I willing be a guest on KMOX AM 1120 at 8:20 AM on Friday, January 17, 2020 talking about the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Prohibition. Please tune in if you’re able! Valley Park has some great architecture along Benton Street. The city hall is a nice building, and then to the east, there…
Tag: West County
Company Houses, Marshall Road, Valley Park
Those are company houses, if I’ve ever seen any, I said to my companions, as we drove down Marshall Road in between 4th and 5th streets in Valley Park. The houses seen in my photographs are just above the giant blue rectangle, which is the St. Louis Plate Glass Co. The two Sanborn Fire Insurance…
Ridgeview Place
My family and I thought it would be fun to go by the condominium development built off the side of our normal house subdivision and see how things were going. Wait a minute, what the heck is up with those downspouts?!
Remembering Tom Maher
I was able to attend the memorial service for Tom Maher, who was a long time reader and commenter on this website, having left, according to my estimates, hundreds if not over a thousand comments over the last decade. I had the opportunity to meet Tom earlier this year, and we ended up talking for…
Chesterfield Mall, 99% Dead
So this is how it all ends. With Macy’s chugging along, and apparently the Cheesecake Factory and the movie theater locked into long leases or owning their own buildings, Chesterfield Mall seems to have finally bit the dust. There are still maybe two stores open, but otherwise the halls are empty, and the air conditioning…
Westland Acres
Update: The sale of the property mentioned in this post did not happen, but individual parcels are still for sale. Due to an eagle-eyed reader, I learned recently that the historic freedmen’s settlement of Westland Acres recently sold for a substantial amount of money. Inhabited by the descendants of freed slaves for generations, I suspect…
Ionic Order
There’s been an exciting new advance in McMansion architecture: the appearance of the Ionic Order in Post-Modernism. Perhaps in twenty years the Corinthian Order will appear, and in another forty the Composite will be reinvented. Senior citizens interested in attending my lecture at OASIS about influential architects who have left their marks on St. Louis…
Old Farm House Revealed
Update: See a similar situation nearby in November of 2022. The cutting through of a new section of Wild Horse Creek Road off of the old Olive Street Road, which began its life as a plank road, has opened up new pieces of land for development out in Chesterfield. The clearing of trees has revealed…
The Spanish Revival Mansion
Built in 1924, this cool Spanish Revival mansion way out in West County surely has a fascinating story behind it. In that year, this was out in the middle of nowhere. It looks like a Maritz and Young-influenced home.
From the Vault: Westport Plaza
I dug some old photographs of Westport Plaza out of my files; I do not remember how old they are, but they are certainly from a long time ago, at least pre-2012. I like them as they capture a time in the history of the office and shopping development that no longer exists. At the…