Update: The Grand Water was repainted in the summer of 2020. I came to the sad realization that the entire east side of 20th Street in Hyde Park (some consider this to be College Hill, but I don’t) is abandoned south of the Grand Water Tower. In February, I photographed the other side of the…
Tag: Watertowers and Standpipes
North Up Blair Avenue, Fall 2018
Update: I retraced my path in early and late summer of 2019. Many of the buildings seen below have now been demolished and are now vacant lots. The house featured in the pictures above and below was demolished in 2019. Blair Avenue gives you a great cross section of the neighborhoods just to the west…
Randall Place, Revisited
Update: I went back and revisited the street in February of 2021. I visited Randall Place a couple of years ago while in the northern Hyde Park area, and I went back recently. Some houses, like the stately house above, are in great condition, but the house below has been engulfed by underbrush. And this…
Grand Water Tower, Revisited on a Sunny Day
Update: The Grand Water was repainted in the summer of 2020. The Grand Water Tower is still a sight to behold, even after all of these years. I have never noticed the bushes growing out of the capital before. I guess I also never noticed how many people have collided with the concrete pylons at…
By the Bissell Mansion, Hyde Park
Update: The Bissell Mansion Dinner Theater closed during the pandemic and the house was later sold. The Lewis Bissell Mansion is supposedly the oldest standing house in the city of St. Louis, built between 1823 and 1828. Rather interestingly, they’ve recently painted the house red, after being white for years. Not even any of the…
Jewish Home for the Aged and Hyde Park at the Turn of the Century
Thanks to help from a reader, Mark Baker, I gained access to this wonderful postcard view of the College Park/Hyde Park at what looks to be the turn of the Twentieth Century, which illuminated additional information on the Jewish Home for the Aged at Blair and Grand. For starters, if you look closely, the Home,…
Nighttime View, Compton Hill Tower
I took a series of photos out the observation deck, just as I had years ago. Above is looking to the northeast towards Downtown. Above, looking south down Grand Boulevard. Below, two of the surviving mansions on Grand. Below, traffic speeds by on Grand. Below, looking west into the Shaw and the Hill neighborhoods. It…
Compton Hill Tower
I took the opportunity to go up the Compton Water Tower last full moon, and it was well worth the climb. It had been years since the last time, and I wanted to see it at night. The limestone glows in the illumination lights from below, and this view of the corner turret takes on…
Grand Water Tower
Update: The Grand Water was repainted in the summer of 2020. Also on the National Register, the Grand Water Tower functioned in the same way as its neighbor on Blair Avenue. It’s interesting that the builders of the towers placed both in the middle of the street on roundabouts; it seems apparent they realized these…