Today, the houses of Claymont look much the same as they did when they were built, but there is pressure in the economically desirable city of Ballwin for “tear downs,” where lots are worth more than the houses on them. While that has spelled the end of many ranch houses in West County, so far…
Tag: West County
Claymont, Beginnings
I was always interested in the Claymont subdivision, located on the southeast corner of Clayton and Kehr’s Mill roads in Ballwin in West County. Developed around 1963, the subdivision was a great example of the new sort of development appearing in the mid-Twentieth Century. Unlike Glasgow Village or Castle Point, which we’ve looked at before,…
Quinette
Back in July, we had looked at Quinette Road, which terminated at Meramec Station Road. Today we’ll look at the small speculative development of Quinette, which was platted at the terminus of the road, far out in West County at the time in 1858. The nature of the Quinette Subdivision becomes clearer after reading an…
Former Normandy Hospital South
It’s hard to keep track of all of the names of the hospital at the intersection of Dougherty Ferry and Des Peres roads, but it was born in 1974 as Normandy Hospital South. Nearby Interstate 270 was actually still known as 244 at the time, and the interchange was only half complete, with nearby Big…
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Des Peres
Please join me on July 24 at 6:30 at the Central Library in downtown St. Louis for a lecture about my new book. Please register here. St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in the 1960s still sat at a relatively peaceful intersection, but change was happening rapidly around Manchester and Ballas roads. West County Mall would soon…
Des Peres City Hall, Former Lutheran Children’s Home
Please join me on July 24 at 6:30 at the Central Library in downtown St. Louis for a lecture about my new book. Please register here. Today, Des Peres City Hall sits in a verdant park, but originally its building and the surrounding grounds was the Lutheran Children’s or Orphans’ Home. The last of what…
The Viaduct
The viaduct under the old Missouri Pacific train tracks has a date of 1930 imprinted in the concrete over its lintel, but there are huge blocks of granite making up parts of its core, so I suspect it is much older, and was merely repaired in the early Twentieth Century. The road goes down to…
Quinette Road
We’re going to dive into some pretty deep esoterica with our examination of Quinette Road, which was the original name for Big Bend Road between its modern day intersection with Marshall Road and Meramec Station Road. If you look at the old 1862 Hutawa Map, you can see the path of Quinette Road along the…
Thomas Mason House
Little did I know growing up in West County and passing by this old stone house on Weidman Road just north of Manchester Road (itself an old Native American trail) that I was driving by one of the oldest European American dwellings in Missouri. Constructed around 1818 by Thomas Mason, it was on 400 acres…
La Salle Institute and Glencoe, Revisited
The La Salle Institute is for sale, out to the west of Glencoe and north of Marycliffe, which we looked at yesterday. It is located where Old State Road cuts off to the northeast and Missouri Route 109 continues off to the northwest in Wildwood in far West County. I’m showing you the west and…