Great site dedicated to preservation of St. Louis architecture.

i can't recall when i found built st. louis, but i am completely in awe of not only the work that you've put into making it such a great site, but also of the complete disregard the city has had of some of its greatest architecture. great work, and i look forward to the next time i visit the city.

Enjoyed the tour of Hyde Park and North St Louis. My 91 year old mom lived on 20th St in the '30s and '40s so I just wonder if she'll recognize any of the buildings when I show them to her. How about Walnut Park? That's where I spent my first 6 years before moving to St Charles like it seemed everyone did during the "suburban flight".

This does bring back some good memories, I grew up on the southside on Juniata street and went to Mann School and Roosevelt, great neighborhood in those days...very safe and clean. Way different now. I stayed in the city awhile before giving up and moving 30 miles South to another "safe" neighborhood..what a shame, it seem to all fall apart right have forced desegregation.....schools got worse and neighborhood became just plain dangerous! The neighborhood I remember is gone......

i came across your site several years ago after moving home from school, and i'm not exaggerating when i say that it ignited my passion for STL. you're doing an amazing thing here. thank you!

Great site, lots of memories. Preservation works, preservation pays. Keep fighting!

I love this web site. I grew up in the central west end of St. Louis. I have always loved the aweswome city and consider it home. Your sight has brought back many memories and saddness of the buildings that are gone.

Hey there,

Like most everyone, I stumbled upon your site and have fallen in love. Ive been frequenting for about a year, yet it finally occurred to me to write a quick thankyou. THANKYOU.

I live in Montreal, another great city for the kinds of treasures you find in St Louis. Ever been?

Anyways, keep it up. Its truely well-appreciated.

Steve

Great site.

Reading through your site really strikes it home with the "going's on" in my life since I moved here just 6 mos. ago. I was getting laid off from my job in WA State, but was given the opportunity to relocate to St Louis, MO, which was closer to my state of origin (KY). My wife and I are in our 30's, and we were thrilled with the all the historical architecture in the city, but sad to see how some areas appeared unfriendly. You can tell how these tall, castle-like houses were built with pride and lots of character! Where we come from, this architecture is hard to find, and is practically unaffordable to most middle-class residents.
Having been here long enough to know what we want, however, we've decided to buy one of these beatiful homes that have been mostly renovated, down in South City. We're just the type of people you mentioned, being young and mobile, and are hoping to inspire other young families to move back into the city. You get so much more out of one of these tall, brick homes than a cookie-cutter in the 'burbs. Keep spreading the enthusiasm!! We definitely will.

Robert, With all the information you give on Blairmont,could you please show the Blairmont area on a map of St. Louis? Thanks. It's great seeing your updates again. Hows the job search going? Remember, St. Louis needs architects too!

This is my favorite website to visit. I own several buildings on the southside and have a love for this city that I wish more young people could understand. I can walk on St. Louis streets for hours and never get bored. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my previous relationship failed due to my marriage with our home. Speaking of, I'm looking for information on Ernest J. Hess. He is the architect who built my home and is responsible for the original Pevely building. I would like to see some of his other projects. Anyone know how to find this stuff out?

I am very impressed with your site. I've recently moved back to St. Louis after working out of state for the past few years. In the past I've worked all over North St. Louis and frequently thought that someone should photograph these glorious houses before they are destroyed or simply fall apart from decay. Sometimes when I'm driving around I imagine what they must have been like 50 or 100 years ago.

With my job I have the opportunity to work with them first hand (nothing special, just installing satellite dishes) and it really is a journey back in time. And it’s not just the architecture; it’s the fact that the builders expected them to last for generations so they designed them in loving detail. Now all we have are boxes… little boxes…
Anyway, thanks again for your web site. I’ll be spending a lot of time here in the future.

Your site is excellent. :cool:
I have never been in your city. I am really surprized how many really nice modern architecture you have. Your work is quite positive and worthy. Thank you!! I ll come back, I like this site.
;-)

HEY! I don't want to pee in your Cheerios, but what are you DOING about this? Documenting it does nothing. I WANT TO BUY. TELL ME WHERE. I've ran through your site a bit without seeing any "SAVE HERE" buttons... make one for me, OK?

Marty

WOW What a great site! I have wanted to move to St. Louis for some time now. I recently put my home up for sale and am looking forward to the move. I am shocked at how fast these great old homes are being razed. I am glad that I will have the ability to purchase one or two when I sell my home and help save them. It blows me away that a city so rich with history is allowing this to happen! Being from Phoenix I saw what few trun of the century homes there were there razed as well. Sad that our history means so little so so many! Thank you for the great site! Mike

Thank you for your work. I am educated whenever I visit.

Love this site. I've always enjoyed the architecture around St. Louis and have recently started learning more about the city's history. builtstlouis.net is a valuable asset to anyone studying the city's recent trend towards renovation and historic preservation.

After graduating from Principia college across the river in Illinois, I lived in St. Louis for 2 years. I lived in the Central West End and worked down at the Mallinckrodt site underneath the McKinley bridge. I spent many an afternoon driving back home through the neighborhoods of north St. Louis and always felt a visceral ache of longing for what had been and what could be. The city has a feel like no other. I could just imagine all the lives and stories that took place in those abandoned streets and houses and wished I could do something to help it regain its glory.
I visited again a couple of years ago and took several days to explore my old haunts and see the city through fresh eyes. I came away feeling both nostaligic for my time spent there and also hopeful because of the new vibrance in places like Washington and the CWE and U-City. I'll always have some regret for leaving the city when I felt like it needed me, but I'm glad to see that there are many people still there who are working hard to make it shine again.
Your website is fantastic and I look forward to exploring it further. I never say this, but God bless your work. You're doing a wonderful job.

Came across the site by way of Reddit. I was impressed with the level of historical research done. I really can't even express how dumbfounded I am by the complete lack of regard for these buildings that once meant so much to so many. I am all for reviving a city, but not by turning them into suburbs. Your plans show a great deal of respect for St. Louis as well as an understanding of sound urban planning.

came to your site this morning from reddit.com Extremely interesting; the North Side destruction you document isn't exclusive to St. Louis - across the country it seems there's little regard for urban preservation. Best wishes in all you do - Cheers!

I grew up in St. Louis. We lived across from Tower Grove Park between Arsenal and Gravois. Grand was our stomping grounds..Kingsway, Tilman's Restaurant. I attended Horace Mann El. and Roosevelt HS. I well recall the fun of the late 60's. Johnny Rabbit on KXOK...Going Downtown every Sat. Hall St. and drag racing. The amazing Muscle Cars of the 60's. Steak & Shake, Chuck-a-burger, White House Road. It was the sweetest time of my life. Thank you for this amazing site. You will never know the memories you gave back to me and I thank you for every one.

Just wanted to say that I found "Built St. Louis - On the Road in New Orleans" while searching for New Orleans Katrina pix, etc. and am amazed at what you all put together. I'm moving there in a month or so to renovate a downtown hotel that was damaged by Katrina & the aftermath. It's a great snapshot of the city and gives a lot of insight to someone who has never been there. Awesome job!!

Fantastic website. I've been debating about moving in the Shaw District but with four kids, that's quite a bundle going to private education. In addition, folks make it sound like I'm going to get car jacked all the time and my kids won't have anywhere to play. Are young families returning to the City or is that a misperception?

Awesome site that I have learned much and thoroughly enjoyed!!! I've learned much about my birthplace I never had available to me in local education (U. City and Ladue). I hope to be able to provide you with some fresh info and photos as I also explore what history St. Louis has...and where it so much seems to almost push out of its reach to celebrate. Your site and insight has provided me with much I never knew existed with the great history in this historic multi-cultural city. I now realize what I am around as I currently work Downtown. You have opened my eyes! Thanks much!! BTW, we'll see what Gateway Mall offers along with the push for the Lofts and condo redevelopment. Perhaps if the population returns, the jobs return...and the city does show life again...?

Robert, It's great to see the updates again. I hope all is going well in "the Windy City" and with the job search.Always remember, the "Mound City" always welcomes you.

I haven't been by this site in a while and I am impressed by how it has grown.I especially liked the expanded tour of ESL.I went back to visit the StL area last August. I was amazed by how much it had changed.I was especially amazed how ESL had gone down hill. After touring some of my old stomping grounds in Belleville I came down the hill toward ESL through Edgemont past 89th and State. As I drove down State Street it seemed like I was in a third world country.It was nothing like I remembered ESL being as a kid growing up there in the 50's& early 60's. Kind of a shock to me.It was also humid and hot something else I had forgotten.

Thanks for this website and keep up the great work.I look forward to seeing more updates.

Thank you so much for this website!!! :-)

Right huuurr.

I grew up on Maffitt Avenue between Sarah and Warne when there were still trees along the sidewalk. I remember the police station on Deer Street, the Golden Slipper and Sarah-Lou's chicken-fried steak sandwiches. I remember the streetcar tracks coming up every spring. I remember the basketball court across Sarah from St. Matthew's, Sumner High, Tandy Park, playing bass drum with Beaumont High's band in the Annie Malone Parade, the fly honeys at Rosati-Kain dance parties, haulin' crates at RET productions events and rippin' the whole 'Ville up on my bike from Western Auto. Good times and bad, the 'Ville was home. Hit me up if you want to share stories.

I AM AT ST.LOUIS!

I enjoy the Built St. Louis website very much. It represents substantial research and much hard work. I am a fan and frequent visitor; please keep it up.

I was surprised and saddened, however, to see that this site includes gratuitous, unkind and inaccurate comments about our local Catholic Archbishop on the St. Stanislaus Church page. That unhappy controversy is so complex that one cannot hope to capture the truth of the story from an unstudied distance or without an awareness of the operational structures in the Catholic Church that have determined the Archbishop's strategies in this case. Please bear in mind that the Archbishop is a highly respected religious leader in our community and gratuitous criticisms of him in recreational venues like this website will only serve to offend very many Catholics in the area while also giving a fresh hearing to innaccurate grievances. No good can come of that, so please, in the name of goodness, remove those comments and refrain from making similar ones. Thank you.

Hello,
I am interested in any photos of St. Louis City Hospital from the 1980s or 70s. I am a grad of the nursing program and would appreciate any information any one has or contacts. The alumni association is no longer around. I have alot of history to share and would love to find anyone with info.
Thanks, you can email me at barbs1212@sbcglobal.net ;-)

I have the Advanced Guestbook 2.4.3, I was wondering how you got the title above the Guestbook name?

Website is really interesting!

Nice Site!

Well, this past weekend I drove along 1900 Montgomery, and the two "remaining" buildings are mere rubble, the interior structure is all that is holding together.

love your coverage of the mid-century ranches in New Orleans.
THanks!

Found your site interesting. There's also a little house listed on the Post-Dispatch's real estate page that I found interesting. I can't post a link of it, though.

It's on 4237 Obear Ave and it's a medium green with seafoam green trim. The roof kind of reminds on White Castle. Anyway, I thought you might find it rather peculiar.

Your site interests me a lot. It's unfortunate when I hear someone argue to tear down a historic building.

Thanks for putting this site together. God Bless.

How will St. Louis recapture the title of "Most Dangerous City in America"? It has to be painful to have to have lost the title considering the area has little other claim to fame. It's just another "diversity and multicultural" disaster, proving that public housing and free hands out don't work.

The figures on the Murphy building in E. St. Louis are so intriguing. They seem to know they've been abandoned and are saddened by their own decay. Beautiful photographs. I'm a fledgling artist (at age 44!) and I may have to paint a portrait of one of the figures.

Great update on East St.Louis. When can we expect a great update on St. Louis especially the MLK area? Looking forward to it. Why Chicago? You are familiar with St. Louis, so why not move back here? It's a great city to live and work in. St.Louis can use great architects like yourself. Thanks. George

Enjoyed viewing pictures of my old neighborhood. Many of the pictures are homes of people I knew and played with when I was younger. At the time, in the 60's it was a great middle class neighborhood. It is a shame to see the Clemen's house (which we called the Convent) condition. It was a place we all played in when we were young.

Thanks for the memories.

I grew up in Hannibal, MO and have had many occasions to visit St. Louis since the late 1960's when I was boy. What an amazing and haunting document "Built St. Louis" is!

I don't know if historic preservation can hope to save but a fraction of these structures, but one can hope that something is done before the whole place is gutted and looks like a post-nuclear wasteland like East St. Louis.

Unfortunately places like the North Side of St. Louis are not alone. Some that I have seen and are familiar with are Niagara Falls, NY, which, apart from the Casino and the falls area is a sorry looking industrial wasteland. Fort Wayne, IN used to have a downtown but now nothing is there.

Even the river-front part of Hannibal, MO looks like a place where in the words of Steven King, the world has "moved on". The downtown Mark Twain tourist stuff keeps it alive but the railroads have moved out, the tracks have been pulled up, businesses have closed, the grain elevator and the old bridge are gone and much of the charm of the old place has departed with it.

Meanwhile the economic center of town has moved out to McMasters Avenue, which is OK if you like a world of nothing but Wal-Marts and McDonald's restaurants, Motels and car dealerships. There really is no place to walk out there.

But I digress. A wonderful site. Someone should do one like that for Chicago.

To see that the glass is not only half empty but also half full, come to a bike tour sponsored by the St. Louis Bike Federation and Trailnet known as one of their "Trails With A Twist" tours. I'm one of the guides for these tours, and it's your chance to take a leisurely ride through old St. Louis and learn about the architecture and cultural history of these neighborhoods. Google St. Louis Bike Fed or St. Louis Trailnet to find out when the next tour will be. Generally, these tours are in the evening during daylight saving time, but next year we'd like to include some weekend morning tours, beginning as early as February. Hope to see you there!

This website is amazing. So interesting to see the hollowing out of parts of America.

I'm really surprised at how white Americans are not more outraged at how blacks have destroyed every major inner city in America. They continue apologizing for them and then running away. It just really puzzles me how or white ever became so spineless as to surrender their heritage to thugs?

This is an absolutely WONDERFUL site! I have always been interested in St. Louis history and this site was exactly what I was looking for. Keep up the great work!

My grandfather and 7 of his 8 children actually worked at Chain of Rocks Park. I remember the park when I was a child on a school picnic. I would love to see old pictures of the park before it closed in 1977. If it hadn't been for all the "riffraff" that moved into that area that park would have still been open. It really sucked that it had to close. I hope you'll be able to help me with pictures as my family doesn't have any.

Robert, I just wanted to thank you so very much for your website!! Though it is sad what has become of the Hyde Park neighborhood, old postcards, etc. show me what the area was like when my great-grandfather lived there from about 1880 until the turn of the century. (He was born in St L in 1867). His father came from Hanover and ran a saloon across the street from the Turnverein - at 2000 Salisbury. Is it possible the picture of the boarded up store at Salisbury and Blair was his father's saloon in the 1890's?

Thanks to anyone who can advise on the photo. Robert - my sister and I have been wandering around in your site for a couple years and realized we needed to let you know how much we appreciate all you have done and are doing and let you know we are drawn to keep coming back to see what else you have added.

Pam in Wisconsin