Moving down to what is now South Main Street, we hit some of the oldest houses in Ste. Genevieve. There is the Bolduc House above. Early colonial houses had broad porches that wrapped around the whole structure, and unlike German or English log walls with horizontal beams, place the logs in the grounds vertically, as…
Tag: Museums
Ste. Genevieve Arts Center
The Ste. Genevieve Artists Guild has an arts center in what was originally a museum building built in the 1930s. The building below was the office. Thanks to the reader for helping identify the original use.
Neoclassicism and Beyond, Paris
Moving along now so we can get back to St. Louis, here is a smorgasbord of Paris buildings that have broader implications on world architectural history, including here in the Gateway City. First up is the Madeleine, which was originally built by Napoleon to glorify his reign, but was then converted into a church. It’s…
Notre Dame of Paris, Under Reconstruction and the Cluny Museum
No trip to Paris would be complete without a visit to Notre Dame, which simply means “Our Lady” in French, and as such, there are perhaps thousands of churches in the Francophone world with that name. Our Lady obviously refers to the Virgin Mary. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the cathedral…
The Palace of Versailles
Visiting Versailles just about drove me crazy. It’s an exhausting day, taking a commuter railroad out from central Paris. But you have to take the right train, from the right station to the correct destination because there are multiple depots in the town of Versailles. It was a beautiful day for the start, and it…
The Louvre
I get a good laugh out of the Louvre. It is an absurdity. Obscenely huge, the product of around twenty expansions and now the home of a gigantic museum with a stellar art collection as well as numerous other institutions in other wings, the Louvre was never the seat of the royal government in France….
Foundations of the Louvre
Like St. Louis, Paris is multi-layered. One of the sights that I was not going to miss out on are the original foundations of the Louvre fortress, which are now viewable after being buried for centuries under the courtyard of the eastern portion of the famous palace. This helpful illustration that somehow photographed well above…
Some Random Impressions of France
First off, perhaps I would like to start off with some impressions of Paris, and France in general. This was my twelfth trip to Europe, but my first to France. Many people were surprised that I had never been, and that was a major reason I chose to finally go. As I remarked to someone,…
Sachs Museum, Missouri Botanical Garden
After being closed the vast majority of my life, the Missouri Botanical Garden’s museum, one of the oldest buildings in St. Louis, finally opened up again as the Stephen and David Sachs Museum. Originally built by Henry Shaw, the Sachs Museum was built in 1859 according to plans by his favorite architect, George I. Barnett….
The Lawrence Cribbin House, St. Charles County Heritage Museum
We’re going to be looking at Greek Revival farmhouses out in St. Charles County for the next week along with some other landmarks. Many of the houses are perhaps not “pure” Greek Revival anymore because of additions and elaborations, but I found it fascinating just how many survive. In this case, this is the which…