It was warming up so we went back out in the area that was cleared for the Weldon Spring Munitions Plant during World War II in St. Charles County. After exploring this staircase, we came across this concrete box of undetermined use. Does anyone know what this could be? Old fence lines survive, as well….
Tag: Ruins
Tragic Fire, Quinn AME Chapel
Tragic, terrible news arrived on February 23, when fire severely damaged the historic Quinn AME Chapel in Carondelet. I looked at the African American church back in December of 2020. As others have noted, due its construction in 1869, the building is perhaps the only one left built by the former independent town of Carondelet….
Former Friedens German Evangelical Church, In Ruins
Well, I guess there’s not much to say but St. Louis has lost another beautiful church to fire, most likely set by squatters trying to keep warm on one of the coldest nights of the winter so far. In this case, it was the former Friedens German Evangelical Lutheran Church, which I first looked at…
Green Board-Ups, JeffVanderLou, Part One
My friend Paul Hohman, a well known architect who specializes in renovations of historic buildings helped get Missouri Preservation to list the “JeffVanderLou Green Board Buildings” as one of their 2024 Places in Peril. JeffVanderLou, which I’ve featured many times over the years, in one of the more heavily demolished neighborhoods in the City, but…
From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part Five
The roof featured sawtooth clerestory windows, which let natural light down on to the slaughter floor. But the upper floors were offices and the storage of promotional materials, which had been left in giant piles of boxes and reams of papers. As a post script, I think it goes without saying that it’s not a…
From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part Four
On the upper floors, view of the nearby Armour Meat Packing Plant and downtown St. Louis are afforded. Now it becomes obvious, from similar rooms in Armour, that this is where beef carcasses were wheeled along overhead tracks through different parts of the slaughtering process, as can be seen below. The tile walls made the…
From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part Three
We moved upward in the building to upper floors that may have been more cold storage, but I’m not sure. We were now looking out over the tops of other buildings in the complex. Hunter had its own power plant, though its smokestack was not the most photogenic, made out of concrete, I believe and…
From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part Two
Moving along in our tour from 2008, we see more demolition debris; I am not certain what part of the building we are in, but I suspect it was more of the cold storage. What you’re looking at below are floors above that collapsed after the support columns in front of them were demolished, causing…
From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part One
I discovered a cache of old photos from sixteen years ago of the Hunter Meat Packing Plant in National City taken in November of 2008. Wow, what a place. It opened sometime around 1900 and at its height employed 1,500 workers, and when it closed in 1982, around 1,100 people were laid off. Demolition began…
A Totally Preventable Fire
Update: The house has been demolished and is now a vacant lot. 3113 Arsenal Street in the Tower Grove East neighborhood was gutted by fire on the night of November 12. It’s the usual story: the owner of an abandoned house who’s owned the building for decades deferred maintenance for so long that finally it…