The last time I had visited the former Carrollton subdivision was back in November of 2022, and some things had changed. First of all, an ultimate frisbee course had been built. Also, we saw a person walking through the empty yards. Not sure what he was doing. The trees are slowly dying but the former…
Tag: Vacant Lots
After the Tornado: Visitation Park
Visitation Park is a small neighborhood, north of Delmar and just west of Union Boulevard, named after the former Visitation Academy which was once in this area. There was still some damage from the tornado, mainly in small loss of shingles to roofs. You can see the house in better times here. However, as can…
Pine Lawn
Pine Lawn is one of the many small inner ring suburbs just outside the boundaries of the City of St. Louis along Natural Bridge Road and Jennings Station Road forms a north-south “spine,” so to speak. The name comes from the estate, one of many out this way, of Charles Clark, of which only the…
The Ruins, North Broadway, Far North Riverfront
I was heading up North Broadway when I spotted something out of the corner of my eye that made me make a U-turn and investigate. Through the lush undergrowth that had sprung up from the heavy rains we’ve seen this spring, I spotted the ruins of an old building peeking out. Through some research, I…
Zombie Subdivision, St. Charles County
It’s been a long time since we’ve looked at a zombie subdivision, so what luck it was to discover one while we were on our way to visit the small hamlet of St. Paul in St. Charles County, which we’ll look at tomorrow. The sun was shining and a nice breeze was gently blowing the…
Downtown Granite City, Early March 2025
I last stopped by downtown Granite City in Spring of 2024, and there has not been much happening other than at the Granite City Arts and Design District on the far side of the area. I did discover another Sinclair Dinosaur which had been put on display along with a bunch of other Route 66…
Angelrodt Street from North Twentieth Street to Blair Avenue, Revisited
Continuing around Hyde Park, I headed down Angelrodt Street east of Twentieth Street, which I looked at back in January of 2018. I first spotted this house, which is rapidly losing its vinyl siding. I’ve always been fascinated by these little houses, built a half century or more after Hyde Park was already a bustling…
Titonix Lead White Factory
I found an old book at the library about Carondelet, and while it was filled with the normal stuff about French Colonial history–which is really cool–what I really found interesting is the industry. I like to think about Carondelet not as a quaint little French town, but rather as a big, brawny Brooklyn on the…
Garfield Avenue Between North Newstead and Billups Avenue, The Ville
I somehow managed to randomly end up going down the same street I had detoured down back in back in late October of 2024, which was Garfield Avenue east of North Newstead Avenue. How this happened I don’t know, but it is interesting to see how the street changed in just two months. The light…
Green Board-Ups, JeffVanderLou, Part One
My friend Paul Hohman, a well known architect who specializes in renovations of historic buildings helped get Missouri Preservation to list the “JeffVanderLou Green Board Buildings” as one of their 2024 Places in Peril. JeffVanderLou, which I’ve featured many times over the years, in one of the more heavily demolished neighborhoods in the City, but…