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Found St. Louis, St. Louis, MO (2026)

04/09/2026

3455 Longfellow in Compton Heights is a MONSTER. How many cats do you think could fit in there?

This was built around 1894 for Charles Hermann, a German immigrant who came to the states around 1850. Interestingly, Hermann had no intention of living in StL when he got to the country. He came to help his brother found the settlement of Hermannsburg which was like, the teeniest tiniest town in Arkansas.

When the Civil War hit the area, bushwackers and Confederates saw these German communities (most of which were anti-slavery) as theirs for the taking. Here’s the thing though...Charles Hermann WAS an enslaver. He purchased a woman named Melinda for $950. She also had a child. There are so many accounts that the family was anti-slavery but it seems like those morals disappeared when opportunity for free labor had arisen.

When the Civil War started, things got bad for the Hermanns. Hermannsburg was in violent territory and the Hermanns were scared.

As all of this was happening, Melinda and her child fled Hermannsburg.

The Hermanns also ran from Hermannsburg…apparently leaving all of their posessions (including possible buried treasure) behind. Charles Hermann got a job with Adolphus Busch (beer man). Hermann got into the brewery supply business and was so successful that he got rich enough to build this house. The end.

Oh PS. After the Civil War, the Arkansas town that was called Hermannsburg was changed to Dutch Mills, apparently an insult to those who lived there before.

04/06/2026

In 1926 a developer said “we gotta put a cool ornate building over at Kingshighway and Chippewa.” So they did, and it became Chippewa Drug.

In 1970 it was torn down for a Jack-In-The-Box.

I ended up entering a wormhole about Jack-In-The-Box that I couldn’t get out of. Jack came to StL around 1970 and it was a very controversial topic for St. Louisans. Even though we already had fast food companies in StL, they were still operating primarily as restaurants that you dine at. When Jack came, they came with the intention of being drive-thru restaurants. With significantly fewer seats in the restaurants, they wanted folks to drive through their window, take their food, and leave. St. Louisans were very concerned about people throwing trash out of their cars and creating massive piles of litter everywhere. They were also worried about food safety with hundreds of cars with gross exhaust pulling up right next to an open window where food is being prepared. They were also concerned about additional traffic congestion, especially in residential neighborhoods.

I’m gonna post some newspaper clippings about the fight against Jack Box. Most of these are from 1970. Does anyone or their parents/grandparents remember any of those?

04/05/2026

This little guy at 2815 Meramec in Dutchtown was built in the late 1800s and the original building was further back than what you see here. It was built as a teeny tiny rental property and in the 1890s was rented for $12.00 per month. In 1900, a streetcar conductor and his wife were living here.

In the early 1900s, a storefront was added to the property so that someone could run a business and then live in the back. I love buildings where someone took a residence and added a storefront to it.

By 1910, this was a business selling notions. Notions are sewing supplies, a thing I definitely knew before I started writing this post. This building has also hosted a beauty shop, gun repair shop, heating and cooling company, and was a showroom for an awning company.

It has remained continuously occupied in some way or another for over a century.

If I can be honest though...I only took this picture because my initials are ET hehe.

03/24/2026

🚨 TUNNEL ALERT 🚨

If you only learn one thing from me, please let it be this silly little fun fact: there is a tunnel under Chippewa near Kingshighway.

In 1951, successful department store Famous-Barr decided to open a brand new store at Chippewa and Kingshighway.

This store had it all: a basement plus three floors with everything you could imagine. I saw in an ad that they had a TREASURE SHOP. I’m so jealous.

By mid-century, this country was in full-throttle with our car obsession. Famous wanted to add parking for TWO THOUSAND CARS and there wasn’t enough on their side of Chippewa so they added more parking across the street. To make it more convenient for their customers, Famous added a pediestrian tunnel under Chippewa. You’d park in the lot across the street, go down an escalator, walk through the tunnel under Chippewa and take an escalator back up to the store.

Famous closed in January 1992 and of course the pedestrian tunnel was closed but...it’s still under there somewhere.

03/17/2026

The Moolah Temple at 3821 Lindell is so freaking cool that I decided to read up on the Moolah Shriners and their founding was so....goofy.

I'm sure you've heard of Freemasons, the extremely old fraternal organization that uses a bunch of symbolic rituals and degrees to teach lessons in morality and personal development. I know there is a lot of mystery surrounding the Freemasons BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT THIS POST IS ABOUT OK!!!

The Shriners came to be because some Masons were hanging out in the 1870s and wanted to create a new fraternity for Masons that focused more on fun and friendship than on rituals.

One of the guys in this group went to a party thrown by an Arabian diplomat and had so much fun that he was like "THIS IS IT!!!! THIS IS THE THING!!!"

That is how the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (aka the Shriners) came to be. Dude had fun at a party and now everyone wears fezzes. They've also spent an extraordinary amount of money creating hospitals for children to be treated regardless of the ability to pay, and it would be so rude of me to leave that out.

This building is so great though. The Shriners had it built in 1913 in the Moorish Style - I'm gonna include some pics of other Shriners temples build around the same time because they are so fascinating.

The Shriners stayed in the Lindell building until 1988, when they moved out to Fee Fee Rd.

In the early 2000s, there was $17 million rehab job done to the building and it opened as a movie theater, bowling alley, and apartments. I remember it as the movie theater with couches.

In 2020, the movie theater closed, and I think the bowling alley is now closed too. I'd love to see that theater reopened in some way!!!

03/09/2026

Over on North Taylor is an extremely cool gate. The gate was designed by the same architecture firm that designed the New Cathedral (Barnett, Haynes & Barnett). It was built in 1895. Apparently it was supposed to have a lil statue on top but they never got around to it.

Behind that extremely cool gate is a private street that is three blocks long: Lewis Place.

Lewis Place is super interesting because even though the private street was meant to be developed for St. Louis' wealthy elite (like the private streets in the Central West End), that's not exactly what happened.

Between 1890 and 1900, only 8 large houses had been built on Lewis. There were streetcars that stopped at the end of Lewis Place that went in opposite directions which meant there was a LOT of traffic from people and streetcars at the end of the street. Wealthy people didn’t like that.

The houses that ended up filling out the private street were much more affordable. There were little bungalows and cottages and for once, you didn't have to be RICH RICH to live on a private street.

Like many streets and neighborhoods in St. Louis, Lewis Place had a restrictive racial covenant. These covenants came to be when white property owners would get together and decide that they did not want Black families living on their block. They put restrictions into their deeds that would say that the homes could not be sold to black community members.

In the mid-40s, a black dentist named Richard Layne moved into #2 Lewis Place (which was one of the original large houses on the block). The white property owners filed suit against him, but eventually the case was dropped and black families were allowed to move onto the street. After the case against Dr. Layne was dropped, more black families moved onto the street, including prominent doctors and school leaders.

I'm really bad at ending posts so bye

PS - Most of this info came from the National Register of Historic Places nomination form written by the Landmarks Association, bless you for all you've given us, Landmarks.

02/18/2026

In 1979, a group of high schoolers in St. Louis were ticked off. Their teachers had been on strike for six weeks. They were terrified that if the strike continued, they wouldn't be able to graduate high school on time. They wrote a letter to the Reverend Jesse Jackson in hopes that he could help settle some of this.

Days after receiving the letter, Jackson was in St. Louis, speaking at a rally that was organized by the students.

Jackson knew the power of a registered voter, so while he was here he took about a hundred high-schoolers, marched them down to the Board of Elections, and got them registered to vote.

Jackson made a very unusual suggestion when he was here.

When the board of education and the local government was saying "oh there's no more money, we can't find any more money to pay, we simply cannot give any more money to the teachers" Jackson suggested that corporations and local businesses chip in and pay the deficit.

And guess what.

About a dozen companies chipped in, paid off the deficit, and the strike was over.

The strike totalled 56 days. Longest teachers strike in StL history.

You would think St. Louis leaders would've been on their hands and knees thanking Jackson for all he did for us, but guess what? One alderwoman proposed a resolution that criticized Jackson for getting involved in St. Louis matters and advised him to stay in Chicago.

When asked about the resolution to keep him out of town, Jackson reminded leaders that a resolution was passed in Birmingham to keep Dr. Martin Luther King out of town and it didn't work at all.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson did so much for St. Louis and we were very lucky to have his lifetime of support (no matter what our leaders thought of him).

02/16/2026

This is Walnut Park School, and it will be demolished soon.

Let me tell you what really pi**es me off about how we got here.

The highest population ever recorded in the City of St. Louis was in our 1950 census. 857,000. My grandparents. Your grandparents. Everyones grandparents lived in the city limits.

Fast forward to 1980. By that point, the population had been reduced to 454,000. We had lost almost half of our population. Half of our tax base. Half of our resources. 30 years is a very short period to lose half your population. Imagine the devastation to our resources during that period.

But...something interesting happened in the 1980 census. While almost every single neighborhood in the city lost population, there were two areas that experienced significant growth between 1970 and 1980. Walnut Park was one of those areas. In the 1970 census, Walnut Park had 16,000 residents, and in 1980, it had 20,000. That is a MASSIVE increase, especially for that period. Black families with chidren represented the majority of the people moving into the area.

What an amazing opportunity for the city to embrace Walnut Park and put significant resources into it to keep the population stable.

Unfortunatey, leaders made investment choices that were not intended to support our Black residents. Programs that were created in the 70s and 80s to help stabilize the city were concentrated to areas south of Delmar, where the majority of the city’s white residents were (and still are).

In the last 20 years, Walnut Park East has lost 48% of its population and Walnut Park West has lost 40%.

And today, St. Louis Public Schools intends to demolish 6 emptied buildings north of Delmar, including Walnut Park School. The cycle continues.

02/08/2026

In WWI, somewhere around 380,000 African Americans served in the US Army. Most of the guys were assigned labor roles like trench-digging and latrine-cleaning.

St. Louisan Calvin Hyde had a very different story. He was a Harlem Hellfighter.

The Harlem Hellfighters (aka the 369th Infantry Regiment) were a famous all-black US Army Regiment in WWI. Since the US military was still segregated in 1917, the Army didn’t want them on the frontline. They ended up fighting under French command. These dudes endured SO MUCH. They spent 191 days in the frontline trenches. Impossible to imagine.

They were called the Harlem Hellfighters because a large portion of the guys were from Harlem, but not StL’s Calvin Hyde. Hyde was born into a sharecropping family in Mississippi, and then came to StL during the Great Migration. When he was drafted in 1917, he was 27, sharing an apartment with his brother, and working at a bar on the riverfront.

Hyde received his training in the US and in April of 1918, got on a ship headed bound for France, where he joined up with the Hellfighters.

On July 15th, 1918, the Germans made a huge attack along the Marne river (near Paris). It was very very bad. The Germans ultimately lost the battle, but there were 168,000 casualties. 12,000 Americans died in that battle, and one of them was Calvin Hyde. He died of wounds received on July 15th.

The war ended about a 100 days later.

Calvin Hyde is buried in France, along with 168 other Harlem Hellfighters. Hyde’s grave is located at Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery.

02/04/2026

The story of Lloyd Gaines is so important to the story of civil rights in Missouri but it’s rarely told so LET’S DO THIS!!!!

In 1926, 15-year-old Lloyd Gaines moved from Mississippi to StL. He didn’t receive much education in Mississippi so he was placed in the 5th grade when he got here. He caught up quickly - so quickly that he became the valedictorian at Vashon High School.

In 1935, Gaines graduated with honors from Lincoln University (Missouri’s first black university) and decided to pursue law. Well, Lincoln didn’t have a law school so he applied to the Missouri University School of Law. I’m sure you can take a guess at their response.

It was “contrary to the constitution, laws and public policy of the state to admit a Negro as a student in the University of Missouri.”

If Gaines wanted to pursue law, he would have to cross state lines.

So, with the help of the NAACP, Gaines sued.

It took three years for the appeal to reach the Supreme Court, but when it did, the court ruled 6-2 that U-Missouri would have to allow Gaines to study there or the state would have to create a law school for black students.

Missouri being, well, Missouri, gave Lincoln University money to establish a law school so that U-Missouri wouldn’t have to accept black students.

The NAACP did not accept this. They thought the Lincoln law school was an inadequate rush job so they prepared for another fight. But when they went to find Gaines...he was gone.

Before his disappearance, Gaines had moved to Chicago to work odd jobs and get out of the limelight. One night, he left the frat house he was staying in, and never returned.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, twice denied requests to investigate Gaines’ disappearance. There’s been a lot of speculation over the years ranging from being murdered to moving to Mexico, but ultimately no conclusion has ever been reached.

In 1950, a court order declared that U-Missouri had to enroll Black students. The Gaines case was a huge stepping stone toward that victory.

In 2006, Gaines was granted an honorary law degree. The University of Missouri, now acknowledging him, offers a scholarship in his name.

02/01/2026

Once upon a time, this beautiful baby lived at Kingshighway and Easton (Easton was later changed to Dr. Martin Luther King Dr.)

I’m sure you’ve heard of CBC High School. This building represented a much earlier era of CBC. Christian Brothers College built this campus in 1882 and it was to serve as a boarding school for elementary/middle/high school/college students.

This beauty served CBC from 1882 until 1916, when it was completely destroyed by a horrific fire. Ten people died that day, including six StL firefighters and four CBC staff members.

After the fire, CBC moved to Clayton, and the site at Kingshighway became Sherman Park.

CBC may be long gone from that site, but a small reminder of its history remains. There is a little street called Paulian Place just west of Sherman Park. The street was named after Brother Paulian, who served as the president of CBC for 30 years.

01/10/2026

In the late 1800s, we had something like 100,000 horses living in the city of St. Louis.

Now we’ve got 4 police horses, a few Clydesdales, and a handful of those poor carriage horses that live in 100+ degree downtown warehouses during the summer...but that’s a rant for another time.

In the olden times, there were hundreds of watering troughs all over the city, mostly small ones outside of taverns and grocers. There were also a dozen or so massive troughs in high-traffic areas. Over the years, they were all destroyed.

EXCEPT FOR ONE!!!!! WE HAVE ONE TROUGH!!!!!!

The lone surviving trough is in Carondelet, in this little triangle bound by Ivory/Schirmer/Virginia. This trough has been here since 1908, and replaced an earlier wooden one. They were calling the trough historic back in the 1960s! It’s been beautified several times, and for years it was used as a giant planter. I think it’s a fountain now. Maybe I should have waited until the fountain was actually on before I took a pic but whatever, I’m impatient.

Pretty cool that it survived. I’m including pictures of some other StL troughs through the years.

Found St. Louis