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Seventeenth Anniversary of St. Louis Patina, St. Augustine’s, Dusk, May 4th
We’re getting closer to two decades here at St. Louis Patina, rounding out our seventeenth year, and what better way to commemorate it than looking at St. Augustine, which is slowly coming to an end...
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Demolition, Former Star Bucket Pumping Co.
One of the last historic buildings of the Carr Square neighborhood is coming down, and coming down fast on land once owned by Anne Biddle. Built in 1906 or around that time (the date is a little...
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Sad Loss on South Jefferson
It’s the same story as usual; a slumlord sits on a property for years in a desirable neighborhood where it could have easily sold to a rehabber but instead it goes up in flames and now yet another...
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Mid-City, Cairo, Part One
Did you ever see that weird movie, Return to Oz? That’s how I felt when we first parked at that cluster of civic buildings in the middle of town in Cairo, much as my visit had begun ten years ago. We...
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Commercial Avenue and Environs, Revisited, Cairo
Well, there certainly has been a lot of changes along Commercial Avenue, the main street of Cairo, since the last time I was here. First of all, we’re down to two buildings on the east side of the...
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Virginia Avenue Between Koeln and Robert Avenues, West Side
Looking into a tip a reader provided me, I went and looked at a burned out hulk of a house down in Carondelet. It’s never good when a house sits in this state for any amount of time. I then headed...
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St. Augustine’s Spire Still Standing, For Now
Contrary to the reports of one local news program, the final demolition of the spire of St. Augustine did not occur last week. I went by on Saturday, and as I had learned from a source already, it was...
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Fires
The third weekend of July was rough in North St. Louis. First off, we lost a beautiful corner store at West Florissant and De Soto avenues, which I swear I’ve photographed and I also could swear was...
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Late Summer Odds and Ends
I have some leftover photos from the summer that I needed to clear out. Above, this house has collapsed on West Florissant Avenue just north of Grand Boulevard in the College Hill neighborhood,...
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Bonaparte, Iowa
The next town is Bonaparte, which is named after Napoleon, of course. Many people don’t realize that many Americans admired the supposedly Enlightenment-inspired French emperor due to his conflict...
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Demolition, Federal Cold Storage Warehouse
I went by on Saturday to check on the demolition of the Federal Cold Storage Warehouse on North Broadway in the Near North Riverfront neighborhood. The fire at this point was now extinguished as far...
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Cote Brilliante Avenue and Environs, Revisited, The Greater Ville
Again thwarted by a one-way on Cote Brilliante (I looked at the Cupples School on it in the past) in the Kingshway East neighborhood, I took Kingshighway south to Aldine Avenue, which I’ve looked...
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Cote Brilliante Avenue and Environs, JeffVanderLou
Continuing down Garfield Avenue past some ruins, I approached the JeffVanderLou neighborhood and finished my journey down the Cote Brilliante Avenue axis. I reached Vandeventer Avenue, and crossed...
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A Totally Preventable Fire
3113 Arsenal Street in the Tower Grove East neighborhood was gutted by fire on the night of November 12. It’s the usual story: the owner of an abandoned house who’s owned the building for decades...
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From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part One
I discovered a cache of old photos from sixteen years ago of the Hunter Meat Packing Plant in National City taken in November of 2008. Wow, what a place. It opened sometime around 1900 and at its...
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From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part Two
Moving along in our tour from 2008, we see more demolition debris; I am not certain what part of the building we are in, but I suspect it was more of the cold storage. What you’re looking at below are...
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From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part Three
We moved upward in the building to upper floors that may have been more cold storage, but I’m not sure. We were now looking out over the tops of other buildings in the complex. Hunter had its own...
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From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part Four
On the upper floors, view of the nearby Armour Meat Packing Plant and downtown St. Louis are afforded. Now it becomes obvious, from similar rooms in Armour, that this is where beef carcasses were...
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From the Vault: Hunter Meat Packing Plant, November 2008, Part Five
The roof featured sawtooth clerestory windows, which let natural light down on to the slaughter floor. But the upper floors were offices and the storage of promotional materials, which had been left...
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