St. Louis Architecture -- related Web Logs

• Built St. Louis Web Log - an informal architectural and urbanist journal kept by myself. Rambling about and photographs of St. Louis, Milwaukee, and other cities.
• Urban Review St. Louis - Steve Patterson tackles issues of urban design all across the city. Frequent updates, in-depth commentary, photographs, and reports from the front lines of issues that matter.
• Ecology of Absence - Michael Allen and Claire Novak-Boyd, along with a host of co-conspirators (including myself on occasion) explore the hidden depths of urban growth and architectural decay across St. Louis and the Midwest.
• B.E.L.T. - Local photographer, historian, architectural marketer, and celebrity junkie Toby Weiss (another co-conspirator of mine) offers highly literate commentary on the city's built environment, with particular focus on the more obscure aspects of Modernism. The Commonspace Blog - The Commonspace tracks St. Louis's grassroots cutural scene on many fronts.
• Pretty War StL -- a local resident's photo-heavy delvings through the city's depths.
• StL Rising -- a discussion-oriented blog centered on the city's urban life.
• Urban St. Louis -- home to thriving discussion forums about development in the city.
• St. Louis Evolution -- an ongoing project to create then-and-now comparative scenes throughout the city. The images are filed (rather confusingly) under the "Urban News" link.

St. Louis Architecture -- Buildings of the Present

The Gateway Arch and Downtown
Images of and pages about St. Louis's most famous structure

• The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial home page

This is a great page, one of the best I've seen anywhere, really. Has wonderful pages on the Arch and the Old Courthouse; just follow the links on the left side of the page.

The St. Louis Arch
A site about the Arch sponsored by Bi-State. Includes a thingamabob to plan your itenerary for a trip to the Arch. Forget that! Just go!

Photography firms
Images in and around the city

Trailnet
Rails-to-trails program in St. Louis, including the Chain of Rocks Bridge.

The Wainwright Building
There are several pages which feature images of the Wainwright, arguably St. Louis's most architecturally significant structure.

• Images of Wainwright Building, St. Louis

A beautiful page by Mary Ann Sullivan, with numerous images of the trim. Simply fabulous!

The Ordinary Eye
A short article from the Common Space with images of Bellefontaine Cemetary.

General Life Insurance Building
Mary Ann Sullivan strikes again, with a nice page and images of this impressive Phillip Johnson building, which is located across the Gateway Mall from the Wainwright.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Owners of the massive grey Federal building downtown.

St. Louis' Historic House Museums
Six lovely old houses that have been converted to museums. Page is loaded with links.

Napolean's Retreat Bed and Breakfast
A Lafayette Square home converted to a B&B.

Samuel Cupples House
A Victorian mansion on St. Louis University's campus that has amazing woodwork and a wonderful stone exterior.

Anheuser-Busch St. Louis Tour Page
No, not the whole city... just their ornate hundred-year-old brewery complex in Soulard. Here's a related page of info on one of the buildings.

Powell Symphony Hall
Images and a complete history of the old theater, now home of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

AAO Virtual Museum
History of the Homer G. Phillips Hospital, from the American Academy of Otolaryngology.

The Fox Theater
One of the most stunning theaters you'll find anywhere, the Fox - located in Midtown, right next to the Continental Building - now has its own web page.

The Continental Building
The Midtown landmark now has its own web site.

Sheldon Concert Hall
This is the history page of the web site for the Sheldon, a performing arts venue in Midtown. Also check out the Rentals page for views of the interior.

The Sheldon Stays in Tune
Article from St. Louis Commerce Magazine.

Bryan Hill Alliance
From the Metropolis web site. This elementary school has a group of dedicated backers. Page has a picture of the building itself, one of St. Louis's many wonderful old school buildings.

Resurrection of Our Lord Church
An outdated page about this wonderful Modernist church building in south St. Louis.

The Cathedral of St. Louis

Clad in grey stone with beautiful green tile roofing, this Central West End building is a city landmark, and sports the largest collection of tile mosaics in the world.
• Archdiocese of St. Louis Site Information
  Has info and images of some of the Cathedral's mosaics.
• Tourism at the Cathedral
  Info on touring the building, plus a link on the left to a virtual tour.

The Saint Louis Art Museum
St. Louis's art museum is housed in a grand building designed by Cass Gilbert for the 1904 World's Fair. The Art Musuem also has a page at Erik Olsen's Forest Park site.

The Muny
Properly known as the Municipal Theater.

The St. Louis Science Center includes the city's planetarium, housed in a distinctive thin-shell concrete structure that is one of the city's most prominent Modernist landmarks..

The Capitol of the Women of America
An article from Preservation Issues, about University City's beautiful old City Hall (formerly the Magazine Building.)

The Missouri Botanical Garden
Also known as Shaw's Gardens to native St. Louisians, the Botanical Gardens have some nice buildings, in addition to the magnificent flora. Also check out the historical guidebooks from the early part of the century.

Tower Grove Park
One of my favorite places in the city. A wonderfully preserved Victorian walking park in south St. Louis. Follow the "Victorian Park" link on their page for more historical architecture info.

The St. Louis Artist's Guild
An old Clayton home, which formerly housed the St. Louis Science Center, is now home to the St. Louis Artists' Guild.

The Seven Gables Inn
A quaint 1926 commercial building now in use as a hotel. Located in Clayton. Click "History" at the bottom for more info.

Lambert Airport
Further out in the county you'll find the St. Louis international airport, with its striking main terminal. Images of architectural interest are on the "history" links. More images can be seen in the gallery.

The New River Bridge
Official site for the designs of the planned downtown trans-Mississippi bridge (which threatens to obliterate still more of the long-suffering Old North St. Louis neighborhood.)

Washington University Campus

• On-line Campus Tour

A graphic and text tour of the Wash U. campus, which is one of the most beautiful areas in the city.


• Anheuser-Busch Hall

Wash U. School of Law's new home is a fastidious reproduction of the old Collegiate Tudor Gothic style of the campus's early buildings. The page also includes construction pictures.


• Construction on campus
  Images of the new education center going up where Mudd used to be.
  
  
• Demolition of Mudd Hall



• Demolition of Mudd Hall

The destruction of one of the campus's most controvertial buildings -- loathed by many, loved by a few (mostly architects.)


• Demolition of Shepley Hall.

It was as stock as a 1950s building could be, from steel window frames and orange brick to the huge suspended globe lights in the double-height atrium. I lived in it for a year, and can't help being a little sad at its demise.


• New dorms under construction

Fontbonne College
Fontbonne is located near Wash U, and its campus is done in a similar (though more bland) Gothic style.

Concordia Seminary
Concordia has a small but beautiful cluster of older buildings, very similar to Duke University's old buildings. This page has a few nice images.

Pictures from Metropolis Holy Trinity Wash
Stark images from a Metropolis cleanup effort in the Hyde Park neighborhood, adjacent to the twin spires of Holy Trinity.

St. Louis Architecture -- Buildings from the past

Scott's Time Portal to Old St. Louis
Old images, maps, postcards, and more. You'll have to scroll way down the front page to get to the site's content.

Eads Bridge
Short page with an old elevation drawing of the Bridge. Part of a page about historic Illinois.

Terry's 1904 World's Fair Page
A history lover's treat! This wonderful page is about St. Louis's 1904 World Exposition, held in Forest Park. Relatively little remains of it architecturally, but it was a high watermark in St. Louis history.

Louisiana Purchase Exposition
Another World's Fair page.

The Forest Park Highlands
An amusement park that existed for many years where Forest Park Community College stands today.

The Coral Court Motel
The Coral Court was a St. Louis jewel, a wonderful Streamline Art Deco motor court located alongside old Route 66. It was demolished in 1995, but lives on in several web sites:

• Tales From the Coral Court is a wonderful little book on the motel by Shelly Grahamn. This is a link to Amazon.com.
  
  
• Ruins

A fascinating page of images of decaying Route 66 structures, including the Coral Court.


• A nice black and white, from the home page of Josh Malks.



• Day 49
  A Route 66 traveler's log, including blurbs on the Coral Court and Ted Drewes.
  
  
• This page of St. Louis Route 66 images contains one blurry shot of the motel.

St. Louis Architecture -- Organizations and Media

Landmarks Association of St. Louis
St. Louis's biggest advocacy group for historic preservation.

ReVitalize St. Louis
A grassroots organization by those working to revive the city, dedicated to its built environment.

Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation
Not a whole lot about St. Louis specifically, but you can find lots of images of nifty old houses in the city under the Real Estate section.

Metropolis St. Louis
A group dedicated to turning St. Louis into a better and more interesting place to live. Info on neighborhoods and urban sprawl, among other things.

The Common Space
A site/zine dedicated to grassroots activism and culture in St. Louis.

Missouri Historical Society
A research organization dedicated to preserving and documenting the state's past. Their library contains nearly infinate resources, and is housed in a beautiful former synagogue on Skinker.

Historic American Buildings Survey
This national archive has many old photographs of St. Louis.

American Memory collections
A set of government databases, including the HABS.

National Historic Landmarks Database
Searchable index of the National Register of Historic Places.

Salvatore Ventura
You must visit this page. Ventura is a fine artist who creates a great deal of his images from details of St. Louis's buildings -- and they're simply beautiful. His image of the Art Museum is one of my favorite post cards.

East St. Louis Action Research Project
A program being run at the University of Illinois, to revitalize and rebuild our neighbor across the river.

Audobon Ark 2000

Post-Dispatch Online
The on-line version of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the city's big daily newspaper.

The Riverfront Times
St. Louis's free weekly newspaper, often with informative articles on what's going on -- and coming down -- in the city.

West End Word
An online local paper.

S a i n t L o u i s
A site with lots of building and development news.

St. Louis neighborhoods, tours, and attractions

Though not about buildings per se, these sites form a good basis for locating the city's more interesting vernacular architecture.

History of St. Louis Neighborhoods
Tucked away on the official St. Louis web site is this treasure trove of information, covering every section within the city limits.

Community Information Network
The official home page of St. Louis is brimming with information, so stay and poke around a while. The "Heritage" link looks particularly interesting. CIN is also the source of the above-listed link, which is not to be confused with the Neighborhoods link on the left of the page -- it leads to even more information, including several nice neighborhood pages. Note, I will not link to individual neighborhood pages that are hosted by stlouis.missouri.org, since they are listed under CIN's page. Some of the pages are just stock defaults; others have extensive information and images. You'll just have to dig around and see for yourself.

East-West Gateway Coordinating Council
Planning and coordinating council of governments in the region.

Downtown Now!
City government task force charged with revitalizing downtown.

Down-Town.Com
I guess it's supposed to be an official web site for downtown St. Louis... it's more of a "what's happening" bulletin board than anything designed to convey a sense of place. By the same group that did the Soulard page, and also does similar pages for South Grand (click on "Reservoir Party Pictures" under "News" for images of the old Water Tower) and the Hill.

The City Museum
The City Museum is awesome! Its eclectic displays -- including a large collection of salvaged fragments from demolished buildings in St. Louis and beyond - has created quite a stir, even generating a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal a year or so back. The museum contains (among many other things) fragments of buildings demolished in the last 10 or 20 years in the city. Haven't found anything quite as cool on the web page, but it's still interesting to browse through.

Lafayette Square home page
Another nicely-done web page about a neighborhood that deserves it. Lafayette Square shows how beautiful and inviting a lot of St. Louis could be like, if more people lived in and took care of the city. Thanks to a resident for pointing the page out to me!

Tower Grove East
Home page of another neighborhood in what is probably my favorite region of the city.

Tower Grove Homes
In fact, it's such a nice neighborhood, it gets its own real estate company. Has lots of house pictures.

Soulard
Web site of St. Louis's oldest (and coolest) neighborhood.

Dogtown
Neighborhood just south of Forest Park. Site has histories, interviews, and photos.

About St. Louis: Must-See Attractions
List of attractions with a keyed map of the city.

Misc. St. Louis Architecture Firms

• American Institute of Architects - St. Louis Chapter
  Home page for this department at St. Louis Community College - Meremac. Lists a number of architecture firms' web sites.
  
  
• EDM Inc.
  St. Louis engineering and architecture firm. They hosted this site for several years. May they live long and prosper.
  
  
• Pyramid Architects
  These guys, along with their associated firm Pyramid Construction, have been attempting almost single-handedly to buy up and rehab all the old buildings around the Old Post Office. While they may have taken on more than they can handle, the effort is still noble. Kudos!
  
  
• Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, Inc. (HOK),an internationally recognized firm which is headquartered in St. Louis. Co-founded by Gyo Obata, who has his own entry on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
  
  
• Mackey Mitchell Associates
  
  
• Powers Bowersox Associates
  
  
• Trivers Associates

Finding More Information

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