I went by on Saturday to check on the demolition of the Federal Cold Storage Warehouse on North Broadway in the Near North Riverfront neighborhood. The fire at this point was now extinguished as far as I could tell and only North Broadway was closed, and will be for a several more weeks while demolition…
Tag: Ruins
Bonaparte, Iowa
The next town is Bonaparte, which is named after Napoleon, of course. Many people don’t realize that many Americans admired the supposedly Enlightenment-inspired French emperor due to his conflict with ancient monarchies in Europe. The beginning of the town centered around William Meek’s founding of mills (he named the town) in 1837. The building above…
Late Summer Odds and Ends
I have some leftover photos from the summer that I needed to clear out. Above, this house has collapsed on West Florissant Avenue just north of Grand Boulevard in the College Hill neighborhood, unfortunately. The house below is in Hyde Park, and I originally looked at it back in August of 2018. The infamous gas…
Fires
The third weekend of July was rough in North St. Louis. First off, we lost a beautiful corner store at West Florissant and De Soto avenues, which I swear I’ve photographed and I also could swear was occupied with a second-hand appliance store if I remember correctly. It was destroyed by fire Saturday morning in…
St. Augustine’s Spire Still Standing, For Now
Contrary to the reports of one local news program, the final demolition of the spire of St. Augustine did not occur last week. I went by on Saturday, and as I had learned from a source already, it was still standing. A Caterpillar was screwing around with a pile of bricks. It reminds me of…
Virginia Avenue Between Koeln and Robert Avenues, West Side
Looking into a tip a reader provided me, I went and looked at a burned out hulk of a house down in Carondelet. It’s never good when a house sits in this state for any amount of time. I then headed around the corner and went up Virginia Avenue, which is a mixed bag of…
Commercial Avenue and Environs, Revisited, Cairo
Well, there certainly has been a lot of changes along Commercial Avenue, the main street of Cairo, since the last time I was here. First of all, we’re down to two buildings on the east side of the street, when there were four the first time I visited. I suspect there will be none soon….
Mid-City, Cairo, Part One
Did you ever see that weird movie, Return to Oz? That’s how I felt when we first parked at that cluster of civic buildings in the middle of town in Cairo, much as my visit had begun ten years ago. We were greeted with a closed U.S. Customs House Museum, which had been open back…
Sad Loss on South Jefferson
Update: Another building a block away on Jefferson Avenue, seen here, was heavily damaged by fire on December 14, 2025. It’s the same story as usual; a slumlord sits on a property for years in a desirable neighborhood where it could have easily sold to a rehabber but instead it goes up in flames and…
Demolition, Former Star Bucket Pumping Co.
One of the last historic buildings of the Carr Square neighborhood is coming down, and coming down fast on land once owned by Anne Biddle. Built in 1906 or around that time (the date is a little suspect), it was a time when there were once thousands of houses surrounding it. Destroyed by urban renewal…