The historic malt kilns at the Lemp Brewery have been stabilized after the unfortunate collapse of the western third (spare me your armchair engineering expertise–unless you have an actual B.S. or advanced degree in structural engineering, I don’t care), and as far as I know, the City of St. Louis will not order the demolition…
Tag: Ruins
St. Louis Place from North Florissant Avenue
Looking across North Florissant Avenue into the St. Louis Place neighborhood, we see the apse of the old St. Liborius, which we probably shouldn’t be able to do if it weren’t for the demolition of so many of the buildings between here and there. Below, we can see again how the street grid of Old…
Old North, Revisited Winter 2022, Palm Street Between Knapp and North Fourteenth Streets
Palm Street always elicits feelings of the tropics, yet that is not what I feel when I look at my pictures, which were frequently taken in the winter, but also in warmer, sunny weather. I’ve photographed this little cottage before in 2017, and at one point my friends were going to renovate it but decided…
Old North, Revisited Winter 2022, North Twentieth Street Between Hebert and Branch Streets
Passing White Castle, and what is now the vacant lot where this house once stood, we come across this grand house. It turns out this house was at one point the home of Fifth Ward Alderman Louis Ford. It must have been really impressive inside back in the day before it was abandoned. North of…
Old North, Revisited Winter 2022, Hebert Street Between North Fourteenth and Nineteenth Streets
I could have sworn I’d posted all of these buildings before, but apparently not. The house above was actually originally a school, sitting on the northeast corner of the intersection of Fourteenth and Hebert. Heading west, we encounter one of the most intact blocks in all of Old North. There is a wall of Second…
Another McKee Property Burns
Another one of Paul McKee’s buildings went up in flames on Tyler Street. I realized I had photographed the building way back in February of 2016 (last photo) as well as June of 2019 (second photo), and now it is completely ruined. It doesn’t matter if it was arson or accidental, the end result is…
Checking Up on McKee Land
Little has changed where Paul McKee owns vast swaths of real estate since I went by this area last year. There are still abandoned and fire-gutted buildings. Update: By July of 2022, the ruins below were finally torn down. The large apartment building on St. Louis Avenue is still sitting as a burned out shell….
5,000th Post: The Ruins of the Freie Gemeinde
None of my friends who live up north around the St. Louis Place and Old North St. Louis neighborhoods told me they were terribly surprised when the old Freie Gemeinde went up in flames on a bitterly cold night a week ago. It suffered a partial collapse way back in 2013, and when I checked…
Suspicious Fires Week: Warehouse on the Far South Side of Old North
Visible in the fourth photo down in this post from June of 2019, this warehouse caught on fire and burned, leaving only a ruined hulk behind. It will surely be demolished, and another vacant lot will join the dozens of others in this immediate area. I don’t imagine anything will replace it anytime soon. The…
Laflin Street, JeffVanderLou, Early Fall 2021
Update: I went back in the winter of 2022. I checked in on Laflin Street, which once had far more houses, including two more to the north of the one above. You can see them in this post from September of 2017 (third photo down). A year later, it became a dumping ground for a…