I’ve officially lost count of the number of times this remaining warehouse from the St. Louis Refrigeration and Cold Storage Company complex has caught fire. I think it’s at three. Here’s from the last time I documented a fire from January of 2017. As you can see, some nice new plywood, that has probably already…
Tag: Near North Riverfront
The Mallinckrodt Chemical Company in the Twentieth Century
The Twentieth Century dawned with Mallinckrodt expanding rapidly. While originally based along North Second Street, it had now reached North Broadway, taking over two long buildings that had once served as power houses for streetcars. The company could now boast over 1,000 products. My favorite are the buildings labeled “cocaine” and “opium.” Edward Jr. had…
The Mallinckrodt Residences
As the Mallinckrodt family’s fortunes grew, so did their houses. Emil’s farm house wasn’t too shabby, and seems to have survived into the Twentieth Century. A Greek Revival center hall house, it acquired a Queen Anne style front porch in the late Nineteenth Century. It was demolished at some point, I estimate, in the early…
The Rise of Mallinckrodt
The St. Louis giant of Mallinckrodt Chemical began as a farm on the North Side, near the present day intersection of North Broadway and Salisbury Street. Emil Mallinckrodt, a native of Dortmund, and his wife Emily Vallmau owned a farm along the road that was then known as Bellefontaine Road, with their three sons Gustav,…
American Foundry and Manufacturing Company and F. W. Hanpeter Furniture Company
The forlorn intersection of Branch Avenue with 9th and 11th streets was once a bustling crossroads as can be seen below in Compton and Dry’s 1876 Pictorial St. Louis. I want you to pay particular attention to the building in the lower left above labeled “5.” In 1876, it was the Bellefontaine Streetcar Company’s barn,…
Late Summer Odds and Ends
I had some leftover photos I didn’t have a use for, so as usual, I do an odds and ends post. The building above is on Sidney Street in Soulard just to the east of Interstate 55. By comparison, this corner storefront above on the Near North Riverfront is a real survivor, with most of…
McKinley Bridge Sign
I love this sign on North Broadway, pointing the way up to Salisbury Street and the approaches to the McKinley Bridge (whose viaduct you can see in the background. It is very, very old, which is perhaps obvious due to the little circular reflectors on the letters, as well as the letters that have apparently…
Kingman and John Deere Buildings, North Broadway
In 1907, the F.H. Smith Lumber Co.’s trustees sold the property at the northeast corner of North Broadway and Warren Street to the Kingman Plow Company of Peoria for $18,000. Recently relocated from East St. Louis, the new Kingman St. Louis Implement Company, was part of a wave of new factories that had relocated to…
Demolition, Federal Cold Storage Warehouse
I went by on Saturday to check on the demolition of the Federal Cold Storage Warehouse on North Broadway in the Near North Riverfront neighborhood. The fire at this point was now extinguished as far as I could tell and only North Broadway was closed, and will be for a several more weeks while demolition…
A Second and Final Fire, Federal Cold Storage Company
Demolition began less than a week after the last fire was extinguished. Back in May of this year, I commented on the little-noticed fire at the former Federal Cold Storage Warehouse on North Broadway. I had remarked that a fire in such warm weather was suspicious. While the weather was cold the last couple of…