Update: The house was foreclosed on and demolished in the late summer of 2021. A new house was built on the lot in late 2022. We’d first noticed it a couple of months ago. The famous house in Ballwin that had garnered considerable media attention over a decade ago due to its sculpture garden commemorating…
Tag: West County
Resurrection of the Zombie Subdivision, Wildwood
We returned to the zombie subdivision in Wildwood that was one of the victims of the housing crash back in 2008 (remember that–it seems a million years ago now). It’s actually sort of interesting to see how the real estate market dealt with this problem. Off Crescent Road, individual homeowners have simply bought the adjacent…
Old Quarry, Town and Country
You never know what you’ll find down a quiet subdivision street in Town and Country. Passing down an old road in between squares of eighty acres of old farmland-turned-subdivisions, something doesn’t look normal. An old aerial photograph from 1955 reveals that there was a quarry active since at least 1937, and it was still visible…
Old Zion Evangelisch Cemetery, Des Peres
An early German congregation, Zion German Evangelisch founded this cemetery around 1847, when they built a log cabin church in this area north of the intersection of Ballas and Manchester roads. The congregation had originally been formed in 1838. It sits just an eighth of a mile east from I-270, but is now surrounded by…
St. Paul’s Cemetery
With roots that go back to 1838, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church has called the northeast corner of Ballas and Manchester roads home since 1867. The current church is from 1938, with an expansion from 1985. The cemetery is south of the church on Ballas, in the shadow of West County Center, which itself took the…
Triage, Chesterfield Mall
Update: By late 2021, the work was complete and the Dillard’s and Sears wings were blocked off. They’re closing off the Dillard’s and Sears wings of Chesterfield Mall, no doubt as a way of saving money on maintenance, utilities and staffing, much as the owners of Jamestown Mall did years ago. These pictures are of…
John F. Kennedy Catholic High School
Updated: Demolished in 2022 for a housing development. See historic photos and the state of construction in August of 2022. The development was largely complete by mid-2023. The former John F. Kennedy Catholic High School, after a short ownership by Fontbonne University, is back up for sale out in Manchester, just to the east of Highway…
Chuck Berry Mausoleum, Bellerive Cemetery
Chuck Berry is interred in a large mausoleum off Mason Road, just south of Olive Boulevard in West County in Bellerive Gardens Cemetery. It is a new building, as far a I can tell, and is constructed of blue granite with light grey granite accents. I do not know if the color blue was chosen…
Two Synagogues, West County
United Hebrew Congregation has a rich history going back to 1837, when the City of St. Louis was still a relatively small town, and before the influx of German and Irish immigrants had dramatically changed the makeup of the population. Like many of the prominent congregations of any religion or denomination in St. Louis, it…
Dr. Edmund E. Babler Memorial State Park
Sculptor Charles Keck produced this handsome monument of Dr. Edmund Babler out in the state park that bears his name. I could have sworn I already photographed this park at some point, but I guess I was wrong. Babler is way out west, in the middle of Wildwood, and I’m glad it’s here, because it…