Having just looked at all those “county” institutions, I want to briefly look at this interesting cluster of very old wood frame houses that sit on the streets to the north of the former Lunatic Asylum. As mentioned before, in 1875, Pictorial St. Louis shows few if any houses around. But clearly right after that,…
Tag: Kingshighway Southwest
The Former Social Evils or Female Hospital
If the grass of Sublette Park could talk, it would have stories to tell. Most people don’t know this, but at one time in the 1870s, St. Louis dabbled in legalized prostitution. It didn’t last long, but one relic of that period was the Social Evils Hospital, or what later became known as the Female…
The Former Poor House Chronic Hospital
Color me shocked when I figured out that there are still buildings standing from the old County Poor House and Chronic Hospital just south of Arsenal and east of Hampton. The oldest building has its back to 59th Street, seen above. The building below looks to have originally faced Arsenal Street and attaches to the…
Former Lunatic Asylum, Revisited
Out west on Arsenal Street Road, even further west than Kingshighway, was a cluster of buildings that any county with a sizeable population would have possessed in the Nineteenth Century: a poor house and “lunatic asylum.” St. Louis also had a home for prostitutes which morphed into an institution where society interned “difficult women.” The…
Fyler Avenue, Northampton
The huge Hampton Gardens apartment complex was built on the old Potters’ Field at the corner of Hampton and Fyler. I found the apartment complex mentioned in all sorts of government hearings, perhaps involved in some sort of corruption having to do with public housing. It is not clear. It mentions some sort of 608…
Gethsemene Lutheran Church
I recently attended a musical performance at Gethsemene Lutheran Church, and I found the architecture interesting. During the Middle Ages, it was perfectly normal for churches and cathedrals to be the centers of the community, where music, meetings, theological discussions and other non-ceremonial events would have occurred simply because they were the only large buildings…
Apartment Buildings, Mardel at Hampton Avenue
I sometimes forget how beautiful Southwest City is, and how there are row after row of these iconic four-family apartment buildings, each with their own sense of individuality. These are on the north side of Mardel, just east of Hampton Avenue. It’s interesting in that many of these have their own little vestibule out front,…
St. Joan of Arc Roman Catholic Church
Designed by A.F. and Arthur Stauder in 1958, St. Joan of Arc Roman Catholic Church is one of the many Modernist churches the Archdiocese constructed in the boom years after World War II. The front entrance is dominated by a huge mosaic of the saint, designed most likely by Ravenna Mosaic, which was a branch…
Former Holy Innocents Roman Catholic Church
Viewed across the broad green lawns of the west end of Tower Grove Park, the former Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Innocents cuts an interesting profile among the red brick houses along Kingshighway. The parish closed in 2005, but it has roots going back to 1854, in at least two previous locations. Before it…
Betty Wheeler Classical Junior Academy, Former Kennard Elementary School
Update: The School Board of the St. Louis Public Schools officially renamed the school after the founder of Metro High School during the summer of 2022, effectively ending the debate over the original name of the school. Samuel M. Kennard Elementary School has been in the news recently, so I thought I would check it…