Moving a half block to the north to Magnolia Place “proper,” there are a pair of handsome gates that mark the entrance to the one block street on both ends at Lawrence and Thurman. And the housing is distinctly different from the houses to the south on Magnolia Avenue that is apparent immediately. While they…
Tag: Shaw
Magnolia Avenue from Lawrence Street to Thurman Avenue, Part Two
Magnolia Place seems to have been platted around 1913 to 1916, which would make sense considering the style of the houses. Note the art glass in the lunette of the windows above. Some of the bungalows also seem to show some influence of Spanish Revival architecture, as well, such as in the house above. Side…
Magnolia Avenue from Lawrence Street to Thurman Avenue, Part One
One solution developers took for the ungainly long lots along Magnolia Avenue was to simply cut through a second street in between Lawrence and Thurman, named Magnolia Place (we’ll look at it in two days), and create a series of much smaller than normal lots with Arts and Crafts bungalows. It’s really a special little…
Magnolia Avenue from South 39th Street to Lawrence Street
Heading west on Magnolia Avenue past South 39th Street, we get to some of those exceptionally long lots. But these houses don’t have those long yards, because the backs were partitioned off to create houses facing South 39th Street, sitting perpendicular to Magnolia Avenue. They are typical houses from the early Twentieth Century. One house…
Magnolia Avenue from South Grand Boulevard to South 39th Street
The next couple of weeks I’m going to be looking at that strange, awkward strip of land that extends from South Grand Boulevard to Tower Grove Avenue between Magnolia Avenue and the north alley behind Botanical Avenue in the Shaw neighborhood. Why is the space between Magnolia and Botanical not wide enough for another street,…
Former Missouri Pacific Hospital
I’d heard of railroad hospitals, and the name seemed self-explanatory in that they were hospitals that served the huge number of employees in a dangerous industry, but I had no idea that they were such a critical part of St. Louis employment history and national history, as well. Interestingly, they were primarily in the west…
Mount Olive Lutheran, After The Fire
Fire struck the Mount Olive Lutheran Church on Shaw Boulevard just east of the Missouri Botanical Garden on July 30. I went by and photographed the building on August 4. The congregation was founded in 1926, the church was built in 1931 on the site of single family houses, and the newer wing was constructed…
Shaw Place, Revisited
Due to the giant no trespassing signs written in gold lettering, I had to look at Shaw Place, laid out by Henry Shaw himself, from the public right-of-way. The eight houses, designed by George I. Barnett, were originally intended as rental properties to generate income for Shaw in his Lafayette Addition. Their style was meant…
Southwest Garden, Part Three
Many of the east-west streets have the same names of their counterparts on the other side of the Botanical Garden in Shaw. This is Flad Avenue, I believe, which is a mix of two- and four-family apartments. I do not know what happened to the building above; there was some sort of fire, obviously. The…
Southwest Garden, Part Two
For anyone who doesn’t live in the City of St. Louis, for many residents, “four-family” is a “four-letter word,” if you know what I mean. But what always strikes me about the Southwest Garden neighborhood is how there are so many well-kept and elegant four-family apartment buildings. It proves that bad management and slumlords are…