I’ve become intrigued recently with the sculpting and shaping of wood in churches in St. Louis. Marble is always beautiful, and is the inheritance of the Greeks and Romans, who, living around the Mediterranean and its more volcanically active geologic topology, had access to metamorphic stone. But in the transalpine regions of Europe in places…
Tag: Holly Hills
Woerner Elementary School
Constructed in 1931, Woerner Elementary School is a late example of an Ittner/Milligan design. It clearly shows the style of that famous architecture firm, with the flanking perpendicular wings and the double entrances. Georgian or Colonial Revival was not a style they had explored before, and the color of the brick, with a beige and…
Heny Vahlkamp and St. Matthew’s Cemetery
I recently wrote about the fascinating figure of Henry Vahlkamp, who worked for the Lemps from 1870 into the 1920s, making him one of the longest serving member of the brewery, far longer than every member of the family save William J. Lemp, Sr., whose length of service is a bit cloudy since he arrived…
Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church
Opened in 1964, the exterior of Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church is relatively simple, but it belies a beautiful interior, which you can see at Built St. Louis. The windows in the clerestory, as well as below in the nave, are simply breathtaking and are clearly the work of Emil Frei & Associates….
St. Stephen Protomartyr Roman Catholic Church
Which of these is not like the others? St. Stephen Protomartyr Roman Catholic Church is an interesting parish, tucked away on a beautiful, quiet tree-lined street in the Holly Hills neighborhood on Wilmington Avenue. St. Stephen was the first martyr of the Christian church, killed by stoning, hence his superlative ????????????? in Greek, which means…
Carondelet Park, Revisited, Part Three
If there is perhaps one flaw to St. Louis parks, it is the borders. St. Louis builders gave us beautiful houses to frame our amazing green spaces, but then in the Twentieth Century, traffic engineers strangled access with asphalt traffic sewers. Loughborough Avenue on the south side of Carondelet Park is one such example: reckless…
Carondelet Park, Revisited, Part Two
On the western end of Carondelet Park the large lake has a rustic stone bridge separating it into two parts, and fishing is allowed. The public restrooms have been closed for decades. The benches have various inscriptions from donors. This says “Our love remains” in Latin.
Carondelet Park, Revisited, Part One
I went back to Carondelet Park to look at the sinkholes that dot the landscape. Much of park has these undulating pockets and depressions, which are the remnants of karst topography. I strongly suspect that the ponds were adapted from the sinkholes, plugged and converted by the park designers for recreation. I would imagine much…
Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery
Update: Readers interested in seeing the plat maps with boundaries of this cemetery can reference them in this post about the neighboring New Picker’s/Gatewood Gardens Cemetery (scroll down to the bottom). Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery lies just inside the city limits of St. Louis; there is a small neighborhood in between it and the River…
Kingshighway at Gravois Avenue
Kingshighway, the busiest traffic artery in St. Louis, comes to a rather anticlimactic end at a group of beautiful buildings on Gravois Avenue. But again, occupancy is good, and there is an interesting mix of building stock. There’s this cool streamline modern storefront reskin. With its original stainless steel or chrome doors. ?? This turreted…