St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Oratory, In the Fog

I thought it would be interesting to rush out into the fog Saturday morning and see if I could get any interesting photos of tall buildings. St. Francis de Sales was almost invisible on the fog-cloaked streets around 8:30 AM, even just two blocks away. But when I drew closer, it appeared out of the…

St. Francis de Sales Parish School

I’ve often regarded Roman Catholic parishes as much more than simply a church, but rather campuses of multiple buildings, including but not limited to a rectory, convent, school and even other buildings. St. Francis De Sales originally had a building on the southeast corner of Sidney and Iowa that housed a musical corps. The parish…

Jefferson and Gravois, Revisited

I’ve looked at the intersection of South Jefferson and Gravois avenues in July of 2012, and I came back over the course of several months to photograph the crossing of two of the most important streets in the inner South Side. It’s come a long way from when it was a small exurban village surrounded…

Details of the Spire, St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Oratory

You probably noticed over the last three to four months my photographs were becoming increasingly blurry, overexposed, underexposed and just all around incredibly lower quality (even more so than usual). This was because my old camera was coming to the end of its life. Thankfully, I received a new camera for Christmas, and with it…

Gravois Avenue, Tower Grove East

Update: See the intersection in 2014 and 2019. Up at the crest of the hill at Arsenal Street, Pennsylvania and Gravois avenues, the buildings are affected by the roar of traffic flying by. Widened in the early decades of the Twentieth Century, Gravois is now the equivalent of seven lanes wide through here. Many buildings…

St. Francis de Sales, Revisited

I never get tired of St. Francis de Sales Oratory on south Gravois.? Rising three hundred feet above the street, the spire is one of the tallest in the world, so I’ve been told. I looked at it years ago, and you can see that post here. Designed in the hallkirche style, which is a…