Twenty-Three Years of Paul McKee: St. Louis Avenue in JeffVanderLou

Turning right from Garrison Avenue onto St. Louis Avenue, we pass by the abandoned Grace Lutheran, and then past the Lindell Park subdivision, which has avoided much of the Northside TIF purchases. But east of here, there are vacant lots of many former McKee buildings, some of which were demolished now close to twenty years…

Bartmer Avenue Between Goodfellow Boulevard and Clara Avenue, West End

Crossing Goodfellow Boulevard, we first pass the former Cabanne Methodist Episcopal Church, which was located at this intersection from 1902 to 2003; it was previously several blocks to the south at Vernon Avenue. This is a long block, and its Sanborn map can be seen in this post for Chamberlain Avenue. As we saw to…

Bartmer Avenue Between Hamilton Avenue and Goodfellow Boulevard, West End

Heading east of Hamilton Avenue, Bartmer Avenue is north of not a parallel east-west street, but actually two, one-block north-south streets which are now blocked off, Parkland and Thornby places. I’ve looked at Thornby Place back in October of 2017. We see that most of the homes are tract houses, and less of the large…

Around the Former Plaza Theater, West End

It’s hard to believe it, but I first photographed the former Plaza Theater way back in April of 2009, when we were first starting to explore the West End and points to the north, such as Hamilton Heights and Wells-Goodfellow by heading up Clara Avenue. Today, it’s the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, which has occupied…

Former Normandy Presbyterian Church

The former Normandy Presbyterian Church was not within the city boundaries of Normandy, but rather Pasadena Park, not to be confused with Pasadena Hills. It operated from 1940 to 2003, it seems. As is fairly obvious, the church clearly grew rapidly, requiring a Modernist addition with a cool arcade that attached a Sunday School wing…

St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church, Normandy

St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church in Normandy along Natural Bridge Road dates to 1953 and is not the first building on the site. The parish dates back to 1854, when Ann Lucas Hunt donated land for the church. The current church was designed by Joseph Murphy, who along with Eugene Mackey, also designed Resurrection in…

Our Lady of Czestochowa Roman Catholic Church

There’s nothing but industrial wasteland to see now where the Polish parish of Our Lady of Czestochowa once stood from 1907 to 1957, swept away by the failed urban renewal plan for the Kosciusko neighborhood. But for a half century, the scrappy church thrived among the tenements and factories that filled the rough and tumble…

Trinity Lutheran Church, Town and Country

Sometimes ironically called the “cash register church,” Trinity Lutheran Church, Chesterfield at the intersection of Clayton Road and Missouri Highway 141 is actually a historically rich and interesting congregation. It’s actually within the boundaries of the suburb of Town and Country but identifies with Chesterfield, further to the west. This Trinity is in the Evangelical…

Former Epiphany Episcopal Church

Known as Church of the Epiphany or Epiphany Episcopal Church, it seems that the congregation moved to its final location at Dougherty Ferry and Ballas roads in 1960 and lasted until 2007. The interior featured a sculpture by Elizabeth Phelan of bronze and walnut entitled “Christus Rex,” or Christ the King. I do not know…

St. Clare of Assisi Roman Catholic Church

The current church of St. Clare of Assisi dates from 1965, though the parish was formed several years before. The congregation used the chapel of the adjacent Passionists nuns, who still exist next door until its own church was built. As we have discussed lately, the church is similar to St. Martin de Porres in…