The views of downtown from the McKinley Bridge are also impressive. The vacant Southwestern Bell building can be seen below, with the boarded up windows that were shot out by stray bullets earlier this year clearly visible. The Eagleton Federal Courthouse is to the west. Then there is the iconic Civil Courts building. The Stan…
Tag: Skyscrapers
Lindell Boulevard from Grand Boulevard to Vandeventer Avenue
Ah, Lindell Boulevard! I avoid the street like the plague because it is such a dysfunctional street. Once a residential street lined with mansions, sometime in the Twentieth Century it became the busiest street in the city. The mansions were demolished, and it became lined with businesses, while the through traffic jumped over to Highway…
Looking Out the Windows of the Alverne
It’s hard to believe considering how long suffering the Alverne Building was, that I was able to stand on the top floor recently and deliver a lecture. It’s now renovated into some interesting apartments, including some two-story ones, and the problem with the building having some small windows that couldn’t be altered in order to…
Central Park, Downtown Jacksonville, Illinois
Jacksonville was founded by groups of “Yankees,” from New England, many of whom were graduates of Yale University. I can’t help but think the influence of the large town commons and greens of cities such as New Haven played a part in the design of Central Park, the outsized town square of Jacksonville. The center…
Queeny Tower Demolition Complete
The old Queeny Tower has been annihilated, and the site is cleared without even a water-filled hole left behind. The site is now being prepared for future construction. Some interesting remainders have been left; for example, up above the cantilevered remnant of the skybridge which connected the Queeny Tower to the main building of Barnes…
The Roebling Bridge, Between Cincinnati and Covington
One of the most important bridges in the history of architecture and engineering spans the Ohio River in between Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky. Opened in 1866, years before the revolutionary Eads Bridge in St. Louis, it served as the important prototypical step for the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Construction faced the same challenges:…
Chouteau Trust and Banking Building
The old Chouteau Trust and Banking Building is one of those landmarks that maybe gets taken for granted, sitting right at the eastern gateway to the Grove neighborhood. But it is significant for being such a large office building in what is otherwise a low-rise neighborhood. It is perhaps obvious that it once had a…
Demolition Progressing, Queeny Tower, Mid August, 2021
Update: Demolition was completed by October of 2021. Like many things in life, it takes more time to get going, but then once you get started, it starts going fast. Such is the case with the demolition of the Queeny Tower, which is now coming down quickly. They were working well into the evening last…
More Demolition, Queeny Tower
Update: See the progress of demolition in mid-August of 2021 and was complete by October. The demolition of the Queeny Tower is proceeding, and when I stopped by on the last Saturday of June, the Caterpillars were working away moving debris around. Part of the top of the tower is clearly gone, and they are working…
Merchant Laclede Building, Revisited
The Merchant Laclede, or Merchant’s Laclede Building, depending on whom you ask, was another of the historic skyscrapers in the financial district of St. Louis, often forgotten in favor of the more famous Chicago School buildings to the west. It was built in 1886. It’s been simplified over the years, losing its pediment and conical…