It’s bad. Fire struck the former St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church at the northwest corner of Page Boulevard and Academy Avenue in the evening of January 23, just as the city was facing a major snow storm. Looking back at previous visits I had made, the first time in July of 2018, then in November…
Tag: Ruins
Twenty-Three Years of Paul McKee: Old North
Old North was originally going to be in the footprint of the Northside TIF (Blairmont, one of the shell LLCs, takes its name from a property McKee bought at the intersection of Blair and Montgomery in the neighborhood). But neighborhood opposition caused the McKee to withdraw Old North from his plan. The only problem is…
Twenty-Three Years of Paul McKee: St. Augustine’s
Next, on my tour of the area damaged by Paul McKee’s Northside TIF, I headed towards what was left of St. Augustine. Illegal dumping is very common in the blocks where houses once stood but were demolished after brick theft destroyed homes. This private club is still going, I think. The tower of St. Augustine’s…
Crunden Martin Ruins, Revisited
Hey, office and flex space for lease! I revisited Crunden Martin to check up on the state of the buildings after the disastrous Black Friday fire. Yes, in case you were wondering, that sign is new. As I had appraised on Black Friday, the building that had already suffered a fire back in 2011 is…
The Old Dairy
I stumbled across some old photographs by William Swekosky of the noted ruined stone house on Missouri Avenue in Lafayette Square, which I have looked at extensively over the years, particularly in July of 2018, but I briefly glanced at it back in May of 2022 when I was examining some new in-fill. What is…
Crunden-Martin, Destroyed
“It’s Thanksgiving, so the fires will be starting now,” someone remarked on social media–I recall reading somewhere. What a far too accurate portent. I woke up on Black Friday, and sadly, they were right. Crunden Martin, that stunning abandoned warehouse/factory complex I’ve looked at around a half dozen times over the years, was being consumed…
Pinkie Tony House, Destroyed by Fire
The house I first documented back in September 2014 was sadly destroyed by fire on October 22. Shockingly, when we went by to examine the ruins, there was nothing left but a pile of rubble. Investigations of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps revealed the house, which was extremely old, perhaps the 1860s but definitely at least…
Wells Avenue Between Academy Avenue and Union Boulevard
I’ll have to admit when I got home and actually looked at the photographs I had taken of this street, I was very disheartened. I have photographed the twin apartment buildings above twice, once back in May of 2012 (badly) and again in August of 2015. I also photographed these two just really beautiful twins…
Ruins in the Undergrowth
“Hey, I wonder how that one house is doing,” I thought to myself two Saturdays ago. I had checked in on a house I first found back in June of 2022 in April of 2024 and had discovered it had collapsed badly. At first, when I drove up the building, I thought it was completely…
Late Summer Odds and Ends
I had some leftover photos I didn’t have a use for, so as usual, I do an odds and ends post. The building above is on Sidney Street in Soulard just to the east of Interstate 55. By comparison, this corner storefront above on the Near North Riverfront is a real survivor, with most of…