You never know what you’ll find down a quiet subdivision street in Town and Country. Passing down an old road in between squares of eighty acres of old farmland-turned-subdivisions, something doesn’t look normal. An old aerial photograph from 1955 reveals that there was a quarry active since at least 1937, and it was still visible…
Tag: Quarries
Fruin-Bambrick Quarry
I never got a chance to photograph them, but there used to be a row of one story buildings that lined the west side of Grand Boulevard just south of the viaduct over the railroad tracks, just north of the intersection with Chouteau Avenue where this vacant lot now lies. Little did I know that…
Quarry, Rockwoods Reservation, Revisited, February 2020
It was a beautiful unseasonably warm day yesterday, so I headed out to Rockwoods Reservation. I had heard some reports of devastating flash floods washing out trails and bridges, so I was not able to access the mines that I had photographed back in 2013. You can just see them through the trees below off…
The Handy Park Area, Revisited
Toby Weiss and I love the little Modernist enclaves built after World War 2, unfortunately often on the sites of former quarries. Luckily, many quarries were converted to parks, such as Handy, Eugene Tink Bradley and Windsor Parks, which is the best use. But Handy Park also has some wonderful in-fill on side streets, dating…
Revenge of the Quarry, Revisited
Update: See these houses again in July of 2018. These houses are doomed, one by one. The old quarry underneath is reasserting itself. Be careful when you buy property in South City.
Eastern Quarry, Pacific
Further east, there is another giant quarry hollowed out of the earth. The large swath of flat land out in front of the quarry holes has been rezoned as an industrial park. I would assume this land was once the staged ground for the quarries behind.
Western Quarry, Pacific
I never expected to see these incredible quarries hollowed out of the rock face on the western side of Pacific. They are the standard type I see around the region; the mountain is shaved off, and then tunnels are carved into the mountains. I would love to learn more about these huge excavations.
Quarry, Alton
The massive caverns left behind by the mining and quarrying of stone throughout the St. Louis region never cease to amaze me. This quarry, just north of downtown Alton, is just one of many along the bluffs of major rivers.
Perkinson’s Quarry and Abandoned Art-Deco Police Station, Hyde Park
I learned recently from Joyce Pharriss that Windsor Park was not originally a park, but a quarry: That park was just an empty lot when my parents bought the store around 1947, and we kids played in it, running through weeds that were over our heads. My dad told me that it used to be…
Open Pit Mining, Rockwoods Reservation
I wish I could go back in time and see what parts of St. Louis County looked like one hundred years ago, when large portions were out in the middle of nowhere. You would see sights like this huge quarry, which provided limestone that was turned into lime for the building of St. Louis.