I traveled from the mouth of the River des Peres, starting by heading up Marceau Avenue, where I spotted some old houses while still in Carondelet. I crossed over the River des Peres on Alabama Avenue onto the south side of the drainage ditch and proceeded up Carondelet Boulevard. Of course, Alabama Avenue becomes Lemay…
Tag: Modernism
Post Office Expansion
No one seems to know when this expansion to the Central Post Office downtown was built, or who was the architect. It’s a huge building, and stretches for an entire block; there’s even parking for employees on the roof which you can see from satellite images. Note the soot on the side of the building…
Chesterfield Mall, Demolition, March 2025
Demolition is proceeding rapidly at Chesterfield Mall, and the target of finishing in May seems like it will be easily met. We last stopped by in December of last year and interior demolition was still occurring, and now the entire mall portion has been torn down, leaving only the anchors. Presumably the old movie theater…
Downtown Granite City, Early March 2025
I last stopped by downtown Granite City in Spring of 2024, and there has not been much happening other than at the Granite City Arts and Design District on the far side of the area. I did discover another Sinclair Dinosaur which had been put on display along with a bunch of other Route 66…
Maryville Gardens
Today, when you stand at the corner of Nebraska Avenue and Meramec Street and look to the southwest, you see the Maryville Gardens Station of the United States Post Office. But if you were to travel back in time to the 1870s, you would have seen the original location of Maryville College, back when Dutchtown…
Second Baptist Church
Second Baptist is a congregation with roots going back deep into St. Louis history. Their current location at the southeast corner of Clayton and McKnight roads was on the grounds of the Barron-Childress Mansion, which they demolished back in 2002. The current church, which received a new vestibule a few years back, was originally designed…
Mid Rivers Mall
Continuing our examination of the concept of the “shopping mall,” we visited Mid Rivers Mall, located at the intersection of Interstate 70 and Mid Rivers Mall Drive. The mall is doing fine, but it’s not doing great. There are four hundred thousand people located within four or five miles of the mall, and they are…
The Crossings at Northwest, Former Northwest Plaza
I thought I would swing by the “Crossings at Northwest,” or what I called Zombie Northwest Plaza, which apparently was the largest outdoor mall in the United State when it opened in January 24, 1966. Supposedly. The last time I was by was back in 2017. The Famous Barr, designed by Raymond Loewy and William…
The Galleria, Former Westroads Shopping Center
It’s increasingly forgotten, but the Galleria originally was the Westroads Shopping Center, and like many other early shopping centers, it was more of strip mall with a single anchor, in this case a Stix, Baer and Fuller, and several other stores arranged in behind a parking lot. Built in 1955, Westroads was Stix, Baer and…
Magnolia Avenue, National Garden Clubs
Hiding in plain sight on six acres on the south side of the Missouri Botanical Gardens is the National Garden Clubs headquarters. You can read all about the history of this organization here. The open courtyard welcomes the visitor into the front entrance of the building. Historic photographs give us a window into the fascinating…