I last stopped by downtown Granite City in Spring of 2024, and there has not been much happening other than at the Granite City Arts and Design District on the far side of the area. I did discover another Sinclair Dinosaur which had been put on display along with a bunch of other Route 66…
Tag: Granite City
Amsted Rail, Granite City
I’d driven by this complex on Niedringhaus Avenue on the way into downtown Granite City dozens of times and I finally looked up what it is. Now part of Amsted Company, which has many different branches, it apparently has had an electric-arc furnace for melting down scrap iron and forging into what eventually becomes railroad…
Downtown Granite City, Spring 2024
I was visiting Granite City to see another amazing GCADD exhibit, so I thought I would photograph the downtown again, it having been five years since the last time. Everything looked the same, but there were some differences. For starters, the Moose Lodge has been demolished. The steel mill is still there for the time…
Checking In on the Metro East: Northeastern Granite City and Pontoon Beach
Leaving behind the steel mill, I headed north on Maryville Road. I had no idea where I was exactly, but later analysis of maps revealed I was in the northeastern reaches of Granite City. Like so much of the Metro East, you can be driving along and it’s suburbia, and then there’s just farm fields…
Checking In on the Metro East: Granite City Industry
After leaving Madison, I wandered over into Granite City, where I soon found myself on East 23rd Street, and lo and behold, there was TMS Services. I went to their website, and after reading their “About Us” section I still have absolutely no idea what they do. I guess it looks like they probably scrap…
Former Granite City Moose Lodge
Update: The building has been demolished. I took a look at the old Moose Lodge on State Street this last weekend when I was over at GCADD in Granite City. It’s an impressive building, and like many fraternal organizations, it looks like it might have had storefront space on the first floor with the meeting…
State Street and Environs, Granite City, August 2019
Update: I revisited the area in the spring of 2024. A lot has been happening on State Street since the last time I posted any photographs of the downtown area of Granite City. Galen Gandolfi, who had opened the first art gallery on Cherokee Street, Fort Gondo, bought a series of buildings at tax auctions…
Granite City, Revisited
I looked around the residential areas north of Niedringhaus Avenue in Granite City back in early April. The town’s heart is still the steel mill, which lies on the southeastern part of town, but the houses on this side of Niedringhaus are not the workers’ homes. They date from the early Twentieth Century, and are…
Granite City Modernist Slipcovers
I’m always intrigued at how downtowns adapted in the 1950s and 60s to the rise of Modernist strip malls and shopping centers in the suburbs. One of the most common tactics, done in downtown St. Louis, as well as downtowns around America, was the construction of “slipcovers” that modernized the fronts of historic buildings. Some…
Granite City Steel, From State Street
Update: The building on the right above has been demolished. State Street, what appears to have been the second of two major commercial streets along with Niedringhaus Avenue, is basically 100% vacant. There are some stores converted to apartments. But what is truly interesting about walking down the street is seeing how the U.S. Steel…