St. Louis Patina

The historic Main Street of St. Peters has a substantial number of architecturally significant buildings. We start at the northeast corner of Main and Depot streets and work our way west, looking at the north side of the street. While… Continue Reading →

It was a sunny day on Saturday and there was work being done on the continual restoration of the former German Roman Catholic parish of St. Liborius. I know many readers and former parishioners are upset about its current use… Continue Reading →

These photos are totally overexposed, but I still wanted to show some of the fall color from a drive around Bellefontaine Cemetery, revealing these views of the leaves changing on the trees.

I looked at The Naked Truth back in 2007, and I thought it was due time to go back and more carefully examine this famous sculpture that was moved around Reservoir Park with the construction of Interstate 44. It commemorates… Continue Reading →

The shadows were growing long late on a Saturday when I decided to go by Reservoir Park in the Compton Heights neighborhood, which I realized I first photographed way back in October of 2007. The park represents a time and… Continue Reading →

I’m sure readers have heard about proposed Target going in on the east side of Grand Boulevard just north of Chouteau Avenue. This has long been an industrial area, and the site of quarries. As can be seen in the… Continue Reading →

In contrast to Barnes-Jewish-Children’s Hospital, which is constantly demolishing, rebuilding and expanding, when we head to the South Side, we discover that the old Lutheran Hospital, whose original post is one of my most popular, is seeing a different future.… Continue Reading →

The old Queeny Tower has been annihilated, and the site is cleared without even a water-filled hole left behind. The site is now being prepared for future construction. Some interesting remainders have been left; for example, up above the cantilevered… Continue Reading →

Hey everyone, is it maybe the time for us all to start having a conversation about how the Mullanphy Emigrant Home is probably going to collapse into a giant pile of rubble soon? Honestly, it’s following the path of St.… Continue Reading →

Visible in the fourth photo down in this post from June of 2019, this warehouse caught on fire and burned, leaving only a ruined hulk behind. It will surely be demolished, and another vacant lot will join the dozens of… Continue Reading →

This house might not look like much, but it is a very old, historic house that dates back to at least the 1870s, and I suspect from its form, is much older than that. It appears in Compton and Dry’s… Continue Reading →

A serious and potentially devastating fire struck the campanile, or Italian-style bell tower of the former Second Baptist Church this last week. Thanks to the professionalism of the St. Louis Fire Department, the flames did not spread to the rest… Continue Reading →

“Fire at an old bowling ball factory on Xograph Avenue in Jennings?” I knew when I heard about this strange occurrence, and how the St. Louis Fire Department had to join their colleagues in the County to help extinguish the… Continue Reading →

The last couple of weeks, and in particular the most recent, have been rough on historic buildings in St. Louis, with fires striking numerous prominent and lesser known structures. The first one I’m looking at is a recycling center in… Continue Reading →

The crossroads of South Jefferson Avenue, South Broadway (originally Carondelet Road) and Chippewa Street creates one of the more interesting intersections in St. Louis. It’s where the traffic from downtown passed by the suburbs of South St. Louis on its… Continue Reading →

I photographed the east side of Crunden-Martin back in the summer of 2020, and not much had changed. The hulking buildings are still vacant, and are built of a sort of pale red brick. A portion of the terracotta cornice,… Continue Reading →

It’s been almost exactly a decade since a fire ripped through one of the massive buildings of the Crunden-Martin complex in December of 2011. I came back in January of 2014, and little had changed since the conflagration except some… Continue Reading →

I went down to the South Riverfront bright and early on Saturday and cut through the flood wall. The sun was shining across the Mississippi River. The water level is still low, but I think it has been rising a… Continue Reading →

The old Fermenting or Lagering House is probably my favorite building at the Lemp Brewery, with its three original floors above ground, and the same depth below ground as it is tall. There are two ugly additional floors added by… Continue Reading →

While these twin buildings are prominent along South Broadway, their role in generating ice for the boxcars that took Lemp Beer around the world is less well known. I wrote about them at the end of this article back in… Continue Reading →