I visited JeffVanderLou in the early morning light, and revisited many of the houses I’ve photographed over the years. The buildings above, I last saw back in December of 2022 (last photo). Much of the area is now abandoned, sadly. We’ll see if the NGA has any positive effect on the area, which hasn’t happened…
Tag: Storefronts
The Lost Houses of Marine Villa
For some reason, I found a bunch of photographs by William Swekosky of houses in the Marine Villa area that have all been annihilated, mostly due to industrial spread and interstate construction; I don’t think younger people fully grasp just how altered this portion of the city is. I’ll let these house “portraits” stand void…
Northeast Madison Avenue Between Van Buren and Sloan Streets, Northeast Peoria
Northwest of the old LeTourneau works, we pick up Northeast Madison Street again, no doubt looking at the former workers’ homes of that once massive factory that helped win World War II. Houses are built close together, and there is a rhythm to their placement and massing. There are very few abandoned houses in this…
North Grand Boulevard Between Finney Avenue and North Market Street
North Grand Boulevard is in transition; half of the right-of-way is being converted into a Great Rivers Greenway to connect Fairground Park to the center of the city. North Grand is also one of the most devastated stretches of a major thoroughfare. We’ll start at Finney Avenue and head north for two days. Above, this…
Casa de Salud, Former Pinkley Motors
I figured there was more to the building at the southwest corner of Chouteau and South Compton avenues. From around 1950 to 1961, this was Pinkley Motors. I couldn’t find much information on the company, but the Bob and Tom Show had a skit on their radio show with the same name. Anyone know the…
Alaska Avenue, Dutchtown, Part One
I decided to take a look at Alaska Avenue, a street in far south Dutchtown that is southwest of Virginia Avenue (former Stringtown Road), meaning that it does not make it north of Meramec Street. So it’s a state street, but even though it’s north-south, it’s much shorter than other state streets in the old…
Sixteenth Anniversary of St-Style
A hearty and much-deserved congratulations to my close friends Jeff and Randy Vines for the sixteenth anniversary of their shop Stl Style on Cherokee Street. While they’d been making their t-shirts for years before that, their dedication to a brick and mortar store in the city they love is something I’ve always respected about them….
Meramec Street Between Ohio Avenues and South Grand Boulevard, South Side, Dutchtown
I’ve looked at the north side of Meramec Street in Dutchtown extensively, in two groups of posts that start here and here, but I’ve never looked at the south side except here and there with individual buildings. Let’s start at South Broadway and work our way west. Thanks to Found St. Louis, I learned the…
1400 Block of Newhouse Avenue, Hyde Park, Revisited
I walked down this stretch of Newhouse Avenue back in January of 2018 so after looking at the damage at the old Friedens Sunday School Hall, I thought I would take a look at how the block was doing. There had been continued abandonment and deterioration. The building below hasn’t seemed to have changed at…
South Ninth Street Between Emmet and Soulard Streets, Soulard
The next block between Emmett and today’s Soulard Street (Lafayette and Soulard would flip later in the Nineteenth Century) was already filled with houses. But interestingly, many of them have changed in form and style. The two churches are still standing; No. 2 was the German Presbyterian Church before it became Most Holy Trinity Slovak…