Washington, At Night

I was giving a lecture out in Washington, Missouri, and I had some time to kill so I walked around the downtown, taking some pictures of the historic architecture. Above is St. Peter’s United Church of Christ which was founded in 1844. Below is the City Hall. I wandered down some of the other streets…

Cedar Street, Part Two, Washington, Franklin County

Proceeding down towards the river, we realize that the houses above are the same ones in the photograph below, just seen from the opposite direction and over one hundred years later. The house above looks like it’s been modified slightly from 1908. But this house above and below can clearly be seen in the far…

Cedar Street, Part One, Washington, Franklin County

Cedar Street turned out to be a delight, with a well-preserved stretch of houses from a wide range of styles. Below, looking way off in the west where the trees are is the location of the thoroughfare. The street works cohesively because despite being so stylistically divergent, the use of the same color of brick…

Around Immanuel Lutheran Church, Washington, Franklin County

It wouldn’t be a German American town in Missouri without a Lutheran church across town from the Roman Catholic one! In this case, it’s Immanuel Lutheran Church, founded in 1862, with the current church constructed in 1882. But let’s look at the general neighborhood around the church, which is a combination of parking lots, intact…

Main and Lafayette Streets, Washington, Franklin County

Walking southeast down Main Street from Cedar Street and St. Francis Borgia we see a fairly intact stretch of Nineteenth Century streetscape. The photograph below, most likely from the church’s spire, shows the downtown area, including Main Street at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Edward G. Busch owned a hardware store along this stretch,…

Front Street, Washington, Franklin Coutny

We’ll head down to Front Street along the Misssouri River, where unlike nearby New Haven, here that street name is more logically facing the riverbank where steamboats would have docked. There is a parking lot for visitors, which I’m not thrilled about and I think would be best filled in eventually. Industry such as corncob…

The John G. Busch Brewery, Washington, Franklin County

John B. Busch founded his brewery south of downtown in 1854, and it continued under the supervision of his sons for many years. Yes, as you might suspect, he was a brother of Adolphus Busch of Anheuser-Busch fame. As was typical, the brewery switched to the manufacture of soft drinks at the dawn of Prohibition….

St. Francis Borgia Roman Catholic Church, Washington, Franklin County

Heading east from New Haven, we’re going to be looking at Washington, Missouri in Franklin County. I’m actually kind of surprised, only two months from the sixteenth anniversary of St. Louis Patina, that I’ve never covered this important city on the Missouri River. We’ll start our tour by looking at St. Francis Borgia Roman Catholic…