Continuing through Wells-Goodfellow, we pass by Stowe School, which closed in 2009 and is now for sale for $450,000. Built in 1967, I call this design, which appear throughout the northwest side, the last generation of schools before the dramatic decline in student population in the city. After the schoolyard there is this lone, abandoned…
Tag: In-Fill
South Tenth Street Across from the Interstate
Across the interstate from Soulard, which you can reach on a pedestrian bridge and St. Vincent de Paul, which just barely avoided being demolished, you find a short stretch of South Tenth Street in what I call Frenchtown. As is evident, these first houses we’re looking at are in-fill, maybe easy to tell due to…
Water Retention Basins, Baden
Let me tell you a story about a creek. It was called the Gingrass Creek, and some geniuses thought it would be a good idea to bury it under a large section of the Baden neighborhood. I looked at this area back on that freezing cold morning back in the winter of 2018. You can…
Surf Ballroom, Clear Lake, Iowa
Buddy Holly played the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis on April 15, 1958. Less than a year later, he, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens would be crisscrossing the Upper Midwest in the dead of winter, hitting small ballrooms such as the Surf Ballroom in the small town of Clear Lake on the shore of…
Maplecrest
You maybe noticed I ignored the little house above yesterday when I talked about the western half of Bartmer Avenue. There’s a reason why: it’s the last remnant–the carriage house–of a long lost estate known as Maplecrest, or sometimes written Maple Crest. Back around 1960, Union Memorial was moving out from its previous location, and…
West End of Chamberlain Place
I’ve looked at the Chamberlin Addition (Bartmer Avenue between Union and Clara) numerous times over the years, first when Toby Weiss of BeltSTL and I discovered it way back in April of 2012.and found the amazing Union Memorial United Methodist Church, which was then featured in this post by Toby. I also revisited the street…
Main Street, St. Charles, Revisited
We were wandering down Main Street in St. Charles and realized I hadn’t really taken very good photos of these buildings, which are primarily in the Greek Revival style. I’ve photographed some of them before in September of 2014. These are some very old houses, and their backsides are of interest, too. Most are built…
Grandview Drive, Peoria Heights
Straddling the city of Peoria and suburb of Peoria Heights, Grandview Drive offers panoramic views of Lake Peoria, a widening of the Illinois River as its wends its way through the prairie, buffeted by bluffs to the west. Originally envisioned in 1894, construction began in 1903 and was completed several years later. Laid out like…
The Little Office Building, McKinley Heights
I have always been intrigued by this little building, sitting on a trapezoid of land at the northwest corner of Gravois and Victor. What is now a doctor’s office was originally the offices of attorney Paul J. Simon, who also served as a state representative in the 1970s. But there was a two-story building here…
Around Hall Street, Cathedral Hill, St. Joseph
There’s more amazing architecture to the west on the slopes of Cathedral Hill, which we examined at different times of the day and dates. There has been some recent in-fill on what had been a recently cleared area of several blocks. There was an abandoned school, and I had to wonder if it was an…