Historic, If Somewhat Damaged, Storefront Threatened on South Jefferson

A building that has long sat dormant after what appears to have been an abortive attempt at rehabilitation is now on the chopping block, according to Cherokee Street News.

Admittedly, the building looks a little rough around the edges when you look at the roof line, in what has rightly been termed a bad mansard.

But it's critical that the street wall of Jefferson Avenue, the heart of the city east of Grand, maintain its integrity, so it does not turn into Natural Bridge Avenue, a street now largely denuded of its storefronts and its character.

Supposedly it's going to be demolished for greenspace, despite the previously mentioned vacant lot across the street that could serve that purpose.

Jefferson Avenue, South St. Louis

One of these days I'm actually going to get out of my car and walk the full length of Jefferson from I-44 to Broadway, and document what a wonderful street it is architecturally.

Marine Villa Along Broadway

Marine Villa is one of those neighborhoods that is forgotten about, often times confused with just being the southern portion of Benton Park, and doesn't have a lot of businesses that are well known outside of the neighborhood.But it still has some stunning architecture, particularly along Broadway, which I might add is way too wide for the traffic it handles nowadays.There is an interesting mix of housing stock, some from the later 19th Century, and some that looks earlier and later.The large amount of Second Empire houses are what I love so much about this area.

Lemp Brewery, Corner of Cherokee and Lemp Streets

Labeled as the "Liquid Carbonic Co." on early Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, the building served various functions, looking at the list of labels on the map. Carbonic acid would have presumably been added to the beer to increase its carbonation.I still can never get enough of the towering grain silos that sit right on Lemp Avenue; simple and clean lines create the perfect utilitarian industrial structure in St. Louis.I would love to look up one of the silos; I assume they are sitting empty.

Marine Villa, South of Broadway

Marine Villa technically goes all the way to Cherokee, but the bulk of it sits right up against I-55 southeast of Broadway. The housing stock is interesting, and similar to nearby Benton Park. There is some in-fill, as these 1950's apartments attest.Up ahead you can see a house that was featured on Bad Mansard, sitting at the top of a ridge line.Nce, solid rowhouses sit along the streets, giving a rhythm to the streetscape.The house above appears to be a bit older than the rest of the houses, and may have been one of the earlier houses in the neighborhood. Below, this stately mansion sits close to Broadway.

Top Floor, Lemp Brewery

The top floor of the power plant is a stunning space, one that no longer exists in present-day industrial construction, as a reader of this site noted last week.I am strongly suspecting the power plant was built after the brewery closed; carefully looking for sign scars on the smokestack, I can only find the International Shoe Company logo. Surely the Lemps would have put their name on the smokestack first?I love the steel trusses in this room, and how they were left exposed to show the structure of the building.I have no idea what this room was used for, or how it functioned in the use of the brewery as a warehouse for shoes. Supposedly, shoes were also manufactured here as well, but I don't have a reliable source to confirm that.

Power Plant, Lemp Brewery

It's a little confusing to know exactly where I was in the brewery when I went in the building along Broadway with the smokestack. It does not appear on the Insurance Map, so I am wondering if it was a more recent addition. A ramp connects the two buildings that are along Broadway; one building is clearly older and has a railroad access tunnel through it.The interior is a massive space, with huge open floor plans that allow for any number of uses, including art exhibits.I would like to know more about these two buildings that sit right next to each other, but am not sure how to proceed.See it from the air here. I suspect the building on the right may have been built by the International Shoe Company when it bought the complex during Prohibition.

Malt and Stock Houses, Lemp Brewery

I know very little about brewing, but buildings labeled "malt house" and "stock house" are almost certainly involved in the direct brewing of beer.If you look closely, you can see where the tanks used for brewing the beer were located.The buildings themselves are massive, amazingly proportioned and still have some nice decorative detail.Imagine product gliding across the rollers or conveyor belt in between buildings.I love the door to the Fermenting Department; it looks like the door to a temple, a temple of beer brewing or something.Street trackage, now embedded deep within the brewery is always fascinating to me; the idea that trains once went down the middle of streets in major cities blows me away.The rest of the photos are from in between the two massive buildings, showing what is actually a fairly intimate space. I can only imagine the hustle and bustle of what was at the time the busiest brewery in the world.

Fusebox, Lemp Brewery

Looking Down, Lemp Brewery

Rumor has it that there is a whole network of caves and sub-basements below the street level buildings in the Lemp Brewery complex.

"Wash House," Lemp Brewery

The largest building, at least by the amount of land that it takes up, is the "wash house" in the southern corner of the Lemp Brewery. It's interesting to see the row of houses along Broadway in the map, considering that they are long gone today. Perhaps living right next to the constant noise of the locomotives moving train cars right in their backyard made the houses uninhabitable.I have no idea what the "wash house" was used for, except that it was in fact its official name, as described in the Centennial History of Missouri, where it uses the name while describing the various positions a certain Lucas Duffner served as supervisor at the brewery.What is fascinating about this building is the obviously massive amount of meddling that someone at sometime did to this building. There are clear remnants of what used to be arched, Italianate style windows on the facade of this low slung building, but they were filled in at one point, probably in the early Twentieth Century to create large, rectangular windows.As needs changed, it seems, so did the appearance of the building.

Bottling Works, Lemp Brewery

The bottleworks, where presumably the bottles were filled with beer, is located on the far east corner of the triangular shaped Lemp Brewery grounds.To put it bluntly, the building is in horrible shape, and probably is the most deteriorated of the all the buildings on the property.The roof is collapsing, and the sky is easily viewed by looking up through the large holes in the planking.The staircase above leads down into the first floor, which was pitch black. I am not sure what was on the lower floor of the building.There are no interesting machines left; no doubt the bottling equipment was sold long ago when the brewery became a warehouse for International Show Company.It was a beautiful day to photograph the complex, as attested by this photo.In one corner, a giant pile of presumably collapsed roof timers sits underneath a blue tarp, protecting it from the rain.