Hi urbanstl members!



We'd like to invite you to take a look at our relatively new Missouri History Museum Flickr photostream.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mohistory/



We've been busy adding a good number of St. Louis street scenes--esp. in and around Wash. Ave. The site is constantly changing, so consider checking back often or consider making us a contact to receive updates; and please let us know what kind of images you'd like to see!



In the next few months, we will be introducing a buy/license photo option online. In the meantime, if you'd like to order prints, you can do so by contacting: Photographs and Prints: photo@mohistory.org or (314) 746-4511.



Happy browsing!

Anyway 705 Olive's original windows can be reconstructed?





This makes me sad. 5 Buildings in this picture and I think they are ALL gone.

This is awsome! I love browsing old photos. Thanks for the link, History people.

You're quite welcome! We'd love to do some then/now projects as well--as STLCardsBlues1989 rightly notes, so many blds. are now gone. Any thoughts?

missourihistorymuseum wrote: so many blds. are now gone. Any thoughts?

Tragic!

missourihistorymuseum wrote:You're quite welcome! We'd love to do some then/now projects as well--as STLCardsBlues1989 rightly notes, so many blds. are now gone. Any thoughts?

I did a then and now for about 100 areas around the city for a school project back in undergrad. Certainly was interesting. But that website is long gone by now. Would love to see more of that. I've often thought of resurrecting that again.

Then and Now books are great. I've got two on St. Louis:



Elizabeth McNulty, Thunder Bay Press, 2000



David A. Lossos, Arcadia Publishing, 2005

Wow. This building is cool!





Here's the Meridian on the right, and where the Washington Avenue Apartments are now on the left



Behind the Meridian you see the A.D. Brown Building, the Urban Winery, and the Vanguard Lofts. Behind the unknown building where the Washington Avenue Apartments is now I guess would be the Lucas Lofts building.



Here's the Banker's Lofts originally



As you can see, it once had a cornice, and the storefront has been changed. You can see the Lammert Building as well. I believe you can see the Merchadise Mart on the left behind the unknown, now gone buildings.

Google is being a butthead right now, but this is the basic view right now. You can see the outline of Merchandise Mart in both pictures.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 7826086957

If this link doesn't work, just type ninth at Washington into Google Maps. Go into Street View and look west toward Banker's Lofts. You can see a building behind the Lammert that is also gone.





Here you see the Rialto, long since demolished. And some short unidentified buildings in front of it. At left you see the Mississippi Valley Trust Company, the Haggerty Memorial Building, and the Merchants Laclede Building (Downtown Hilton). You also see the The Security Building behind that. Between Merchant's Laclede and Security building is an unkown building which is now demolished for a parking garage.





Again we see Banker's Lofts and the Lammert Building. This was taken before the Statler (1917) and the Lennox (1929) were built. You can once again see the building behind the Lammert building that is a surface lot now. The Curlee building and Dorsa Lofts must be behind that somewhere.





I'm sure all these buildings are long-since obliterated.



Merchandise Mart seems remarkably intact. Although there are some tiny cupolas (I guess is what they're called) on top of the building in the 1903 picture.



You also see Vanguard Lofts and a 4-story building that is now a parking lot on the right hand side of the photo.





Washington at 7th.

I don't recognize anything here. It may all be obliterated under the convention center. On the right hand side is the P.C. Murphy Trunk Company. Here's a bit about one of the founders (Son-in-law of P.C. Murphy), including a death certificate.

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/scripts/ ... ID=0000911

http://www.sos.mo.gov/TIF2PDFConsumer/D ... 750859.pdf

The P.C. Trunk company is listed at 612 Washington St

Which must be where the mall is now, since Dillard's was built in 1907.

We tore these beautiful buildings down for an ugly glass mall?

Go here ( 700 Washington Ave, Saint Louis, MO, United States ) and look east toward the mall and Dillard's. That I think would be close to the perspective the original photographer had. Obviously only Dillard's is still there. However, Dillard's can't really be seen in the 1922 picture.



This must all be gone now.



I wish I could just leap into the picture.





Merchandise Mart Apartments, Curlee Building (apparently with the Curlee sign on the it). And a billiards place on the left which is now gone.





Lammert and Banker's Lofts, as well as some long-gone buildings.





Dillard's, as well as 555 Washington on the left-hand side.





Grand National Bank. Fox Theater. Buildings on the left other than the Fox Theater and Fox Associations next to it are now the Woolworth's site.





Almost a completely different city.



Wow!

Why is so expensive and difficult to lay a few tracks in streets downtown now compared to 1900? I think we have less traffic now then we did then, so it wouldn't slow traffic.



I would think some enterprising private company could propose tracks to the city, and make money charging people a $5.00 to ride a re-introduced old-fashioned trolley. (Nobody would be required to sing the Trolley song.) It would be cool to find the old track maps and make it do one of the actual old routes.



Hey, nobody would have thought it would be cost effective to re-introduce horses downtown, but we have them, and somebody is making money. Maybe they could even have a horse pull the trolley on the tracks.

Grover wrote:I know that St. Lous has lost a number of great buildings, but I don't think we've lost any more than (and really probably less than) places like Chicago and Boston. This is why I cringe when someone says "typical St. Louis" when a building is demolished. You might as well say, "typical western capitalistic culture." Good one.

The problem isn't that we've torn down buildings, it's that we've torn them down for parking lots or new buildings that are inferior to the ones they replaced.

Thanks and Help Wanted

Thank you all for your comments! STLCardsBlues1989--your "captions" were especially helpful. Would you all be willing to add some of these notations to the images on the Flickr site? http://www.flickr.com/photos/mohistory/ We could certainly use help in identifying buildings and structures. And if you have ideas for spreading the word across the urbanstl forum, these would also be appreciated. This is a very active group with much solid information that can greatly enhance our records!



History Happened Here

I'd also like to introduce another MHM Flickr site that might peak your interest(s). We've begun a Flickr companion group to our History Happened Here (www.historyhappenedhere.org) project. http://www.flickr.com/groups/historyhappenedhere/



This group is meant to be rather inclusive--asking for you to share photos, 90 second videos, stories, memories, and info about sites in and around St. Louis where history happened. Your participation would be fantastic! Perhaps photography groups formed here could be devoted to taking images for this site . . . other thoughts?



Here's an example to get you started:



Big Mound during destruction;"The last of the Big Mound";. Daguerreotype by Thomas M. Easterly, 1869. Easterly Collection 76. Missouri History Museum. Photograph by David Schultz, 1994. NS 17087. Photograph and scan

I'll probably post the captions soon. I'm glad you liked them. I have church tonight, so I'll be busy for a couple hours.



I basically got my info from http://www.builtstlouis.net/arch.html and using Google Street View to see what the view would look like now.



Thanks for posting the pics online. They are fascinating.

As much as I love looking at these, they still make me want to cry.



Thanks for posting them.

STLCardsBlues1989 wrote:I'll probably post the captions soon. I'm glad you liked them. I have church tonight, so I'll be busy for a couple hours.



I basically got my info from http://www.builtstlouis.net/arch.html and using Google Street View to see what the view would look like now.



Thanks for posting the pics online. They are fascinating.

Thank you so very much.

Ok I am depressed now.... Those are all very amazing photos. These definately will come in handy if i ever carry out outlandish dream of building a scale model of downtown circa 1920's...

Check out this site, too

http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/browse.php?C ... tlglobedem

Grover wrote:What about Chinatown? I hear someone mention it every once in a while - I believe the site of Busch II? And the Ville!

ohhh yeah, nothing says "progress" like bulldozing an established chinese neighborhood to make way for the great american pastime. Actually, I will admit that I don't know much about it other than it was just about where the famed Softball Park Village will go. I have never seen any pictures.....but would love to if they exist.