I’ve looked at the former John F. Kennedy High School before, then during demolition, and then last year as initial site grading had begun. We were surprised that by mid 2023 that the subdivision was largely completed. I’m intrigued by the conversion of large institutional parcels being subdivided into smaller plots of land. Certainly many…
Tag: West County
AMC Theater Closes at Chesterfield Mall
Update: An additional closed theater added in August of 2023. I was surprised to discover that the relatively new AMC theater at Chesterfield Mall had closed back on May 18 of this year. Yes, the mall is going to be demolished for redevelopment, but the Cheesecake Factory is doing very well and will continue to…
The Former Faust Estate
Always take that strange narrow road and see where it goes. We were recently visiting Faust Park in Chesterfield to look at the collection of historic West County structures on display there (see them here and here) and noticed there was a little road going to the east. Before we knew it, we had discovered…
Eberwein Park
Time for more barns! Eberwein Park is the former farm of the eponymous family, who sold hay harvested from its fields into the Twenty-First Century. It is now a public park owned by the City of Chesterfield off Old Baxter Road, preserving the original barn from the early Twentieth Century. Garden plots are available as…
Reinke Barn, Bluebird Park
Tucked in a valley in Bluebird Park in Ellisville is the Reinke Barn, moved from its original location west of Clarkson Road on Manchester Road. Originally built in 1905 for Henry Reinke, laborers came from the communities of Sherman and Glencoe to help build the barn. It could originally hold two horses, six cattle and…
End of Winter 2023 Odds and Ends
The old Soulard Branch of the St. Louis Public Library has had several uses over the last decade besides the commercial space facing 7th Boulevard. There was “The Library” and then “The Archives.” They’re both gone. Below, in McKinley Heights, I still can’t believe that Second Empire house below is sitting vacant; the property values…
Chesterfield, Post-Chesterfield Mall
Big things are happening out to the west of the now almost completely defunct Chesterfield Mall, which entered the hallowed halls of my Crumby Run-Down Malls of St. Louis pantheon with this post in June of 2017. But Chesterfield still boasts some of the highest income levels in the region (even if other zip codes…
Howard Bend, February 2023
I’ve been driving out and around the Howard Bend area since the early 1990s, and it’s interesting t see how it’s been changing. In fact, one of my earliest posts, almost fifteen years ago, looked at the area when it was still rural. Finally, after years of false starts, Maryland Heights’s dreams of developing the…
Odds and Ends
Occasionally I see some things around the city that make me chuckle or stop and just look. Here are a few from the last month or so.
Whispering Oakwood, Reborn
I had been following the saga of the house that had been in various legal wrangles with the suburb of Ballwin for years. As I reported in the past, it had been foreclosed on by a New York bank, and then it was demolished, leaving a vacant lot. Much to our surprise, a new house…