Update: The seminary buildings were demolished in 2023. The former Holy Family Seminary in Overland is now Wild Acres Park, but the buildings are still well-preserved and the grounds well-maintained. They have sort of a 1940s proto-Modernist interpretation of the Spanish Revival, which I sort of like. Like St. Stanislaus Seminary in the Florissant area,…
Tag: Universities
Former Harris Teachers College
Normal schools, where teachers were trained to teach in primary school education, were located throughout the State of Missouri. My own alma mater, Truman State, was long a teachers college. Harris Teachers College, built according to plans by William B. Ittner in 1905, was the location of the white teachers’ college in St. Louis. The…
St. Louis Community College, Meramec
Purchased in 1959 with plans to become a subdivision after the closing of the former St. Joseph College, the large open tract of land at Big Bend Road (formerly Quinette) and Couch Avenue became St. Louis Community College-Meramec Campus. St. Joseph College was operated for seventy years by the Redemptorist Order. The architecture is typical…
From the Vault: Augustana College
More of my photos dug up from September 2011 reveal the beautiful Old Main Hall at Augustana University, built in 1883 in what I would describe in an Italianate/proto-Beaux-Arts style. It is most certainly not Beaux-Arts in the purest sense as popularized by Cass Gilbert or McKim, Meade and White, but is not purely Italianate…
Fayette, Iowa
Update: I revisited the town and university in July of 2022. “But, but, we have to have a parking lot or people won’t come downtown!” I’m sure someone said that when it came time to do something with the vacant lot that was left on the west side of the main street of Fayette, Iowa,…
Preston M. Green Hall, Washington University
I know Washington University gets a lot of grief for its decision to focus on building Gothic/Tudor/”Academic” Revival buildings on its campus for the last twenty years, but I like it. I think it’s important for a university to have an image, and the architecture established one hundred years ago is beautiful, and worthy of…
Parks College, Revisited
A reader graciously sent me some more images of Parks College, as well as one postcard of what the school looked like in better days. My original post about the college has elicited the most comments, up there with the former Deaconess Hospital and Cragwold. It clearly is still very dear to many people in…
Saint Louis University Medical School Building
Anyone know much about this building? I cannot seem to find any information on when it was built, and who the architect was. This addition on the upper floors to the north was very well done, and works well with the original structure. The two buildings below are now offices incorporated into the medical complex….
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls
The University of Northern Iowa offers a fascinating ensemble of Early Twentieth Century academic buildings arranged around a quadrangle with a relatively unified architectural style and program that lasted until the 1960s when Modernist additions began to appear. Seerley Hall, above and below, is the administration building, the most highly adorned, and presents the original…
Truman State University, Revisited
Based off the campus of the University of Virginia, the grounds of Truman State University still look good after all of these years being gone. At one point before a disastrous fire that drained the lake to fight it, this would have been the view to the original building of what was once known as…