I never thought I’d see this day, but all the buildings that were vacant and/or hit by bricktheft have been demolished east of Glasgow Avenue. There were dozens of buildings in this stretch a decade ago, and they’re all gone now. The last ones were still here less than a year ago. We’ll see when…
Tag: St. Louis Avenue
John Loler House, Destroyed by Fire
Update: See the house in ruins a week later; the site was cleared soon after. I was getting ready Saturday evening to head over to the Granite City Art and Design District when I glanced at Twitter, where I follow the St. Louis Fire Department. They were reporting a fire at a “three story house…
St. Louis Avenue West of North Florissant Avenue
I’ve sporadically photographed the block just to the west of North Florissant Avenue, and mainly the buildings on the south side of the street. They’ve all been destroyed on the south side: first the Winkelmann Mansion, then a row of houses in a fire. But the north side of the street has some amazing buildings…
Updates on the Inner North Side
Update: The remaining houses on the north side of the street have been demolished. Two buildings on St. Louis Avenue in JeffVanderLou apparently had become something of celebrities due to some graffiti someone had painted on them years ago. I came by while they were in the process of being demolished; the one on the…
North St. Louis, Late Summer, 2019
I met new people all over North St. Louis this summer, including members of the congregation of the Original Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in the Ville neighborhood, on St. Louis Avenue. Better Family Life had organized dozens of churches to host barbecues all summer long, and the Church had been one of the participants. I…
JeffVanderLou, September 2019
If anyone asks me the neighborhood that has been hit the hardest by racism, predatory banking policies, redlining and failed government actions, it would easily be JeffVanderLou (though in time at the current rate, other neighborhoods in St. Louis and North St. Louis County will surely catch up). I had revisited the area in the…
West on St. Louis Avenue, Summer 2019
I’ve been creating new tags for notable streets in St. Louis that I feel represent great cross sections of architecture and culture (such as North Broadway or Cherokee, and the newly introduced South Jefferson), and I’m now introducing a “St. Louis Avenue” tag, for what I believe is a street that best illustrates the North…
Winkelmann Mansion Property For Sale, and Other Follies
Update: Construction on the “green” houses started back up again in mid to late 2019. Oh hey, if you’d like to buy the vacant lot at the corner of St. Louis Avenue and 20th Street, it’s for sale, minus the historic mansion that Paul McKee let collapse and be demolished back in 2013. Meanwhile, another…
Revisiting St. Louis Place, Early February 2019
I went by the site of the old Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, which is still a vacant lot since it was first damaged by a fire and then demolished. I was intrigued by a rectangle of concrete with rough aggregate in the middle of the lot–was this a relic of the old church? I…
The Greater Ville in Extensus
I will be looking at the Greater Ville neighborhood for the next couple of weeks. I’ve looked at The Ville before. The Ville was the old wood frame exurb of Elleardsville, where segregation forced St. Louis’s African American middle class to live. The Greater Ville, horseshoe shaped and embracing the smaller Ville neighborhood around it…