Found St. Louis

For many years, this building at 2215 Scott Avenue was occupied by bakery supply companies who were mixing, packaging, and distributing various flours for baked goods. You may notice the DIXIE CREAM DONUT FLOUR sign on the front.

And while I could write a whole bunch about the flour companies that occupied this building, that's not the purpose of this post.

This building is one of the only buildings that remain from when this was the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood. What was once a large vibrant Black community in St. Louis was completely eradicated for the sake of ~urban renewal~

20,000 residents, gone
5,000 buildings, gone
Churches, restaurants, doctors offices, entertainment venues, banks, cultural institutions, gone
A massive community, totally wiped out.

I am writing this because the incredible exhibit about Mill Creek Valley at the Missouri History Museum is set to close July 12.

The curator of this exhibit, Gwen Moore, is from Mill Creek Valley and was one of the many families displaced. That personal experience brings something to the exhibit that I can't really put into words. It just makes it so much more powerful.

Please go see this exhibit before it closes forever!!!!!!

The pictures in this post are just a fraction of what St. Louis lost in Mill Creek Valley. All photos are from the Missouri Historical Society.

St. Louis is known for our incredible public school buildings. Most of the buildings that get all the attention are the castle-like buildings of William Ittner and Rockwell Milligan. These are the guys that brought you Sumner, Roosevelt, McKinley and like 70 other school buildings.

Our ornate school buildings get so much attention that they end up overshadowing our 1800s school buildings, like the one pictured, Euclid School.

Euclid School (originally called Washington School) was opened in 1893 as a four room, single-story building. Multiple additions over the next decade allowed for the building to fit ONE THOUSAND STUDENTS inside.

This building represents the standard floor plan of the late 1800s buildings . Three stories, 12 rooms. We only have a handful of these babies left.

I'm sure you can imagine my confusion when I read that two days ago, SLPS voted to demolish this building even though there is a developer who lives in the neighborhood, who has financial support, architectural plans, and a vision to turn it into apartments. St. Louis Public Schools rejected him.

Instead, SLPS will pay $1,000,000 to demolish it this building.

One of my favorite facts about the Baden neighborhood is that before it was full of buildings, it was full of grapes. There were acres and acres of vineyards. If you ever wondered why there are street names like Grape and Concord in the neighborhood, well now you know.

But this building right here? This thing is a GEM. Located at 8449 N Broadway, it was originally part of Paulus Gast's wine garden. Paulus Gast was one of the guys with a ton of grapes and a wine company. He created this relaxing wine garden where people could relax in the summer away from the chaos of the city. The garden was very popular in the 1880s-90s.

Gast went on to open a brewery in the 1890s, more on that later!

This building at 1711 Locust is so cool.

This was a power substation for streetcars. It was built in 1903 for the St. Louis Transit Company. Now, I barely understand how electricity works so you’ll have to forgive me for this terrible explanation, but from what I understand, the substation would receive electricity from the Union Electric Light and Power Company and spit it back out to power our streetcar lines. There were no streetcars entering or exiting this building, it was all done through the science of wires. I believe this was a booster station which was a backup station for when certain lines needed more electricity. It was built just in time to support the millions of visitors we were about to get during the World’s Fair.

At this point this is a husk of a building. It’s been vacant for decades. The roof is practically nonexistent so nature has taken over. There is nothing inside, it’s truly just a big empty space. I wonder if it could be adapted into an event space or something? The owner of the building is GRAY INVESTMENTS LLC, and I’d love to know what their plan is!

I love this picture of the two houses at 5111 and 5115 Pattison on The Hill. There's a mustachioed man standing outside of 5115 and I wonder what he was thinking when this photo was being taken (in 1917!!)

I was looking at the 1920 census records for this specific block and each page is just a wall of text that says ITALY (under the question that asks where you were born and where your parents were born). Just on this block alone, all of the last names were names like Roncilio, Filipini, Bolazina, Colombo, Diani, Pellegrini, Ceriotti, Barbaglia, Garavaglia, Chiodini, Gianbelli, Tapella, Berra, Cantoni, Maloni. Just like, Italian to the CORE.

I know that residents of The Hill have worked so hard to preserve their history over time and it's what makes their neighborhood so popular.

There has been some outside encroachment into the neighborhood. I saw that five small homes were demolished so that one person could build a mansion for themselves. Seems.....stupid. I believe there has been discussion among residents about creating a historic district to stop some of this nonsense in the future.

Unrelated...I've never eaten at ANY of the Italian restaurants on The Hill and I'm looking for a dinner spot on Saturday. Tell me where I need to go!!

PS: The black and white photo came from the Missouri Historical Society. They’ve got a ton of old StL photos on their website.

I just love this building at 5930 Dr. Martin Luther King. It was built in 1948 for the J.C. Penney Company, who had grown out of their previous storefront location just down the street. It served not only the Wellston community, but people all over the north and west sides of St. Louis. There were multiple streetcar and bus lines that brought thousands of passengers in and out of the area.

The story of Wellston is a story of white flight, loss of industry, and government neglect, but also a story of perseverance. I need to study it more before doing a post, but I hope to share more information about Wellston with you soon.

J.C. Penney closed its doors in 1976. For as log as this building has been vacant, it looks like the owners have done a fantastic job at keeping it stabilized. I really hope it gets a new life some day.

Bellefontaine Cemetery is the greatest place in St. Louis. It’s like a history museum in nature. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever explored.

87,000 St. Louisans are buried there.

One of them is Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser-Busch. This is his tomb. When he died in 1913, the funeral was massive. Acording to newspapers, the family received so many flowers that it took 25 trucks to get them all delivered to the cemetery. Thousands of people lined the streets to pay tribute.

The mausoleum is so ornate! The architect who designed it, Thomas P Barnett, was the same guy who designed the New Cathedral!!!!!

This mausoleum is just one of approximately three trillion cool things about Bellefontaine Cemetery.

The iconic Vess bottle just north of downtown was one of three Vess bottles made for advertising in the early 50s.

This particular bottle was originally located at Hampton and Gravois. Not only did it light up, but IT ALSO ROTATED!!!!!
Ugh, I wish I could see it in action.

The bottle lived at Hampton and Gravois through the 50s and 60s, but went into retirement as a result of street widening. For years it sat in storage at the Treesh Neon Sign Co (the company who originally made it). In the late 80s, Vess decided to restore it to its original glory and put it just north of Downtown, so anyone driving down 70 would see the giant lit up bottle. Treesh did the restoration.

In 1990, the bottle was back. It wasn’t allowed to rotate (due to some sort of highway law) but it was lit up in all of its neon glory.

In the early 2000s, there were plans for this area to become a residential and entertainment district. Known as the Bottle District (after our dear friend, Big Vess Bottle), it was to have a sports museum, restaurants, 250 residential units, etc. I’m not sure if the financial crisis of 2008 or Paul McKee killed the project but it’s so dead. This is all that remains of the dream of the Bottle District.

Every time I look at the little castles in the middle of the Mississippi River, I want to cry. It’s just incredible what this city was able to accomplish without modern technology.

These were our water intake towers, located just south of the Chain of Rocks bridge and built to supply the ENTIRE FREAKING CITY with water.

One tower was built in the 1890s and the other in the 1910s. The little castles are on top of massive pipes that go all the way down into the bedrock of the river. The pipes lead down to a massive tunnel (that also goes under the bedrock of the river) that leads back to land. The castle-pipes have vents in them, so when the vents were opened (by people living in the tiny castles), the river water rushed down the castle-pipe and into the tunnel that leads back to land. The water would end up in massive settling basins (so the river crust will fall to the bottom), and then a bunch of engineering stuff happened that I don’t really understand and boom, the new consumable water would be available to everyone in StL.

The castles were put here for a few reasons. They were built in middle of the river because the freshest water is the stuff that’s furthest away from land. Also, they needed to be north of downtown so the waste from the factories wouldn’t get into our water supply.

Even though the intake towers are now out of commission, they’re still wonderful to observe. If you ever get a chance, take a walk down the Chain of Rocks Bridge and see for yourself. The bridge is actually so cool to walk through !