St. Louis Brick

9/14/08

Gothic Garage

This garage in TGH that serves to illustrate every Flannery O'Connor novel I've read.

I had been enroute to meet Bad Tim for dinner when I spied a man near the garage and stopped to chat. He was the owner and after we chatted long enough for him to determine I wasn't as weird as I really am, he allowed me to come into his yard to do these photos.

Bonus point! The fleur-de-lis which completely captivated me. The owner said he thought it was a family crest. (Bad Tim disagreed over dinner.)
The owner told me the house was built by a stone mason named Bauer.

I am so freaking envious.

9/13/08

Female St Andrews Cross Spider

Building a stabilimentum in her web:

9/11/08

This pissed me off

A few days ago I went by the Marti Frumhoff Memorial Garden site and discovered these truck tracks in the clay:

Added to my annoyance was my talent for falling* which pitched me into a seething fury.

An irrigation system had been installed and as I stepped down into the wet clay which has the tenacity of quicksand to check on the line I slid into the clay stew. The stuff in the photo is the stuff of bricks. This was the day after an intense rain.

Sure enough a truck had taken out one of the sprinkler heads.

I came home and emailed the photo to the city project manager who met me on site today with a herd of other people: The contractor who built the site, The plumber(s) who installed the irrigation and an engineer.

Suddenly, everyone else was PISSED OFF.

Solutions were presented and discussed.

I mentioned I had offers from two neighbors who were willing to help till the site. I was told it's been tilled and had to explain to the herd of people that compost and gypsum must be added to the clay if anything is going to grow. Everyone agreed, boiling moods slowed to a simmer and the herd moved off.

Then I drove to Bayer's in Imperial, MO to pick out five trees.
Beau ran wild in the tree farm and lifted his leg on every trunk. *Bad Tim (after dropping me off after dinner one night) watched me fall down my front steps, roll across the sidewalk and land in the street. After asking if I was OK he said, That was spectacular!

9/4/08

Pulchritudinous Brickwork

Yet another reason I love living in Tower Grove South, I get to encounter intriguing brick and brick work:

39 Wyoming

I walked into CFX a few days ago. It used to be Holy Family church where I spent (literally) thousands of hours between grades 1-8.

9/3/08

Multi Color Granular Brick

These bricks are my current favorite.
The surface presents as rough as the mortar which was finger tooled in places to accommodate the brick face. I love that!

Each of these bricks have two or more colors.
Click on the photo to enlarge, the white mortar makes the colors pop.

Don't you miss it?

Don't you miss it, don't you miss it?
Some of you people just about missed it!
Last time to make plans!

I was driving along Tower Grove just north of I40 and noticed this building, that used to house the Ibex studio, is gone.
Intricate terra cotta with the fleur-de-lis. I did these photos two years ago.

Evans & Spring - North St. Louis

Where the brick disappears.

Terra Cotta Captials in Tower Grove South

And one carved wood:

9/1/08

Greetings from St. Louis! Part 2

Chase Hotel.
One of my favorite puzzles as a kid was, What's wrong with this Picture?

Bell Telephone.
My Dad worked for Bell. During the historical Wildcat strike in the 60's the workers carried signs that read, Ma Bell is a bad Mother....

Hotel York Sixth and Market:

Mayfair Hotel swimming pool:

Old Folks Home:

Yeatman High School

City Hall 1914: Brick street!

City Hospital: Mostly gone

Arena: gone

8/31/08

Paging Larry Giles - Brass Plaque

Sent by Rich who found this blog while doing a search. I'd love to buy it but it must go to the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation. I thought it was a sidewalk plague.

This plaque is exactly 4" by 5". I found it (loose) on the floor of a back room of a building in North St. Louis. We were remodeling the building in some fashion. The year I found it was probably 1968, so I've had it for 40 years.

I have googled this thing 6 ways from Sunday, and haven't found anything or anybody, resembling or related to FF Hoffman.

Certainly u may post it. I have enjoyed the marker for 4 decades, but would be willing to sell it, and always wanted to find someone like yourself that really thought it was awesome, too.

BTW, it is unused, IE, it was never removed from masonry, it was just never installed. I always assumed that it was placed into brick walls; but do you think it was installed into cement walks?