Family Farm, August 2023

My last stop on my August travels was my family farm east of Peoria in Central Illinois. As longtime readers know, the cattle barn was destroyed by a tornado in late March. These photos are from late August, but the destroyed barn is now completely cleaned up. I also had a surprise, as the last…

Belle Isle, Detroit

As I drove onto Belle Isle, connected to the City of Detroit by the MacArthur Bridge, I blew by a small booth. Thinking I should stop after all, I backed up and talked to the woman and realized I had to pay $11 for the honor of driving my car around the park for around…

Two Houses on Dunn Road, Florissant

Saved from demolition twice now, the John B. Myers House, sits just north of the intersection of interstates of 270 and 170, though it once lay along a quiet stretch of Dunn Road (now a glorified frontage road). Constructed in 1878, it is often described as Classical Revival, but I should point out that it…

Family Farm, Late June 2023

Update: See the farm in August of 2023 for updates after the tornado. Two days after I posted these photos on March 29 of the family farm, a tornado struck, destroying several structures and trees. Thankfully, the historic horse barn, built in the late 1800s, survived with minimal damage, losing only a few pieces of…

Grant’s Farm, Mid-June 2023

The Busch Family Ownership Group (minus Billy and Adolphus IV) welcomes you to Grant’s Farm! We paid an evening visit to the Busch family estate recently. I learned the structure below was the ice skating building. This was part of the original holdings of the Dent Family, and the Hardscrabble log cabin is one of…

The Former Faust Estate

Always take that strange narrow road and see where it goes. We were recently visiting Faust Park in Chesterfield to look at the collection of historic West County structures on display there (see them here and here) and noticed there was a little road going to the east. Before we knew it, we had discovered…

Eberwein Park

Time for more barns! Eberwein Park is the former farm of the eponymous family, who sold hay harvested from its fields into the Twenty-First Century. It is now a public park owned by the City of Chesterfield off Old Baxter Road, preserving the original barn from the early Twentieth Century. Garden plots are available as…

Reinke Barn, Bluebird Park

Tucked in a valley in Bluebird Park in Ellisville is the Reinke Barn, moved from its original location west of Clarkson Road on Manchester Road. Originally built in 1905 for Henry Reinke, laborers came from the communities of Sherman and Glencoe to help build the barn. It could originally hold two horses, six cattle and…

The Sheep House, Rural Pike County

The owners of this property have moved next door to a modern house, and left the original homestead standing. The sheep, and possibly a few goats in the far background, have now moved in. Down the road is the barn.

Family Farm, Deer Creek Township, Illinois, March 2023

I woke up to a dusting of snow on the ground, which I was not expecting at this point in the season; apparently the same thing happened in St. Louis. It was very, very cold out, to say the least. But the sky was clear and blue in the morning.