Near North Riverfront

I can't believe how much potential lives in the area just north of Laclede's Landing. Beautiful, relatively stable warehouses await adaptive reuse, but with the economy in the tank, I am afraid that this will take some time.I'm more worried about the casino wanting these buildings torn down so none of their faint-hearted patrons might have to endure the sight of an abandoned building, as has already doomed the cold storage warehouse torn down two years ago.With the departure of Sligo Steel, the area grows even more desolate.

Kahoka Courthouse Threatened with Demolition

Thanks to Missouri Preservation, I learned today that the Clark County Courthouse is threatened with demolition. Because you know, in these robust economic times, we can afford to tear down perfectly fine, if purposely dilapidated buildings at our whim. See my original post here.

Out of Lemp Photos

Sorry, I'm out of Lemp Brewery pictures. But I have a link to a great site that my coworker Joe Sardo told me about; it has historic photos from around America. See it here.

City Garden, Successful Urban Renewal

I wish the historic buildings that used to stand here were still here, but since they're not, we have to come up with some sort of solution to fill the void.I think the City Garden is a great example of where well planned and executed design can add a lot to a downtown. We must keep it properly funded, though.

Old Cathedral

The Old Cathedral sits in bizarre isolation, never intended to sit by itself, but rather buffeted by buildings most of its existence.The only intact survivor of the clearance of the original street grid of St. Louis, it nonetheless is an attractive building.Built in the Greek Revival style, it certainly must have been stunning when first built.There was a wedding going on, so I didn't get a chance to photograph the interior during this trip.

Corrosion, Gateway Arch

Much ado recently has been made of the corrosion of the Gateway Arch, now coming up on its 50th Anniversary.I don't know why I had never noticed it before, but blemishes are clearly visible on the legs of the Arch.While Modernist structures are often regarded as "new," it bears reminding that many of these buildings are not new at all anymore, and will require careful conservation in the coming decades.

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.