I’d been doing some research lately on the old St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, which was completed around 1845 (the parish was founded in 1843 and closed in 1973), making it the third in St. Louis after the Old Cathedral and St. Mary of Victories, a German language parish. A familiar name came up, the…
Tag: Vacant Lots
Around Grant’s Farm
At first, I was flabbergasted to find the site of the Joseph Sappington House to be an empty lot, but some quick Google research led me to discover that the log cabin has been disassembled and is going to be (has already been?) moved to a new location next to the Thomas Sappington House. I’ll…
Kassebaum House and Environs
The August Kassebaum House sits on Lemay Ferry Road just north of Butler Hill Road; it was built in 1907 at the unincorporated village of Mattese. Designed by William Wedemeyer, its advanced ornament and design shows just how wealthy Kassebaum had become as a merchant out in this isolated corner of South County. His storefronts,…
Locust Street Between Cardinal and Huntley Avenues
Moving east, there are more businesses that replaced houses. The photo above is perhaps the southeast corner, but I can’t be sure. The house in the background is gone for certain. The Fountain on Locust has become a famous restaurant in the amazing Spanish Revival building below. While this building below was marked for demolition,…
Cote Brilliante Avenue and Environs, Revisited, The Greater Ville
Again thwarted by a one-way on Cote Brilliante (I looked at the Cupples School on it in the past) in the Kingshway East neighborhood, I took Kingshighway south to Aldine Avenue, which I’ve looked extensively over the years and how it was eventually demolished due to rampant land speculation by the Roberts Brothers and others….
Cote Brilliante Avenue from Hodiamont Avenue to Goodfellow Boulevard
The St. Louis architecture, preservation and ADA rights community lost a dear friend last year by the name of Steve Patterson, who ran a blog, UrbanReviewSTL, for almost twenty years, and one thing Steve always did every year on Dr. Martin Luther King Day was to walk or eventually ride his motorized wheelchair the full…
Bumpers in Trees
Tipped off by a source, I was guided to a grove of trees where bumpers were wrapped around trees decades ago, and now the trunks have grown around them, encasing them inside. Is there anything more American than this type of littering?
Viaducts, Trestles and Bridges, Chouteau’s Landing
Wandering around the vacant lot where the former Powell Square Building was located before it was demolished in Chouteau’s Landing, I was struck at just how much infrastructure there is clogging this part of the city. Perhaps it is a necessary evil, needed to move commerce and industry around the center of the city for…
The Old Quarry on Utah Street
Things are not looking good for the houses built on the old quarry on Utah Street that I last looked at back in May of 2019 (second photo). I believe there has been additional demolition, and there has certainly been more abandonment. The houses are looking really bad as the settling has continued. It’s dramatic…
Around Wabash Avenue
I found Wabash Avenue recently, which is one of the last major north-south arteries in St. Louis down by the River des Peres. There are a series of streets that come off the avenue to the east and west. Interstate 44, above and obscured by the trees, cuts through the area. The area is quiet…