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Found St. Louis, St. Louis, MO (2025)

11/19/2025

Someone recently asked me about the history of the giant boarded-up building at 2345 Lafayette at Jefferson.

This was built in 1928 as ~The German House~ a cultural and educational facility for StL’s massive German population. I’m sure you’re thinking “ok, cool building, but probably not a huge deal.” Oh it was a HUGE deal. Thousands came to the groundbreaking and thousands poured in and out of the building during its FOUR DAY LONG opening ceremony!! The Germans were not playing around with this one.

It had a bowling alley, a theater/auditorium that seated around 1200, restaurant, meeting rooms for the dozens of German-American societies that met there, banquet halls, and living quarters on the top floor for the caretaker.

During WWII, growing complaints led to a name change - the German House became the St. Louis House.

As times changed, the use of the building evolved. Loads of boxing matches were held here in the 50s-70s.

My favorite part of this building’s story is that in the 50s and 60s, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra actually recorded here! Columbia Records chose the venue because they believed that the building had superior acoustics for recording music! I gotta find one of those recordings!

In the 80s-90s, the building operated as the Gateway Christian Temple and Gateway Christian School.

In 2007, the building was sold to...the Church of Scientology (???). They planned to renovate it for Scientology classes, counseling, and administrative offices. I think they renovated the auditorium...and then..uh...nothing. The building has remained vacant the whole time.

In 2024, news outlets said that the building was up for sale, but it all seems a bit hush-hush. Usually when a building’s for sale you see a thousand realty listings but here...nada. I can’t even find their asking price - I can only guess they want some ridiculous amount for it.

Anywho, I have faith that this will come back to life - I feel like the potential of the auditorium with the good acoustics could make for something super cool!

10/27/2025

I’ve seen some really great (and extremely depressing) photography of the Lewis & Clark Tower and it inspired me to research this iconic building.

If you’ve ever been to Chicago, you’ve probably seen those two massive round towers that look like corncobs. Those mid-century buildings were created to be a city within a city, and residents would have access to retail and entertainment all within the comfort of the complex.

Inspired by that concept, a developer decided to create a smaller version of it north of St. Louis in Moline Acres. The original design consisted of two identical 16-story circular towers with a shopping plaza connecting the two. Each circular tower would have 200 apartments, and then 60,000 feet would be dedicated to commercial and professional offices. There was to be a swimming pool, bowling alley, indoor theater, etc.

The first tower was completed and available for use in 1964. It seems like it was a pretty popular building after it was constructed, but for reasons I’m not totally sure of, the second tower was never actually built.

In 1965, an adjoining movie theater was opened (Lewis & Clark Theater). That same year, Top of the Tower Restaurant was opened. Some folks seem to think that it was a revolving restaurant - it wasn’t.

I’m not sure when the decline started for Lewis & Clark. I know Moline Acres lost 25% of its population between 1970 and 1980.

At some point you could purchase the apartments as condos, but in the 2000s, the building was in such a state of disrepair that the condo association couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) pay for the repairs and in 2014, the building was condemned.

I’m not entirely sure who even owns the building today...but it would be soooo cool to see it rehabbed. I realize that may not be a realistic outcome but a girl can dream!

10/23/2025

I’m so angry with White Castle right now that you could say I’m....beefing with them (hehehe).

White Castle is opening a new prototype of their store, and it looks like every other modern fast food chain - a bland, boring box. White Castle felt like the last of the fast food chains to keep their unique design. I’m way more distraught than a human should be over this.

Here’s some fun history. In 1906, journalist Upton Sinclair wrote a book called The Jungle, which exposed the grotesque and unsanitary practices in the meat-packing industry.

When the White Castle guys created their business in 1921, they set out to create this super clean, pristine vibe within their restaurants to promote an image that was the polar opposite of what Sinclair wrote about.

The tiny burgers with a zillion onions were there from the start. It was genius really. Much easier to eat than a giant burger and so cheap that you just wanted to buy more and more.

They were so popular that there were approximately ten trillion imitators. The copycat restaurants would either replace the word White or replace the worst Castle...so you ended up with White Cabin, White Hut, White Palace, White Knight, White Mill, Blue Castle, Magic Castle, Little Castle...the list goes on.

2025 marked White Castle’s 100th year in St. Louis. We were the first city to get a White Castle outside of it’s founding city of Wichita. Our first White Castle opened on 18th street (across from Union Station) in 1925.

I will leave you with some fun photos of White Castle buildings (that are no longer standing) in St.Louis!

PS - huge shout out to , where the majority of these photos are from. They have a huge WC archive available online! The only pics that didn’t come from them were the prototype pic and the color photo of Vandeventer (which came from )

10/21/2025

Hi, here’s a cool building. Located at 4477 Olive in the Central West End, this was built in 1917 and fully constructed in only 97 days.

Read the following description of this place from the Globe-Democrat and guess what sort of business this building was built for.

“The exterior of the building will be done in velour brick, trimmings of stone and terra cotta all masterfully blended into soft color tones. The balcony and tile roof are enhancing features, which add much to the attractiveness of the company’s new home. There will be an array of counters and cases, the store being treated as an inviting reception room with modern oak woodwork and paneling, polished floors, effective leaded glass windows, wall frescoes and draperies, together with restful furnitures, giving the whole a high-class atmosphere.”

Sounds fancy, right? This was built for...a dry cleaning company. A dry cleaning company!!!! It’s so wild how much love and care was put into the creation of our buildings for even the least glamorous of businesses. This was home to several dry cleaning operations through the 60s. While that doesn’t sound very exciting, someone once threw a stink-bomb through their window during a labor dispute with the union of the cleaning and dyeing workers. That’s kind of exciting.

The second floor was rented to various businesses, most notably The Mummers, a theater group who put on small productions.

Over the last few decades the building has been owned by various non-profits, two of which have tried to get it demolished. They failed both times and our 1917 fancy dry cleaner building lives on.

09/28/2025

This house at 6513 Bradley Ave in the Lindenwood Park neighborhood is a Sears House!

I’m sure everyone is familiar with Sears, the department store that used to be everywhere. Sears started out in the 1800s as a mail-order watch company. Over the years, they expanded into farm supplies, groceries, jewelry, stoves, toys, clothes, etc.

In the early 1900s, Sears introduced a concept called Sears Modern Homes, where you could just...order a home from a catalog. You could buy homes ranging from tiny cottages to huge mansions.

Sears would ship out all of the building materials via train. Some homeowners would have contractors build these houses, others would get a group of friends and family together to build the homes themselves.

It is estimated that over 70,000 Sears homes were built throughout the United States.

The largest single collection of Sears homes is only an hour outside of St. Louis, in Carlinville, IL. Two coal mines were opened there and the company running the mines purchased 156 Sears homes for their employees to live in. It was the largest order for Sears homes in history and today there are still 152 of the homes standing!

This house is so freaking cute, I cannot deal with it.

09/21/2025

This utterly hideous nightmare at 2933 Dodier was originally built in 1903 for the president of a lumber company. The house did not look like this when it was built.

Fast forward to 2024 when an out of state investor purchased the property.

The “investor,” Red Door Legacy aka Lighthouse Estates owns (I’m guessing) 20-30 properties here. They buy vacant buildings, board up as many windows as possible, cover the whole thing in a thick coat of maroon or black paint, and all of their buildings end up looking like this. The paint hides not only the many boarded-up windows, but tuckpointing and structural issues that may be happening with the property. I can’t imagine what they’ve done to the interior.

I really have nothing more to say.

09/14/2025

In 1923, St. Louis Public Schools decided that they needed to build a massive stadium to host their football, baseball, and soccer games. They bought this huge piece of land at Kingshighway and St. Louis Ave.

This concept was new and a little weird. Nowhere in the country had any Board of Education built a publicly funded stadium entirely separate of any school.

The original plan was to create this massive stadium that seated 50,000 people (WHAT) at a total cost of 1.25 million. Parents were furious at the idea of spending that much money on a stadium when there was still a pressing need for new schools. As a compromise, the Board of Ed scrapped the original plans and came up with a smaller, much cheaper stadium that would seat 15,0000 at a total cost of $300,000.

The stadium was designed by RM Milligan (who designed schools like Beaumont, Buder, Vashon, Scruggs, Dewey, Roe, Long, etc) and had the most modern features like dressing rooms! and showers!

It finally opened in 1928.

The stadium wasn’t just used for football games. In 1963, Bob Hayes set the WORLD RECORD for the 100-yard-dash (9.1 seconds) right here!

It also hosted pageants, festivals, various entertainment events, etc. The Moolah Shrine Circus was held here annually.

In the 1960s, bleachers had been added to the fields of five city high schools, so football games were being hosted at the schools. The stadium fell into disuse and in 1969, the wrecking ball took it away forever.

08/23/2025

The vacant Millenium Hotel in downtown StL is set to be demolished to make way for a giant new development.

In 1964, St. Louis decided to build a massive hotel with a revolving restaurant at the top. It would do a full rotation each hour. The whole revolving restaurant thing was a mid-century marvel that went out of style in the 80s. I’m very depressed that I’ve never been in one. We should have a rotating restaurant in every city in this country!!!!

This hotel was originally called the...Stouffer’s Riverfront Inn? When I read that I was like hold up. Are we talking about the frozen lasagna Stouffer’s? The Lean Cuisine Stouffer’s? They were running hotels? Apparently the brand started out as a dairy stand that evolved into restaurants that expanded into hotels that expanded into frozen lasagna.

Stouffer’s finally opened in 1969. A second, smaller round building was added to the site in 1974. It seemed like there was a lot of hype as it was being built, but once it finally opened, the hype fizzleed out. After a few years, it became the Clarion Hotel, and in 1992, it became the Regal Riverfront Inn, which eventually became the Millenium Hotel. The Millenium Hotel finally closed in 2014.

Today at a bookstore, I saw a St. Louis book that had an illustration of the riverfront on its cover. The illustration included the Millenium Hotel, because why wouldn’t it? It made me think about how that silly hotel with its revolving restaurant exists in just about every single riverfront picture from the last 60 years. I don’t know. Maybe I’m sad about its demolition. Or maybe I’m sad about the 20-year, 90% tax abatement that the new development will receive. When the original hotel was built in the 60s, it received a 25-year tax abatement, and all that got us was a bunch of failed attempts at a hotel, 2 soon-to-be demolished buildings, and less money for our public schools.

I’m sure this current batch of aldermen will explain to us why this tax abatement is so much different and better than the last!!!

Sorry, I went off on a tangent. Rest in peace, you revolving queen.

08/10/2025

There is a very lovely lake in Benton Park.

The lake is now without water, all thanks to a cave.

English Cave exists a teeny bit to the east of Benton Park. There’s a bunch of lore that it goes directly under the park (with more lore that there are entrances to it from the houses that line Jefferson Ave but that’s a bunch of shenaniganery if you ask me)

The cave is named after Ezra English, a brewer who popularized the cave and made it into a pleasure spot in the mid-1800s.

We’ve all heard a lot about beer caves in StL but my favorite factoid about English Cave is that in the late 1800s, it was used to cultivate mushrooms! A couple years ago, a dedicated team sent a camera down and found mushrooms still growing, I mean is that not the cutest thing or what.

Earlier this year, the Benton Park Lake sprung a little leak, which probably had to do with both the sinkholes under the park and the cave itself. The little leak turned into a totally drained lake. I hope the city can find a way to repair the lake because it looks like hot garbage right now.

08/02/2025

The St. Louis Public School district has been fighting a losing battle for decades

Here is a quick primer on public school funding in Missouri. Please keep in mind that this is a crazy formula far too complicated for my pea brain to understand, BUT, I can understand the basics. Public schools in Missouri receive a base funding of $6,375 per student.

If St. Louis had the population it had in 1967 (with 105,000 students enrolled), SLPS would receive $669 MILLION dollars at the base level. Today, SLPS total enrollment is 20,000. That $669 million has been reduced to $127 million.

I realize this is a gross oversimplification of school funding. Federal, state, and local levels all play a part in school funding. Regardless, one thing is for certain - when you lose kids, you lose money.

There have been some news articles out discussing how SLPS may be forced to close half of their schools. I'm furious. St. Louis is furious.

We have historic, high-maintenance buildings that are now housing one-fifth of the students they were built for.

Someone's gonna need to get real creative before we end up bussing kids to the opposite ends of the city just for them to get an education.

07/27/2025

THE ONION HOUSE
4148 Connecticut

In 1882, Gerhard and Maria Ludewig, along with their four children (one of whom was only two months old) got on a boat and travelled from Germany to the United States. Gerhard was listed as a farmer in Germany, but when he arrived here he became a cabinet maker.

The family built this house in 1892. I believe members of the family owned and lived in it until at least 1950. That’s pretty incredible given all of the rapid changes to St. Louis in that timespan.

Truthfully I just wanted to post this because every time I’ve been by to take a photo the house was covered with scaffolding. The scaffolding is off so today I finally got my pic.

There are many articles about the family who has spent years rehabbing it - it’s clear a lot of blood, sweat and tears (get it...onion...tears....man I’m hilarious) went into this house. Truly a gem in Tower Grove South.

07/20/2025

The best part about this business card is that nowhere does it say what the guy’s actual career was. Frank Dausch was a barber lol.

This thing where barbers were LEECHING and TOOTH DRAWING dates all the way back to the medievel times. Before modern medicine, barbers were also...surgeons. They did stuff like tooth extraction, wound care, haircuts, amputations, beard shave, etc.
They were actually called barber-surgeons.

I really want to talk about bloodletting though, because that was wild. There was a common thought that all of our ailments stemmed from too much blood, so the solution was to drain the body of some blood when a person was feeling sick. One way was to slash someones vein and let blood pour out into an open container.

Another way these guys did bloodletting was through leeching, which was exactly what you think it was. Throw a bunch of leeches on a person and let them get down to business. Leeching became so popular that there were leech farms where people bred leeches to sell to apothecaries.

Frank Dausch was up on North Broadway doing all of this stuff (well probably not amputating people) in the late 1800s, when it had become far less common. Soooo wild right ?

PS: Leeches have been used in modern medicine but not in this way!!!
PPS: You know those cool old barber poles? It is thought that the red and white symbolize the blood and bandages from the barber’s historic role as a barber-surgeon!
PPSS: I found this business card at the Kirkwood Historical Society - 302 W Argonne

Found St. Louis