on West Olive Street in Grand Center, and the lake I had photographed before is now gone. The new houses actually have some panache, and are turning out better than I expected. However, what was demolished could have easily been saved….
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…