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Burned Down, St. Louis Avenue
No one knows how the fire started, but the end result is the same, as usual.
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Old Soap Factory, Under Demolition, Pagedale
I’ll be honest, I was never terribly impressed with the empty buildings of the old Lever Soap Factory. Apparently the owners weren’t either, and they’re now demolishing the giant factory first by...
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Fire, Old Refrigerated Warehouse
What a shame. This warehouse, once part of the St. Louis Refrigeration and Cold Storage complex, will be demolished after a horrible fire gutted its interior. Major losses along the Near North...
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Ice Sculpture Garden
The only possibly good thing that came out of the tragic loss of the old refrigeration warehouse were the elaborate ice sculptures left behind by the firefighters’ water, fighting a fire on one of the...
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Kennerly Avenue, Revisited
I find myself drawn back to these old wood frame shotgun houses in the Ville, dating back probably to as early as the 1870s, when this was a rural village named Elleardsville. The African-American...
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Up Around the Bissell Water Tower
There are some truly beautiful houses up at the crest of the hill where the Bissell Water Tower stands. They’re in good condition, for the most part, including this old wood frame house below,...
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Barry-Wehmiller, Demolition
The old factory in Walnut Park, a victim of changing economic and technological times, is being demolished. It was never the most impressive abandoned building, but the weird mix of junk inside was...
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Wells-Goodfellow #9, Revisited in Extensus
We explored Wells-Goodfellow for two hours on foot a couple of Saturdays ago, and over the next month, I will show what we saw. Walking up Hamilton Avenue, we saw destruction, vacant lots and...
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Wells-Goodfellow #10, Hamilton Avenue and Side Streets
Hamilton Avenue cuts up along the western side of Wells-Goodfellow, and is the second to last street after Hodiamont before the city limits. There is extensive abandonment, and increasing number of...
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Wells-Goodfellow #21, Collapsing House
What a beautiful building, I thought. It needs some work, though. Then as I walked by, the sunlight came through the staircase, and as I rounded its side, I realized its porch had collapsed, and the...
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Wells-Goodfellow #25, 5600 Block of Labadie
Over east of Goodfellow, the housing stock has more variety, with a strange mix of Cape Cods and early Twentieth Century apartment buildings. There are few people left, but the plywood is new on many...
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Wells-Goodfellow #46, The Burn Out, Revisited
Well, I guess we know now what happened to that house I saw back in November of 2015. Other than the effects of gravity, nothing has occurred with this forlorn ruin.
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Reservoir Market, Still Standing, Still Deteriorating
I don’t expect salvation for the historic Reservoir Market, but it is still standing for the time being.
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Crestwood Mall Demolition, the Past is Now Back to the Present
Crestwood Mall is disappearing, but the recent demolition of the “front” of the mall, built in 1984 opposite the original strip mall shops, has reappeared, temporarily. Most fascinating to me, the...
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See-Sawed Roof
I don’t really remember what this building was, but it was a salvage business at some point, judging by the sign. It is a mess, and the roof has collapsed, like a see-saw. Why, I don’t know....
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St. Louis Place, Under Demolition
The fence has gone up, and the houses are coming down. Hot neon pink will presumably not stop several late-night racers who will undoubtedly crash through at some point.
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JeffVanderLou Over to St. Louis Place
We were in the area, so we stopped to look at the memorial at Jefferson and Hebert. We also saw this interesting office building, as well as this collapsed building below on the other side of Parnell....
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Crestwood Mall Demolition, Conclusion
There’s not much left to say about the demolition of Crestwood Mall; we have not learned from our past, and will continue to make the same mistakes. Plan on Gravois Bluffs being demolished forty or...
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They Don’t Build Them Like They Used To #7: Landslide!
St. Albans had some problems with roads washing out recently.
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