Demolition, Memory and Baltimore

A tree fell in the forest and I wasn’t around to hear it, so to speak. As a couple of my readers know, I lived in Baltimore, Maryland, from 2004 to 2005 in the Hampden neighborhood, a former mill town north of downtown along the Jones Falls. One of the most prominent landmarks in the…

Checking In on Southern McKinley Heights

I thought it would be interesting to check in on one of my favorite places in St. Louis, those narrow ancient streets of the old rural village at the northern end of the intersection of Jefferson and Gravois that is now the southern tip of McKinley Heights. I looked at Charless Street in June and…

Foundations, Benton Park

Alerted to a recent demolition in Benton Park, which is rare due to its historic district status, I went by to take a look. The property, owned by an infamous slumlord, was once a corner store with an alley dwelling whose collapse I covered back in May of 2019. It was in bad shape before…

Mount Mora Cemetery, St. Joseph

Established in 1851, Mount Mora owes its current design to W. Angelo Powell in 1872. Like most of the cemeteries I show, this is a product of the rural cemetery movement begun at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. For a city of St. Joseph’s size, there are an insane number of mausolea! It just goes…

Downtown St. Joseph

Downtown St. Joseph is quite nice, with minimal amount of land turned over to pointless parking lots. There are many buildings being renovated, and there are many interesting businesses. There is this huge mural on the side of a wall where there is a parking lot. If there is cause for concern is that there…

Joseph Robidoux IV and Jesse James, St. Joseph

It was a little later, in 1843, that St. Joseph was incorporated as a city, laid on the groundwork of a French American Joseph Robidoux IV. His mark on the city is still present to this day in the east-west streets coming out of downtown, which are named after his children. Robidoux was active in…

Demolition, Old Bumper Plating

Some old buildings, due to their history, just need to be torn down. One case in point was a squat building at the southwest corner of Victor Street and Texas Avenue. As can be seen, a small duplex house was added on to by the Koken Barber Supply Company, where shellacking occurred for some of…

North Up Blair Avenue, College Hill, March 2024

We cross into College Hill and look down Obear Avenue, which I looked at back in the snow of the winter of 2019. Below is the wood frame half flounder I’ve photographed many times over the years. Further north I came across that pocket of wood frame houses, which must be very, very old. Sadly,…