A valued reader alerted me to the recent completion of a new religious building, the Chapel of the Risen Christ in Resurrection Cemetery in Affton. Please ignore the KPLR broadcast antenna in the background. Heavily influenced by the Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut by Le Corbusier in 1950, this chapel was constructed by BSI according to designs by…
Tag: Cemeteries
Oak Grove Cemetery, St. Charles
Oak Grove Cemetery in St. Charles, not to be confused with the one in North County, has a history that goes back to at least 1860. Interestingly, for whatever reason, the City of St. Charles took over ownership in 1860, which is the same date that I could find for the cemetery in the historical…
Friedens United Church of Christ and Cemetery, St. Charles
Tipped off by Found St. Louis, we checked out the Friedens United Church of Christ and its accompanying cemetery. The current sanctuary dates from 1962, I believe, but there was a much older church that dated from 1864. I suspect that the stained glass windows might have come from the older church and were reused…
St. Peter’s, St. John’s and Immanuel Lutheran Cemeteries
It’s a little confusing, but there are three cemeteries contiguous to each other to the west of downtown St. Charles, and each has its own section, but there are no boundaries between them. In the southeast corner of the huge area is St. John’s Cemetery. While in the north and west is Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery….
Bellefontaine Cemetery, August 2025
I hadn’t been by Bellefontaine Cemetery in a while so I thought I would swing by. The flowers by the gate house were looking wonderful. I tried to find monuments and mausolea that I hadn’t seen before.
Mount Carmel Cemetery, Belleville
Heading back towards St. Louis on Main Street in Belleville, we then visited Mount Carmel Cemetery, which is the diocesan cemetery. It is quite large. And while there is a fair amount of forest that has grown up at Mount Hope down the street, there are wide open lawns that show off the rolling terrain…
Mount Hope Cemetery, Belleville
Now owned by the City of Belleville, Mount Hope Cemetery is a perfect example of how Protestant burial grounds owned by Lutheran or Evangelical congregations were not part of a larger entity such as a Roman Catholic diocese, so when the church associated with the cemetery folded, the accompanying graveyard suffered as well. In this…
Des Peres Presbyterian Church, Frontenac
Constructed in 1834, the old stone Des Peres Presbyterian Church is rapidly approaching the bicentennial mark out in Frontenac off Geyer Road. Despite the roof collapsing in 1874 and a car crashing into it a few years ago, the venerable church has remained a beacon in the community. At one point it was threatened with…
Family Farm, Early June 2025
I visited the family farm last weekend, and it’s perhaps evident, if it wasn’t already in the photos of the tornado damage, that the smoke from another natural disaster, the wildfires in Canada, was affecting the sky in the background. Longtime readers will know that the farm was hit by a tornado back in March…
After the Tornado: Around the Ville and Greater Ville
Fountain Park, which has been in the news a bunch already, was crowded with disaster relief efforts so I continued on, not wanting to get in the way. I headed up North Taylor Avenue, taking a quick look at the Lewis Place neighborhood before heading into The Ville. I’ve looked at the building above before,…