Sitting on a ridge that gives its name to Cathedral Hill, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Joseph dominates the eastern end of the slope. Surrounded by intact urban fabric, the cathedral’s brick exterior blends in well with the neighborhood. The building below functions as the offices for the cathedral as well as a food…
Tag: Mannerist Revival
Oak Hill Elementary School
Named after the heights that were owned by the Russell family and contained their clay and coal mines (their estate was to the north), Oak Hill was designed by William B. Ittner and opened in 1907. As is typical of many of Ittner’s schools, the building has a Northern European Sixteenth Century influence to it,…
Emmaus Homes, Fall 2022
Update: Hoffman put the property up for sale in October of 2023. We swung by Emmaus Homes, which is now Chateau Hoffman, to see what was going on. It looks like there is a pause in renovation after the clearance of trees we saw back in February of this year. The first floor windows of…
Emmaus Homes, New Lease on Life
Update: We went back in the fall of 2022 to see if there had been more construction. The site had been mothballed. Hoffman put the property up for sale in October of 2023. Bonjour mesdames et messieurs! Bienvenue au Château Hoffman! OK, jokes aside, anyone in the preservation community–or anyone in the wider community in…
Alexander Hamilton Elementary School
Alexander Hamilton Elementary School is tucked away in the neighborhoods north of Forest Park, only two blocks south of Delmar. It’s surrounded by a park and quiet residential streets, and to the northeast a major Metro depot. It was designed by Rockwell Milligan, of the famous firm of Ittner Milligan, and it looks like many…
Former Marthasville Seminary and Emmaus Homes, Winter 2016
Update: The Emmaus Homes moved out shortly after these photos were taken, but the property has been purchased and is being renovated into a hotel. See it the spring of 2021. As of the winter of 2022, it had been intended to be renovated into a hotel and winery. But then Hoffman put the property…
Revisiting Carondelet: Virginia Avenue Between Loughborough Avenue and Blow Street, Blow Elementary School
It’s interesting to see how a similar pattern of development occurs in different parts of the city. As I showed recently at the old Webster Elementary School in Old North, at the Blow Elementary School in Carondelet, there were original two earlier school buildings built adjacent to each other before both were demolished for a…
Albion Place
North of Whittemore Place is Albion Place, named after the archaic appellation for Britain. The street was nothing but open land and a sinkhole in 1876; even Park Avenue remained to be developed. An allee of trees may delineate the future alley, but I am not sure. Like its neighbor to the south, it was…
German House, Lafayette Square
One of the more spectacular buildings in St. Louis, the German House was the center of Teutonic culture in St. Louis for generations. Sadly, it is sitting vacant right now. It’s a huge building, and has a theater out the back, as can be seen here. The parking lot right at the corner with South…
Athlone Avenue Between Rosalie Street and West Florissant Avenue
Much of the O’Fallon neighborhood is in great shape, and I challenge people who think that all of North St. Louis is a giant wasteland to visit the streets to the west of West Florissant. They are proudly owned, and maintained immaculately. Moving east of Carter Avenues, we see how this is the heart of…