St. Louis Patina

As the fog lifted even more, I sought out even taller buildings, and the Gateway Arch seemed like a good candidate. I also thought the river would be foggy, but no luck there. There was something surreal about the two… Continue Reading →

I was all excited about the forecast of fog, so I got up early to see if I could get some interesting photos of St. Louis shrouded in mist. But already in the early morning the fog was lifting, so… Continue Reading →

It’s good to have laugh every now and then. For a little comic relief I bring you the house on the northwest corner of Indiana Avenue and Crittenden Street in the beautiful Benton Park neighborhood, which I’ve looked at twice… Continue Reading →

Supposedly Dogtown landowner James Prather was out of town for an extended period when the nearby Glades were first subdivided, and his caretaker took advantage of his employer’s absence to cut down the property’s oak trees and sell off the… Continue Reading →

The son of Stanislaus Mitchell, Sr., Stanislaus Jr. was president of Mitchell Clay Manufacturing Co., which was located on Manchester Avenue just west of Sublette. It was logical, then, that his family’s estate was up in the hills to the… Continue Reading →

Leaving behind noisy McCausland, we head down Plateau Avenue, past the parking lot on the north for Olympia. There is a row of unique four-family apartment buildings, and then there are some interesting single family houses. This house has an… Continue Reading →

McCausland Avenue has long been known as the southern half of the western boundary of St. Louis. It’s a little too narrow to be a good four-lane street, but it’s too wide to be a two-lane street. Traffic moves along… Continue Reading →

Wandering up Louisville Avenue up to Clayton Avenue, we realized we had drastically gone outside the boundaries of Franz Park (and I’ve already looked at that stretch of street before), so we turned down the short stretch of San Jacinto… Continue Reading →

Walking down Dale Avenue a little ways, formerly and appropriately Valley Road due to its path down a deep ravine, we then headed north up Louisville Avenue. Looking again at historic aerials from 1937, much of the west side of… Continue Reading →

While still on Mitchell, it’s hard not to notice that something very dramatic is happening to the housing stock. There are more Cape Cods, on what was still farmland in 1937, according to historic aerial images. But then, whoa! Things… Continue Reading →

The heights of The Glades was known as Blackberry Ridge, and the area was laid out after the Civil War. It seems that the railroad station was named Benton due to an Irish immigrant having trouble saying the name The… Continue Reading →

Like many St. Louis Public Schools, John J. Roe Elementary School started out as an older, Romanesque Revival building that was built when the area it served was largely rural and suburban. Then the great firm of Ittner/Milligan came in… Continue Reading →

Ah, winter’s here, with plenty of cloudy skies. So the next week or so I’ll be looking at the Franz Park neighborhood, which I lump under the Greater Dogtown tag. It’s imperfect, and perhaps the Franz Park has a more… Continue Reading →

Help didn’t come in time for one of the more unique and beautiful houses in Carondelet, which I had photographed back in March of 2021 (second photo) on Michigan Avenue. Only a couple of months after taking those photos, a… Continue Reading →

I’m always drawn back to the Biddle Mausoleum, which I just realized, since it was built in 1831, is rapidly closing in on being two hundred years old. It could easily be one of the oldest buildings in St. Louis,… Continue Reading →

Nearby the massive Pierre Chouteau plot is the towering obelisk of the Lucas family, whose names and family’s property holdings affect the physical plant of the St. Louis region to the present day, particularly in North County. However, perhaps his… Continue Reading →

Somehow I’ve never noticed the prominent Pierre Chouteau plot in the middle of Calvary Cemetery, whose graceful staircase is inspired by Italian garden design such as we’ve seen at Meridian Hill Park and the Villa d’Este. Walking up the stairs,… Continue Reading →

I normally drive around on Prospect Drive, where the more famous Wainwright and Lemp mausolea are, but I decided I would take the less-traveled Birch Drive, which wends its way around to the southwest, and features some very nice monuments.

Entering into Springdale Cemetery in Peoria is normal enough–rows of graves along a gentle slope–but as you continue your drive, you realize that this is no normal final resting place. Founded in 1857, it was part of the rural cemetery… Continue Reading →

“Dan Fogelberg? Who’s Dan Fogelberg?” As at least one friend has remarked to me, lately Google Maps has been arbitrarily highlighting some features and ignoring other more important landmarks on-line. Recently, while scanning around Peoria on Google Satellite, one such… Continue Reading →