Update: Construction actually did not start until the winter of 2023, and was substantially completed by April of that year. The building was finally rebuilt in the spring of 2023. I’m impressed that work has already started on repairing the damage to the high value corner storefront at the northwest corner of South Compton Avenue…
Tag: Tower Grove East
Reckless Stupidity, Compton Avenue and Arsenal Street, Tower Grove East
Update: A false start of repairs began a couple of weeks after the collision; reconstruction was only largely completely finally in April of 2023. The building was finally rebuilt in the spring of 2023. Well, it finally happened. An insane, totally irresponsible jerk was hurtling through my neighborhood of Tower Grove East and crashed into…
Around Tower Grove East, Winter 2020-21
Remember, if you’re going down a street with a bunch of houses from the 1910s, and all the sudden there are houses from the 1950s, you need to do some investigating. Yes, it may have just been where a house burned down, or maybe a livery stable yard, but sometimes there is something really cool…
Grant School
I could have sworn I’d photographed Grant School before, and I may have, but I can’t find it now. Nevertheless, it’s a great example of first, a pre-Ittner/Milligan school in St. Louis, and secondly, a perfect example of how an old school building can be renovated into apartments. Tower Grove East is a stable neighborhood…
Messiah Lutheran Church, Tower Grove East
I’ve driven and walked by Messiah Lutheran Church thousands of times, and I am embarrassed to admit that other than this one photo from September of 2013, which I replicated below since it’s such a beautiful view, I’ve never closely photographed it before. I suspect the church was sited in its lot to line it…
Virginia Avenue Between Sidney Street and Halliday Avenue, East Side
I’m not going to apologize for or lay off my criticism of the crap that’s happening to innocent houses such as the one you see above and below. They’re the same house, before and after a certain firm gets ahold of houses that are in perfectly fine shape, and then proceed to destroy them, putting…
Tennessee Avenue Between Magnolia and Shenandoah Avenues, East Side
Heading north up Tennessee Avenue, there are more houses that come in pairs or in triplets. And again, most are actually two-families disguised to look like single-family houses. The architecture reflects the more linear and stern forms of early Twentieth Century building trends in the areas around Tower Grove Park. But there are also houses,…
Magnolia Avenue Between Virginia and Tennessee Avenues, North Side
I took a walk down Magnolia Avenue in Tower Grove East. There is a wide variety of different housing styles, and even a wonderful music school on the corner with Virginia, The Music Room. Interestingly, below, on the left is a house that looks like a two-family, and on the right is a two-family that…
Arsenal Street Between Minnesota and Michigan Avenues, Tower Grove East
It’s hard to believe it, but the houses above were once an almost completely ruined pile of smoking timbers and collapsed brick walls a few years ago. I wrote an article about those two houses, and the other Civil War-era survivors around the crossroads of Gravois and Arsenal a few years ago at St. Louis…
Old Bavarian Inn, Tower Grove East
Update: Renovations began in the winter of 2022; see progress in the fall of 2022. The Bavarian Inn opened in 1946, but its famous owners, the Eiseles, bought it in 1963; the Black Forest down on Cherokee Street was also run by the family. The building is obviously older, but I do not know what…