It had been awhile since I’d checked in at the site of the former River Roads Mall, and the contrast between 1962 and 2025 cannot be greater. But perhaps it also reflects the changing pattern of suburban shopping; large, anchor-based shopping centers are being demolished and replaced with single parcel stores, each with their own…
Tag: Redevelopment
Darst-Webbe
Darst-Webbe, which like many housing projects in the United States, is spoken about as a single complex today, but like Pruitt-Igoe on the Near North Side of St. Louis or Cabrini-Green in Chicago, was really two different projects originally. It was built on the grounds of the neighborhood annihilated in the 1940s between Soulard and…
Clinton Peabody, Today
Over the next week, we’ll be examining the Near South Side, the area seen above around 1961, and how it has changed over the last eighty years due to government urban renewal plans. Clinton Peabody, built in 1942 on the Near South Side, is being demolished. Long known for crime and entrenched poverty, it will…
Rock Island, Illinois, Part Two
We next headed down to what I think is the Old Chicago neighborhood of Rock Island, which has seen redevelopment and the construction of mixed-income public housing. The color blue has also been a popular choice for the older houses. Unlike Davenport, Rock Island has most definitely chosen to have a levee, which is straight…
Former Missouri State Penitentiary, Jefferson City
First opened in 1836, the former Missouri State Penitentiary operated until 2004, and was apparently the oldest prison west of the Mississippi, beating out the one we saw recently in Fort Madison, Iowa. It is located on East Capitol Street a few blocks east of the Missouri State Capitol. As is typical, based off the…
More Tiffany Redevelopment
I took a look at the in-fill development was going in the Tiffany neighborhood east of South Grand Boulevard after having visited back in February of 2021 and November of 2022. East of Theresa Avenue on Vista Avenue, there is substantial construction completed, but there are still some empty lots. But the tan brick houses…
The End of the Former Orthwein Estate
The “old estate” I was referring to back in September of 2018 was the Orthwein property in Huntleigh, and since then the property was sold off and subdivided. Large McMansions have gone up on the western end of the property. It was by far the largest tract of undeveloped land in St. Louis County outside…
John L. Miers House, Maryland Heights
Built in 1905 for John L. Miers, the house at the northwest corner of Midland Avenue and Smiley Road is now threatened with demolition. Miers was president of the United Railways streetcar company, and rather appropriately, a line ran right out front of the house (though obviously he could have afforded his own transportation). It…
Rung For Women, Expansion
It’s hard to believe that just six years ago I was documenting the old warehouses and buildings of the Fox Brothers Company, some of which were too far gone to be preserved (last three photos). Fox Brothers was a huge company that produced millwork for the area; the park that bears its name nearby 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…