I was visiting Granite City to see another amazing GCADD exhibit, so I thought I would photograph the downtown again, it having been five years since the last time. Everything looked the same, but there were some differences. For starters, the Moose Lodge has been demolished. The steel mill is still there for the time…
Tag: Modernism
Around the Family Farm, Spring 2024
I checked up on the family farm east of Peoria in Central Illinois the last weekend of April, and things were looking good even if the fields were very wet, delaying spring planting. It was very windy, and it was alternating sunny and cloudy all day long. No longhorns could be spotted at the neighbor’s…
Grand Motel, Closed and Burned Out
Back in January of this year, the now-closed Grand Motel was severely damaged by arson. It is actually very sad because the new owner was planning on renovating the buildings for a homeless outreach center. I saw her on the news, and her heart was in the right place. I don’t know what will happen…
Former Carrollton Bowling Alley
Sitting at the entrance to the now eradicated Carrollton subdivision, the former bowling alley of the same name is still open under a new name, Kingpin Lanes. It now has sand volleyball courts under a giant inflatable dome to the left of the front door. The bowling alley has been around for a half century…
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…
Old Cervantes Convention Center
So I didn’t know this, but America’s Center is actually four distinct entities, with the old Cervantes Convention Center being one component. Originally opened in 1977 on Convention Plaza (ever wondered why there was a street named that nowhere near the entrance?), Cervantes took up much of the old Columbia Square neighborhood. Designed by HOK,…
The End of Fontbonne University
Sadly, my prediction that Fontbonne University would not make it to 2030 proved to be correct. (I also predict that two or three other universities in the St. Louis region will not make it to that year, either.) It started out so promising, though, founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph, whose legacy still includes…
Abandoned Famous Barr Parking Garage
Recently I was giving a tour of downtown to some visitors from out of town, and I was trying to weave a careful route that avoided as many bombed-out buildings as possible, but eventually we ended up going by the Railway Exchange and its parking garage. It’s become something of an outdoor guerilla art project…
St. Louis and the Mississippi
I was recently in 1520 Market Street, informally known as “City Hall West,” and before that the former Federal Building, when my curiosity was piqued by the sculpture in the middle of the lobby. It turns out it has a whole story, dating back to the construction of the building in the early 1960s. It…
North Up Blair Avenue, North of Penrose Street, Hyde Park, March 2024
Heading north from Penrose Street and continuing our tour in Hyde Park, we see that Ferry Street is blocked off again, no doubt due to another problem with the sewer underneath in what was originally a deep chasm in the natural topography of the earth before the neighborhood’s development. We detour to the east down…