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Survivors, Westminster Place, Grand Center
A reader alerted me to a beautiful street of homes in Grand Center hiding in the shadow of the Coronado Building on Lindell. Westminster Place, perhaps more famous for its stretch through the Central...
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Cleaning up ‘Blight’ in Grand Center
Wow, the time flies by; it seems like just yesterday I was posting pictures of abandoned buildings on Grand just north of Powell Hall. There have been some developments; the abandoned funeral home is...
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Just One Front Porch
I was standing around on a front porch in Grand Center of a house that has somehow survived the devastation that has continued to plague the area as the quest for more parking lots and vacant lots...
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Castle Ballroom in Bad Shape
The Castle Ballroom suffered a major collapse of one of its exterior walls during a recent storm, exposing the interior to the elements, which will eventually lead to a death sentence for this...
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Castle Ballroom Demolition
I wasn’t going to bother driving by the rapidly disappearing Castle Ballroom, but I ended up driving by on Saturday and thought I would take a look. It’s sad to see, particularly because there is...
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Another Art-Deco Police Station
Albert Osburg designed at least six Art-Deco police stations, which I believe were closed in the 1980s for three “superstations” that combined three districts into one. That’s down to two districts...
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Another Midtown Survivor
I wrote an article recently about how Midtown used to be a thriving residential area before the theaters and parking lots showed up. This house is fascinating; it is OLD. It was probably one of the...
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Final Blumeyer Tower Coming Down
I know I’m supposed to be mad the final historic public housing tower in St. Louis is being demolished, but I’m not. Not everything is worthy of preservation–just the buildings that contribute to the...
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Church Shell, Grand Center
This relatively small church for the once upscale residential community in Grand Center now serves as an art space, buttressed for safety but left as a shell.
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Powell Hall Details
Covered with an interesting mixture of grotesques, the exterior of Powell Hall, so often viewed only at night while arriving to see a performance of the symphony, never ceases to impress. The central...
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Telephone Building, Grand Center
I seem to remember that this building was originally telephone building or something. It seems to have received a vertical addition at some point, as the upper floors are clearly much newer than the...
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Masonic Temple Revisited, Dusk
That massive, hulking limestone Parthenon sitting on its own man-made Acropolis is for sale again. If you have a couple of million dollars and don’t mind them using some of the rooms occasionally, it...
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Alexander Euston Mansion, SLU Campus
The Alexander Euston Mansion, from 1890, still sits at 3730 Lindell Boulevard, but is now part of SLU. Euston owned pressing mills that created linseed oil. Perhaps not the most exciting industrialist...
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Moolah Temple
The Moolah Temple’s original purpose, that of the Order of the Mystic Shrine, is now hosted in another building out west, and its new use as a movie theater works well. Moorish Revival architecture...
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Bannister House
Henry Semple Ames or his mother most likely had this building constructed in 1889, during the boom years for Grand Center. Its neighbors are gone; it was later owned by a Ms. Cushman after the Ames...
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Arthur J. Donnelly Funeral Parlor, Lindell Boulevard
This old funeral parlor had an interesting brush with history; read about it here.
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The Coronado
The wall of buildings on Lindell west of Spring are the handiwork of Preston Bradshaw. The first one in the picture, and the first one built, is the Coronado, built as a residential hotel between 1923...
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Mark Twain Apartments, Lindell Towers East
Preston Bradshaw continued his march west with another residential hotel for Pleitsch and Price, constructing what was originally known as the Mark Twain Apartments in 1926. Perhaps the most...
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Lindell Towers West
The final creation of Preston Bradshaw, what is now known as Lindell Towers West, was completed in 1927 for Pleitsch and Price. This building is probably the most unique of three; it violates and...
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