I was extremely pleased to see that Blackline took on the difficult task of renovating the old St. Thomas of Aquin parish school. It is in Dutchtown, which is seeing increased not-for-profit investment, but also extensive out-of-town predatory speculation. The former church is nearby. Sure, the windows were probably not black originally, but it’s more…
Tag: Schools
Two Churches in the Land Between the Rivers
We looked at two churches in that flat bottomland sandwiched between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers that forms an almost peninsula-like eastern tail of St. Charles County. The first one, Trinity Lutheran Church at the intersection of Highway 94 and Church Road, dates from 1876, when it was calved off from Emmanuel Lutheran. The church…
Checking In On Mark Twain and Central High Schools
St. Louis voters recently overwhelmingly passed Prop S, which will allow the St. Louis Public Schools to issue bonds for much needed improvements to buildings, most of which are now over one hundred years old, though as anyone who will admit it, are extremely well built and will last for centuries if properly maintained. The…
Schiller’s Grove and the Former St. Elizabeth’s Academy
I had long known that the former St. Elizabeth’s High School and convent, now the International Institute, had once had a larger chapel that had been partially demolished when its new Modernist wing had been built in the 1960s in Tower Grove East. Christopher Schiller, owner of the Swan Tavern on the Levee, had bought…
John F. Kennedy High School, Interior and Today
I dug up some old photos of John F. Kennedy High School from when it had just opened back in 1971. As I covered back in March of this year, it has been completely demolished for new houses named Celtic Meadows. As can be seen below, there has been some major grading work going on…
Lindell Boulevard from North Boyle Avenue to Kingshighway
Proceeding further west on Lindell Boulevard, we see both well-preserved stretches of historic architecture and utterly obliterated streetscape. There are those stunning townhouses, which I would love to own if I didn’t have to worry about a car driven by a man-child flying into my living room every day. And then there’s the former of…
Our Lady of the Presentation Roman Catholic Church
Updated with correct dates due to new information from the Archdiocesan archives. Our Lady of the Presentation Roman Catholic Church is located on Tudor Avenue at Brown Road, just southwest of St. Charles Rock Road in Overland. It was founded in 1915. The present church was consecrated in 1948. It’s a classic example of the…
Around Buchanan County, Iowa, July 2022
In a clockwise route, we explored various small towns in Buchanan County, starting in the northeast with Lamont, where we first spied this foundation above left behind but incorporated into a horse enclosure. There was also a half-flounder downtown on the main street, though I don’t know how old it was. Another sight was a…
Around Woodford County, Illinois, June 2022
I went around and looked at some of the towns northeast of the family farm. I started with Eureka, the county seat of Woodford County. I could have sworn I had featured the courthouse before, but apparently not. Got to love the bank where they filled in the windows–who needs natural light when there’s amazing…
St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church, Peoria, Exterior
Up the hill in Peoria away from the South Side is St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church, which has roots going back to 1891. It is interesting in that it has only two front portals. As is typical of many German Gothic Revival churches, the spire is offset and transitions to an octagonal shape above the…