It’s that time of year, so it’s time for odds and ends! Above is a spandrel from a storefront in downtown Belleville, looking suspiciously like something Louis Sullivan would design. Below is just another house we found while driving around town. Cleveland High School is looking really, really bad compared to earlier visits; I first…
Tag: Interstates
Gate City, Birmingham, Alabama
Heading north towards the outermost regions of Birmingham, we now explore Gate City, whose name is perhaps a little obvious. There was a pass through Red Mountain, which perhaps you can extrapolate received its appellation from the abundance of iron ore running through it (remember, iron ore is one of the three components of steel…
Alabama Avenue Between Holly Hills Avenue and Iron Street
Crossing Holly Hills Avenue, we near the end of our trip up Alabama Avenue in Carondelet, as the interstate will stop us from proceeding further. There continues to be a mix of styles, showing the slow development of the neighborhood. This is the last house, at Iron Street, where the interstate cuts through and ends…
Chouteau’s Landing, Early October 2025
We were back down on Chouteau’s Landing much like I was almost a year ago and the the buildings and bridges were looking good in the evening light. The MacArthur Bridge’s road deck is now completely gone, and is only used for trains. I’m always impressed by the massive concrete footings for the other rail…
American Foundry and Manufacturing Company and F. W. Hanpeter Furniture Company
The forlorn intersection of Branch Avenue with 9th and 11th streets was once a bustling crossroads as can be seen below in Compton and Dry’s 1876 Pictorial St. Louis. I want you to pay particular attention to the building in the lower left above labeled “5.” In 1876, it was the Bellefontaine Streetcar Company’s barn,…
Viaducts, Trestles and Bridges, Chouteau’s Landing
Wandering around the vacant lot where the former Powell Square Building was located before it was demolished in Chouteau’s Landing, I was struck at just how much infrastructure there is clogging this part of the city. Perhaps it is a necessary evil, needed to move commerce and industry around the center of the city for…
Saint Mary of Victories
I realized I have never done a post on St. Mary of Victories down on Chouteau’s Landing, just across South 3rd Street to the east of Interstates 44 and 55. I wrote an article about the church several years ago at St. Louis Magazine. As can be seen above, the church was once part of…
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…
The Missouri River at St. Charles
We next went down to the Missouri River, which of course has been highly modified by the Army Corps of Engineers. There is the famous railroad bridge to the east, and I normally would have consulted Bridgehunter.com, but there is a new update about what the heck happened to that valuable website. It’s interesting that…
Street Design and Crashes, Arsenal Street and Interstate 55.
The recent crash of an automobile into St. Louis institution Gus’ Pretzel’s Shop was logical. I’ll explain why. Vehicles come whipping off of southbound Interstate 55 every thirty seconds or less, and the vast majority of them make little to no effort to stop, making the assumption that no one will be coming from westbound…