Downtown Muscatine was really nice, with most of the storefronts occupied and many buildings looking like they had recently been renovated. As would be expected, there are a plethora of Italianate storefronts, as one often sees in cities along the river. The Laurel Building, below, was built in 1917 and was designed by William Hyland…
Tag: Parking Lots
Sears Demolished, Chesterfield Mall
The former Sears has been demolished at the Chesterfield Mall site, which culminates the clearing of the buildings for redevelopment. The former Macy’s and eventually reopened Dillard’s buildings will remain.
Former Constant Mathey House
I discovered the Adlon Apartments were once the site of the Constant Mathey House, demolished sometime before 1927 when the new building was constructed. Mathey was a salesman with the famous Mermod Jaccard Jewelry Company. But interestingly, the old carriage house is still standing in the back of the apartment building’s parking lot. This is…
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…
Botanical Avenue from South Spring Avenue to South Grand Boulevard
Crossing South Spring Avenue, we reach the final block in our survey of Botanical Avenue in the Shaw neighborhood. The first house on the corner is an impressive example of what I might call almost Tudor Revival or Jacobethan in style. Interestingly, it also appears to have been originally built as a two-family flat. The…
Requiem for Shopping Malls?
The announcement that Macy’s will be closing the store at South County Center raised the specter that there will be another round of mall closures after an initial wave that struck the St. Louis region earlier this millennium. As Toby Weiss at B.E.L.T. St. Louis documented so well at Northland Shopping Center and River Roads…
Town and Country Mall
Tally ho! Just when I thought I knew of every defunct and demolished mall in the St. Louis region, life throws a curveball. I just learned about the existence of the Town and Country Mall, at the southeast corner of Woodson Road and Page Boulevard in Overland. Opening in November of 1960, two years before…
Urban Renewal and Historic Preservation, Mason City
I mentioned yesterday when discussing the City National Bank and Park Inn that South Federal Street was a pedestrian mall, but that is not even telling half of the story! In one of the more bizarre urban renewal machinations I have ever seen, the pedestrian mall then turns into an actual shopping mall, known as…
No Street Parking in Laclede’s Landing
Why is street parking not allowed in Laclede’s Landing? It makes the whole neighborhood just look dead, and it’s so funny just watching people drive around in circles on streets where no one can stop or anything. Yes, some of the streets are narrow but the north-south ones aren’t. And how are you supposed to…