The Cincinnati Music Hall, built in 1878, is one of those monumental buildings in America that might very well have been swept away by urban renewal, replaced by a new performing arts center. Instead, it has been revitalized, and almost 150 years later, is still very much part of the cultural fabric of the city…
Tag: Renaissance Revival
Old Louisville, Part Two
Continuing our look around the Old Louisville neighborhood of Louisville, we see an evolution of styles, but again, they are in keeping with what we would expect to see in St. Louis. In this case, we now see what would be best described as Renaissance Revival. Also, there are houses that have elements of the…
Old Louisville, Part One
I thought it would be interesting to look at neighborhoods close to the downtowns of several major cities in proximity to St. Louis that I had visited in 2021. I have often noted that you just can’t walk to residential neighborhoods from downtown in St. Louis; there are train tracks, vast swaths of vacant land…
Chapelle Expiatoire
The Chapelle Expiatoire might win the award for the building threatened with demolition the most number of times in its existence. Also, my streak of finding tourist attractions that are deserted continues, as I think there were a grand total of maybe four other people at this site when I visited. Expiatoire means “Expiation” which…
Neoclassicism and Beyond, Paris
Moving along now so we can get back to St. Louis, here is a smorgasbord of Paris buildings that have broader implications on world architectural history, including here in the Gateway City. First up is the Madeleine, which was originally built by Napoleon to glorify his reign, but was then converted into a church. It’s…
Hôtel de Ville, Paris and St. Louis City Hall
One thing that annoys me about American architectural history and St. Louis architectural history in particular is that it is frequently written by people who have absolutely no background in European architectural history. Case in point, it is “common knowledge” in St. Louis that City Hall is based off of the Hôtel de Ville, the…
A Vanished Mansion at the Corner of Lindell Boulevard and West Pine Drive
These two houses along Lindell Boulevard just west of Kingshighway, which I looked at way back in March of 2008, used to have two neighbors just down the street, back when this was actually known and platted originally as Park Road, as I mentioned yesterday. Designed by the famed architecture firm of Barnett, Haynes and…
A Vanished Mansion at the Corner of Lindell Boulevard and Kingshighway
As I always tell people, if you come across a house that is much newer than all the houses around it, you need to be suspicious. Take 2 Westmoreland Place, built in 1895 by Henry Siegrist, an automobile lubricant executive on lot 33 of the Forest Park Addition. It passed through various owners before being…
Urban Density Surviving on Grand Boulevard
While all those demolitions are going on down south, there are actually a fair number of really nice buildings still standing just to the north, particularly on the west side of Grand Boulevard. Justine Peterson has a presence in one building, nice rehabbed above. There’s this spectacular Art-Deco storefront above, which is a rarity in…
St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church, Peoria, Interior
I was absolutely stunned and delighted to find some magnificent paintings on the interior of St. Mark’s when I went inside on a quiet Saturday. There’s a long story about how the parish renovated the church to undo changes done in the mid-Twentieth Century, but one of the major alterations was to embrace the work…