A couple of weeks ago I covered the historic survivors of the Compton Hill neighborhood on the blocks just to the west of South Jefferson Avenue, including Caroline Street. I found a nice collection of those survivors along Caroline Street to the west of Ohio Avenue, with a predominance of Italianate style houses. In other…
Tag: Post-Modernism
Carr Square, May 2026
I realized that while I investigated the Carr Square neighborhood in two pieces at St. Louis Magazine several years ago (you can read the first part here, and the second part here), I had neglected to take a look at what the area looks like now. To put it mildly, you would never imagine that…
Bartmer Avenue Between Hodiamont and Hamilton Avenues, West End
I’ve looked at Bartmer Avenue in the Chamberlain Addition several times over the years, starting all the way back in April of 2012. This is Gamble’s Second Subdivision of Rose Hill, from 1871, which shows just how early this area was originally platted. We’re going to start at close to the city limits at Hodiamont…
Horton Place, West End
The Horton Place Addition was platted in 1887; city records do not preserve the name of the surveyor, though Julius Pitzman was active in the area at the time period. Sanborn maps split the one block (but very long) street into two maps. Above is the west end, and below is the east end. It…
Run-Down Motel, Bridgeton
As part of my continuing series of run-down motels around the region, we stop by this gem on the northwest side of Interstate 270 in Bridgeton. Anyone have any memories of this place? Clocking in at 2.8 stars at Google Maps, it was part of a trend in hotels in the 1970s where there was…
Pine Lawn
Pine Lawn is one of the many small inner ring suburbs just outside the boundaries of the City of St. Louis along Natural Bridge Road and Jennings Station Road forms a north-south “spine,” so to speak. The name comes from the estate, one of many out this way, of Charles Clark, of which only the…
Zombie Subdivision, St. Charles County
It’s been a long time since we’ve looked at a zombie subdivision, so what luck it was to discover one while we were on our way to visit the small hamlet of St. Paul in St. Charles County, which we’ll look at tomorrow. The sun was shining and a nice breeze was gently blowing the…
Downtown Union, Franklin County
I rolled into Union, the county seat of Franklin County, on a quiet afternoon last Saturday and took a look around. Union, like Washington to the north up Route 47, has seen explosive growth in the last thirty years as an exurban community in the larger St. Louis Metropolitan area, so there is a lot…
West End of Chamberlain Place
I’ve looked at the Chamberlin Addition (Bartmer Avenue between Union and Clara) numerous times over the years, first when Toby Weiss of BeltSTL and I discovered it way back in April of 2012.and found the amazing Union Memorial United Methodist Church, which was then featured in this post by Toby. I also revisited the street…
The Closure of Nursing Homes
The last decade or so has been rough on nursing homes in St. Louis. While readers at first might find the link tenuous to history, they must be reminded that many are in historic buildings, and likewise, neighborhoods are kept healthy when members of society are able to “age in place,” meaning they do not…