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St Louis Photo thread


smeagolsfree

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As many of you know, I went to St Louis over the weekend just to explore the built fiber of a great American city. Even if Nashville had kept everyone of the older buildings that have been torn down, St Louis would still outnumber that many times over. They took down 40 blocks of buildings just to build the Jefferson National Monument and upgrade the riverfront. There are many, many jewels there and I didn’t have time to take note of all of them. From a short venture north of the city, I did notice there were a lot of vacant homes not to mention large vacant building downtown. If the city ever is able to recover its past glory, then it would truly be great.

 

Just to note there was a lot of crap that was built in the city, and I think there are mistakes in every city. Here are a few.

 

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These are examples of the older apartments of which there are blocks of. Most of these are in the Central West End area.

 

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These are a few examples of the buildings in that area as well. The first is the Basilica.

 

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Old City Hall

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Old County Courthouse

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The Wainwright Building

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The RR exchange building

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Public Library

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The old Post Office

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Union Station

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Below building had a sold sign on it. Empty and ready for reuse I hope

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A number of older and newer buildings in the downtown area.

 

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Public Art

 

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The Arch and above

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Hope you have enjoyed. Could have posted more, but would have started being redundant.

 

One last building and this is a shame as it was empty and falling apart.

 

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About 12 years ago I spent a month in a corporate rental unit in one of the ugly buildings in that first photo!  The only real redeeming feature was that it had a lovely view of the Union Station.  I would imagine that these buildings are from about the same time as Nashville's Capital Towers...nothing fancy about either development by today's standards!

 

St. Louis does, indeed, have some outstanding older building stock and the Basilica is nothing short of stunning!!!

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Guest 5th & Main Urbanite

Nice photo's Ron. I have not been there since the mid 1990's, but I'll tell you Nashville has a long way to go before it's a "real" city. St. Louis is stellar.

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Guest 5th & Main Urbanite

Nashville could only learn from a photo thread like this, but alas we won't unless it effects the tourist trade. Great thread Ron.

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I think that I have eaten at the restauarant in the historic building that you have pictured. 

 

Also, that very last photo looks a lot like the building that used to house the bar called Magnolia's (or "Mags") and the old Bad Dog.  Madrigals went way downhill, and I stopped going there, and Bad Dog moved to a new spot off of Vandeventer Ave, which is cleaner and much larger, and with a large parking lot.  Still a gritty area, but nowhere near as gritty as the old Bad Dog.

 

I really like the Soulard area just south of downtown.  They have (or used to have) a Mardi Gras parade in that area.  St. Louis does have a lot of French history, perhaps even more than New Orleans.  Of course, St. Louis is named after King Louis XIV.  The Soulard area also has a pretty awesome turn-of-the-century City Market (farmer's market) building.  You have also captured some of the Richardsonian Romanesque details and even the 2nd Empire-style buildings that St. Louis boasts.  There is a pretty gritty industrial area called Laclede's Landing next to downtown, which is supposed to have a lot of nightclubs and things like that.  I'm not into that scene, so I only drove through there in the daytime and wasn't too impressed.  But maybe it's one of those had-to-be-there things.

 

St. Louis does have a lot of stunning older buildings, but a lot of crappy new ones.  Lots of boxy blankness, which is especially apparent near the riverfront.  But St. Louis was one of the biggest cities in America at the turn of the last Century and benefitted from the City Beautiful movement that was going on at that time.  St. Louis was in competition with Chicago and Detroit, and in terms of turn-of-the-century architecture that really shows in all three cities.  It's just that Chicago's architectural competitiveness continues to the present day, whereas that is not the case with St. Louis (and definitely not Detroit).

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