Rockwoods Reservation, in far western St. Louis County, used to be the site of intensive limestone quarrying for the creation of lime. The mine is now closed off from visitors, but you can still get a sense of the massiveness of the mine from the large holes in the side of the bedrock. The bedrock…
Tag: Quarries
Centaur, Revisited
Update: The house above is now complete, and suburban sprawl did not come to Centaur. I made it back out to the hamlet of Centaur, which is now being swallowed up by suburban development. It’s slow, I should say, as this McMansion has been under construction now for years, and seems abandoned. I finally figured…
Chouteau at Grand Boulevard
One hundred years ago, there wasn’t a lot at the intersection of Grand and Chouteau; there was a quarry, some houses, but no signs of the massive buildings that would one day fill the area. On a recent Saturday, I had the pleasure of joining a picnic at the intersection, in one of the large,…
Quarry, Elephant Rocks State Park
Luckily for the iconic “elephants” at the quarry, their stone was too battered by weather to be of any use to builders. Consequently, the stones remain where they have rested for millions of years. Nearby, however, the quarries soon tapped into the distinctive pink granite of the area, cutting and hauling away huge chunks of…
Lost Quarries of the South Side
Update: See houses that may have been quarry workers’ house here and here. I revisited the quarry site, and found more of what may have been buildings related to the quarry, in the summer of 2020. In January of 2025, I wrote about more of the history of this site, which was the Eyerman Quarry….
Modernist Enclave in North St. Louis
Thanks to Toby Weiss and Matt Mourning, I was alerted to a fascinating street in North St. Louis, where the early Twentieth Century architecture switches to Modernist architecture of the mid-century. Perfectly preserved, and still maintained, these houses face other houses across the street built fifty years before. Expect a more detailed and more informative…
Grimm Road, Goodfield, Illinois
Alerted by my parents, we went back and checked out Grimm Road, on the outskirts of Goodfield, Illinois. We were fascinated by this massive, masonry arch that allowed a road to pass under the railroad tracks. Why is there such a massive, expensive viaduct for a country road, we wondered. Further on up, and before…
Meramec Highlands Quarry
I set out to find the quarry that provided some of the stone for Union Station, as well as many of the stone for houses–perhaps the Lemp Mansion, Cragwold–in the Meramec Highlands resort area of southwest St. Louis County. I found the edge of the quarry, but my traveling companions wanted to get going, so…