Holy Name Catholic Church, East Central Kansas City

I have no idea why Holy Name Catholic Church is being torn down, except that shortsighted leaders see more value in the cut stone than in the stunning work of Gothic Revival structure they're destroying.

Nominated for the National Register of Historic Places, it is now being torn down, one stone at a time, until what you see here is all that is left of the church.

You would think this is in some completely bombed out neighborhood, but in reality the neighboring blocks are relatively stable, with beautiful rehabs and new, seemingly expensive houses.

I guess they thought that an historic church was a detriment to their property values? More so than a vacant, weed-choked lot?

As I always say, just because you lack the imagination to see this church restored to its former glory instead of demolished, doesn't mean you should get in the way of someone, maybe not even born yet, who has the vision and drive to find a new use for the church.

Read about the history behind the church in the 1960's here.

The images remind me of pictures of post-war Germany after it had been bombed at the end of World War II.

See it from the air here, before most of the church was demolished.

In just a few short months, the entire church will be gone, and its striking presence will be gone as well.

As you can see, the stone is being carefully stacked and hauled off to another location. How stupid and short-sighted...

Roundhouse, Hall Street

I went and visited the roundhouse on North Hall Street; there is very little left, but there is clear evidence of such a structure existing up this way.

More Collapse at St. Mary's Infirmary?

I can't tell for sure, but it looks like there might have been a little more collapse at St. Mary's Infirmary. I may be wrong, but it doesn't look good, if at the least in the long run.

Roundhouse Remnants, Clayton Avenue

Finally, after weeks of waiting for the weather to break, I made it out to the only extant ruins of a locomotive roundhouse left in the City of St. Louis. It is weed choked, and even in the winter much of the form of the of the building is obscured. You can see the roundhouse below, in the Sanborn map from the early 20th Century.

While the building is gone, the substructure is well preserved, and the actual turn table the locomotives would be turned on still survives. It seemed to be covered with blankets, but I saw no other evidence of people living on the site.

The large steel apparatus in the middle of the turn table perhaps provided electricity to the turntable, but I'm not sure.

What I found interesting is that I always had this image of the turntable being just that, a giant round disk that rotated all at once. In reality, the turntable, for lack of a better term, actually looks like more of a rotating bridge.

It is very cool to be able to see the round pit in which the turntable would have rotated, with a giant locomotive sitting on top of it.

It's hard to see, especially since dirt has been dumped on to of them, but the original concrete footings, presumably where the locomotives sat in the roundhouse, are still preserved as well. I know some roundhouses featured maintenance pits under the tracks, so the concrete may have been the sidewalks in between the rails. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating and forgotten relic of the past, right under the elevated lanes of Highway 40.

Post-War North St. Louis Construction

There's often a prevailing view in St. Louis that nothing was built in the city after World War II except new skyscrapers downtown. In reality, out in the neighborhoods, corner stores were already being knocked down and replaced with gas stations such as the one below. Sadly, this trend continues, as the historic fabric of corners in St. Louis are degraded by the construction of parking dominated businesses such as Walgreens or Quiktrip. Also, new housing, known in local parlance as HUD housing, sprung up in neighborhoods of older housing stock, as can be seen above. These narrow houses actually fit into the street wall very well, but their poor construction has led many of them to be abandoned already, and demolished in many cases.

Photos by Jeff Phillips

Cahokia Mounds

I visited Cahokia Mounds last week, and was impressed again at what a stunning site it is. In particular, the pictures of what the site looked like originally caught my eye.

I think a lot of people forget that the largest city in America in Pre-Columbian times was right across the river from St. Louis.

Just like in St. Louis, some of the mounds were hauled away for fill, which was the case with the second largest mound at Cahokia, seen above.

it's actually very hard to capture Cahokia in photographs, as the site is universally green, except for one house right in the middle of the site.

Monk' Mound is truly impressive, and larger at the base than the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt, so they say.

Looking out on a hazy day towards St. Louis, it's amazing to see the contrast of two cultures, separated by a millennium. St. Louis would be wise to better market Cahokia as one of the premier archeological sites in the world. Other than New York and Philadelphia, which possess one UNESCO World Heritage site each in their city boundaries, no other American city has the distinction of having a UNESCO site so close to it.

Dutchtown: Good and Bad

There are a lot of beautiful houses in Dutchtown, such as the well-kept one above. Below, I low this little detail of what was once a storefront, but apparently they also included an arched doorway through the front. I'm not sure about the story behind it.This Italianate house also is amazing on Chippewa; it just keep going out the back. I wonder if this was a smaller building that was built out over the years after it became an apartment building.All is not well in Dutchtown, as this building attests. It looks like it's in an advanced state of collapse on the upper floors.Likewise, this sturdy rowhouse is now boarded up, despite being well-built. It looks like something you might see in Hyde Park or St. Louis Place. I hope these abandoned buildings aren't harbingers for the future.

Lever Soap Factory, Pagedale

I'm trying to find out more about the abandoned soap factory in Pagedale off of Pennsylvania Avenue. Did you or someone you know work there? Know anything about its history? I learned that it was only abandoned in 2001 when Lever "streamlined" its operations worldwide, after being in use for approximately fifty years.

Engine House, Elephants Rocks State Park

On my recent trip to Elephant Rocks State Park, I spotted a sign for a trail spur that lead to an old engine house, built to house the train locomotives that hauled the distinctive pink granite from the quarry nearby to St. Louis and points beyond.I guess I assumed it would be red brick, like so much of Missouri's construction, so I was pleasantly surprised to find it built from the same pink granite quarried nearby.In hindsight, I guess that is pretty obvious, but it is a unique structure nonetheless. Inside, the train tracks still lead away from its front door.

Caught in a Compromising Position

Supposedly this man died sucking his thumb in the middle of the eruption, but I don't think you can tell that from what's left.

Taverns, Pompeii and Herculaneum, Campania, Italy

Bars and taverns in many ways have not changed in two thousand years. This bar in Pompeii, shows how food would be kept warm in pots in the bar. Patrons could order food and drink from right in front of them.They often times were very brightly decorated. Take a look at the bar below; two thousand years later, people are still making bars out of scraps of marble in the same way.The last two pictures are from Pompeii's neighbor, Herculaneum. They take on much the same form as nearby Pompeii.Many people in these cities would not have kitchens, and would buy their meals on the street.

Paestum #4: A Circle and an Ellipse

Paestum began its life as a Greek city, and the original circular civic meeting space is preserved, though later built over by a Roman building. This is where early democracy of sorts played out over 2500 years ago.In contrast, the amphitheatre built by the Romans illustrates the change in government as the city became more and more Latinized. Gone is the circular meeting space, and in its place is a civic space for gladiatorial games paid for by powerful autocrats such as the Roman emperors.The distinctive stone work, which looks like a fishnet, was designed to absorb the shock of earthquakes.The nearby museum, built by Mussolini, holds treasures from both the Greek and Roman eras. This metope below is a great example of Archaic bas relief sculpture. We don't know why they're always smiling like that.