I was checking out the beautiful Emil Frei & Associates stained glass windows in the chapel of the new St. Louis University Hospital, and when I looked out from my perch in the parking garage, I captured the stunning view of the skyline of the central corridor of St. Louis. Above is the Central West…
Tag: Office Buildings
St. Louis Avenue West of North Florissant Avenue
I’ve sporadically photographed the block just to the west of North Florissant Avenue, and mainly the buildings on the south side of the street. They’ve all been destroyed on the south side: first the Winkelmann Mansion, then a row of houses in a fire. But the north side of the street has some amazing buildings…
Macklind Avenue Between Oakland and Manchester Avenues
I found myself wandering up Macklind Avenue north of Manchester Avenue, and there’s a unique group of post-World War II light industrial buildings. I’d love to know the story behind the two anachronistic doorways that flank the two sides of this first building. This building obviously dates earlier, probably to the 1930s. This, of course,…
The Beauty of Dutchtown, Part 39: Virginia Avenue Between Eichelberger and Walsh Streets
Continuing north from Eichelberger, we see houses set back from the street, but then there are numerous businesses built right up to the sidewalk line, their front façades angled to match the orientation of Virginia Avenue. They show their continuous occupation up through the Twentieth Century, and while many of them now appear to be…
Main Street, Louisiana, Missouri
The beautiful architecture continues, and quiet descends on Main Street, one block east of Third Street (seriously, the lack of mufflers on the trucks in Louisiana is a serious detractor from quality of life). Above, there’s a Gothic Revival cottage, and below there’s a rare Italianate villa with its tower placed on the front facade….
Hill and North Main Streets, Hannibal
Apparently someone named Samuel Clemens, whose pen name was Mark Twain, was from Hannibal. There’s a statue of two of his most famous characters, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, at the end of North Main Street. Back down on Hill Street, which intersects with Main, the houses and offices that his father worked and lived…
Downtown Quincy, Illinois
Much like St. Louis, Quincy got its start due to its location high on the bluffs above the Mississippi River, allowing it to benefit from the trade connections without the threat of flooding. Much like St. Louis, eventually the railroad connections became much more important, and bridges began to be built across the river at…
Dick Brothers Brewery, Quincy, Illinois
The Dick Brothers Brewery is located on York Street in the South Side German Historic District. It is a great example of adaptive reuse of a historic brewery building that has incorporated its underground cellars into a guided tour. The buildings are also a great example of the Rundbogenstil of brewery architecture, which I classify…
The South Side, Quincy, Illinois
For the next several weeks, I’m going to be looking at the towns upriver from St. Louis on the Mississippi River, starting with Quincy, Illinois. It’s an interesting city, and in many ways, it is a small version of St. Louis. On the South side of the city, there is a German neighborhood, much like…
Current Affairs This Summer
I went by the Theophile Papin House on the last Saturday of June. It’s being demolished. It’s sad, but honestly, it had been so heavily altered that it wouldn’t really have been feasible or worthwhile to restore it back to its original appearance. It would have been an ersatz structure. During demolition some interesting stone…