It finally happened, the Mullanphy Emigrant Home, which I last looked at back in June of this year, caught on fire and burned to the ground on the night of September 14th. There is certainly no grand conspiracy, but simply the fact that overnight lows reached 50 degrees, and a squatter’s fire probably spread out…
Tag: Lindell Boulevard
Private Traffic Signals
I recently became fascinated with the phenomenon of “private” traffic signals, which are electric traffic control lights which serve only one user at a busy or dangerous intersection. The first one is where West Pine Boulevard sweeps around and terminates at Lindell Boulevard after coming out of Forest Park. The traffic light usually only serves…
Francis Preston Blair, Jr. Monument and the Lindell Entrance to Forest Park
Standing at the Lindell entrance to Forest Park, the statue of Francis Preston Blair, Jr. memorialized a Missouri politician that is not very well known anymore, but was once so prominent that he is actually one of two Missourians represented in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Here’s another great writeup about Blair, at a…
A Vanished Mansion at the Corner of Lindell Boulevard and West Pine Drive
These two houses along Lindell Boulevard just west of Kingshighway, which I looked at way back in March of 2008, used to have two neighbors just down the street, back when this was actually known and platted originally as Park Road, as I mentioned yesterday. Designed by the famed architecture firm of Barnett, Haynes and…
A Vanished Mansion at the Corner of Lindell Boulevard and Kingshighway
As I always tell people, if you come across a house that is much newer than all the houses around it, you need to be suspicious. Take 2 Westmoreland Place, built in 1895 by Henry Siegrist, an automobile lubricant executive on lot 33 of the Forest Park Addition. It passed through various owners before being…
Lindell Boulevard from North Boyle Avenue to Kingshighway
Proceeding further west on Lindell Boulevard, we see both well-preserved stretches of historic architecture and utterly obliterated streetscape. There are those stunning townhouses, which I would love to own if I didn’t have to worry about a car driven by a man-child flying into my living room every day. And then there’s the former of…
Lindell Boulevard Between Vandeventer and North Boyle Avenues
Heading west of Vandeventer, this stretch of Lindell Boulevard is perhaps the most devastated of the entire street in the Central West End. There is hardly anything left from the Nineteenth Century left on the north side. Even the AAA was once threatened with demolition for a drug store several years. Perhaps the most notable…
Lindell Boulevard from Grand Boulevard to Vandeventer Avenue
Ah, Lindell Boulevard! I avoid the street like the plague because it is such a dysfunctional street. Once a residential street lined with mansions, sometime in the Twentieth Century it became the busiest street in the city. The mansions were demolished, and it became lined with businesses, while the through traffic jumped over to Highway…
Two Unique Buildings, Olive Street Just West of North Compton Avenue
Often while sitting at the light at Olive Street and North Compton Avenue, I’ve looked to the west and seen these two buildings. I finally decided to take a look at them more closely. The first building on the right was actually the location of a western outpost of the famous Tony Faust’s restaurant. The…
In the Footsteps of Lillian Handlan Lemp
Many readers are no doubt familiar with Lillian Handlan, who would marry William Lemp, Jr., the heir to the Lemp Brewery. Later, their acrimonious divorce would make headlines around the country. But she also lived in many places around St. Louis, and I’ve identified several places she called home. There may be more, but for…