I was out visiting a friend two Saturdays ago, and I was intrigued by the “new urbanism” development of the Streets of St. Charles. It’s becoming increasingly common for wealthier suburbs of major cities to build these mixed-use developments, where there are ground floor restaurants and stores below apartments or condos. There’s usually a hotel…
Tag: St. Charles County
Our Lady of the Rivers, Portage des Sioux
Located down a concrete walkway at the end of a promontory, the statue of Our Lady of the Rivers is a short distance from the town of Portage des Sioux. Past the front entry, there are a series of steel panels commemorating various river-related events, such the one below. The statue itself, designed by Norma…
Two Churches in the Land Between the Rivers
We looked at two churches in that flat bottomland sandwiched between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers that forms an almost peninsula-like eastern tail of St. Charles County. The first one, Trinity Lutheran Church at the intersection of Highway 94 and Church Road, dates from 1876, when it was calved off from Emmanuel Lutheran. The church…
Twin Silos
The question arose when we viewed the entrance gateway to this new development: was the name obtained a priori or a posteriori?
Pitman Cemetery
Recently volunteers have restored a historic cemetery in St. Charles County that holds the grave of a Revolutionary War veteran. The grave of John Pitman is above; as is typical of Protestant settlers, the dead were buried in family cemeteries in early Missouri. Here’s a link to a great article about how the subdivision developer…
Boyd Plantation, Towne Park
Moved and restored after a disastrous fire, the Boyd Plantation house is now the centerpiece of Towne Park near Foristell in northern St. Charles County. It sits in a broad swath of open land east of Highway 63 on land donated by the Towne family. You approach it from the north where you can see…
Christian Science Reading Room
We couldn’t figure out the history of what is now a Christian Science Reading Room, but it is clearly an old house, judging from its Greek Revival style and the soft brick that makes up its walls. Early brick in the St. Louis region was not fired at as high of temperatures as later eras,…
Farmstead, Surrounded by Highways
We spotted this farmhouse, which had received some more decorative millwork but is still essentially a Greek Revival wood frame structure, sitting on a rapidly shrinking plot of land on St. Peters Parkway, just to the north of the Page Avenue Extension. What is interesting is that fair number of outbuildings are still standing. I’m…
The Lawrence Cribbin House, St. Charles County Heritage Museum
We’re going to be looking at Greek Revival farmhouses out in St. Charles County for the next week along with some other landmarks. Many of the houses are perhaps not “pure” Greek Revival anymore because of additions and elaborations, but I found it fascinating just how many survive. In this case, this is the which…
O’Fallon and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Roman Catholic Church
The parish complex of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary cuts a stunning profile down the west side of Main Street north of the railroad tracks in the historic section of O’Fallon. The church is over 150 years old, but I suspect this building is around one hundred years old, built in what I…