I usually avoid the stereotypical Arch shots in my St. Louis threads, but I got to experience it from a couple interesting angles recently, so I decided to post those Android phone shots and a random handful of others (50 in all).
Note that I run a blog on St. Louis development (read: small scale rehabs), so a lot of the shots were not intended to be sexy streetscapes or cool graffiti, but rather oblique angles of buildings being rehabbed. Scroll down below at your own risk of boredom.
01. From East St. Louis MetroLink light rail platform – what a view!
02. Fire dancing from Malcolm Martin Memorial Park, also in East St. Louis (spectacular, front and center skyline views):
03. The Arch from St. Louis’s tallest habitable building—the Metropolitan Square:
04. The Arch viewed from five miles west, peeking out from behind the Chase Park Plaza:
05. Okay, enough with the Arch. Here’s an unlikely rehab going on in the city’s Near North Riverfront, a primarily industrial area:
06. Skyline, sans Arch, viewed from a rooftop in the Washington Avenue Warehouse/Garment District.
07. A cool, spray-painted garage (with matching door!) in an otherwise squeaky clean, tidy St. Louis Hills neighborhood on the far southwestern edge of the City.
08. A cool, red brick Victorian under rehab in the Benton Park neighborhood:
09. Brand new bungalow constructed in the Shaw neighborhood:
10. The Lacassian Lofts Project on the western edge of Downtown. The decorative cornice, long gone from the building, is being restored.
11. The North Sarah development is being constructed on what was once barren urban prairie in a heavily disinvested neighborhood. The addition of three story mixed use buildings in such an area is visually jarring – in a good way. This is Phase II.
12. I love it when corner storefront buildings boast their date of construction. This 1890s vintage building has lost one of the numbers.
13. A vacant Fox Park home with some creative graffiti (okay, so I have at least one “cool graffiti” picture in this set).
14. A Benton Park home with wrought-iron balcony and extensive rear building under rehab:
15. Sideways Soulard streetscape shot.
16. St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church – a German church that was the city’s tallest building until the early 1900s. The spire rises to 300 feet.
17. A Lafayette Square Victorian home on a private court:
18. A rehab plus new addition to a building on Lafayette Avenue in the city’s Gate District.
19. Vacant for at least a decade, this Benton Park West building didn’t seem a likely candidate for a $350,000+ rehab. Unlike most rehabs, which de-densify, this rehab is turning what is assessed as a two-family into 3 units.
20. On the Lafayette Square Spring House and Garden Tour:
21. More Lafayette Square:
22. A storefront tucked away in the Lindenwood Park neighborhood.
23. Bonus shot: Downtown Carlinville, Illinois (about an hour north of St. Louis).
24. A recently completed rehab in Tower Grove South:
25. The MoPRO “Dutchtown Classic” bicycle race in the city’s Dutchtown neighborhood – so named for its original population of “scrubby Dutch”, a misheard version of Deutsch (German).
26. The zany Cinco de Mayo parade rolls by on equally unpredictable Cherokee Street:
27. A beautiful and somewhat rare stone home in Tower Grove South:
28. Another view from the Metropolitan Square building downtown, this time facing west:
29. A 1939 era church in the St. Louis Hills neighborhood – stunningly modern, spare, and small.
30. Crazy brickwork in the Benton Park neighborhood:
31. An impending rehab in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood on the western edge of the City:
32. Streetscape shot in Benton Park – I’m waiting for that corner building to get its rehab permit.
33. Blurry shot from a dirty bus window of a cohesive commercial row in the Marine Villa neighborhood:
34. The Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood again.
35. Back in St. Louis Hills. I’ve always admired the rows of “gingerbreads”, but especially those with the decorative terra cotta outlining the swooping roof lines.
36. Park Avenue in Lafayette Square at sunset:
37. An awesome rehab in Tower Grove South that removed a disfiguring 1980s storefront remuddle and exposed an old brewery sign.
38. One way to protect your tree lawn (Southampton neighborhood, near St. Louis Hills).
39. New signs put up by the new owner of St. Louis Union Station, once the busiest rail passenger terminal in the world.
40. The Bevo neighborhood (where I’m from). This is the commercial district that fronts the actual Bevo Mill (you can see the Mill barely visible at left in the picture). These buildings recently were placed in a National Register historic district.
41. A very late snow for St. Louis (March 3rd); in the DeBaliviere Place neighborhood.
42. Right across the street from my house in Benton Park.
43. A recent rehab in Benton Park:
44. From that same early March snow as before, but this time in the Soulard neighborhood:
45. A new “passive house” constructed in Dogtown.
46. A new contemporary home in otherwise staid St. Louis Hills:
47. A Fox Park corner. Did you spot the pooch on the balcony?
48. St. Louis’s Civic Center, viewed through the lens of the Scottrade Center (home of the St. Louis Blues):
49. Another view from the top of the Congress building in DeBaliviere Place. The Arch is hiding behind the Chase Park Plaza (Art Deco tower) in this photo.
50. It’s only fitting to end with yet another (partial) Arch picture. This one is looking east on Chestnut Street towards the iconic Civil Courts building (pyramidal roof) and the new St. Louis University Law School building, which took one of downtown’s most plain/boring mid-century buildings and is refurbishing it into something more visually interesting (the building with the “T”-shaped glass cutout):
Hope you enjoyed!
Threaded Mode