Found St. Louis

07/06/2025

This Tuskegee Airmen stuff is wild.

In 1927, when Christopher Newman was five years old, his family came to St. Louis from Mississippi as part of the Great Migration.

That same year, St. Louis had a massive parade to celebrate Charles Lindbergh’s solo transatlantic flight. That parade and that flight lit the spark in Newman that would eventually send him off to Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama.

He flew 84 missions during WWII. Once while in Italy, he had to crash land his plane, it caught fire, he spent almost 3 months in the hospital, got out, turned right back around and got in another plane. Another time, while flying over the Adriatic Sea, his plane was hit by enemy fire. He had to bail from his plane and land in the sea. He floated in that sea alone for six hours until he was rescued. All of this stuff happened before he even turned 23!! CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE???

As if that wasn’t enough, he went into the Korean War and flew another 97 missions.

Newman was one of the most courageous people I’ve ever read about. He passed in 2022 at the age of 100 but his legacy lives on.

Soldiers Memorial currently has a (FREE FREE FREE) exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen. I hope you get a chance to check it out.

06/16/2025

Why didn’t anyone tell me there’s a 150-year-old farmhouse just sitting in the middle of University City?? I couldn’t believe it until I visited it!

This house at 6826 Chamberlain was built around 1873 for a family of German dairy farmers, the Sutters. Shortly after the home was built, the Sutters sold the property to another German farming family (this time it was vegetables, not cows), the Meyers. Roman Meyer would grow his vegetables and take them into the city for market. University City to downtown StL is about 11 miles… wonder how long that trip took with a wagon full of produce in 1873.

As University City grew and was ripe for development, the Meyers sold off most of the land, but kept and continued to live in the farmhouse. The house was owned by the Meyers for over a century, which is probably the only reason it’s still standing today.

The coolest part about this house is that both the Sutters and the Meyers are actively involved in its preservation and storytelling. If you ever get the opportunity to visit, please check it out. (I’ll link their website in my comments)

06/09/2025

I typically don’t use my platform to share current events but as a Ward 8 resident with zero representation at this time, I’m sad to see that most people in the ward don’t know about this event tomorrow. If you live in Ward 8 please come to this. There are a lot of candidates and it’s important we vote for the one that will best serve all the communities within our ward!!!

📢 Ward 8! Meet ALL 5 Alderperson candidates at our upcoming forum to fill the vacant seat! Get your questions answered and learn their visions for our community. Join us Tuesday, June 10, 6:00-7:30

06/09/2025

Bellefontaine Cemetery is my favorite place in St. Louis and it’s currently closed due to tornado damage.

I was looking through my pics of the cemetery and came across this little angel who died when he was four years old. He had diphtheria and passed within five hours of his first symptoms. That was at a time when the United States had about 15,000 diphtheria deaths per year. Thanks to vaccinations, there are now about two deaths per year in the United States.

I don’t know where I’m going with this post. I just miss Bellefontaine.

06/03/2025

Thanks to everyone who shared my last post about Dee! His roof is being tarped right now, and there are some discussions with legal aid as well. Thanks to the angels at 100 Roofs, who put their full time business on hold just to provide aid to tornado victims. Everything they do is donation based. Please consider supporting them! https://www.100roofs.com/

05/31/2025

When Walter and Winifred Bryan purchased this house on De Giverville in 1914, they were a young couple with an infant son. Walter was the superintendent of power stations for the United Railways Co. The couple raised a total of four children in this house, and lived here all the way until 1964!

When the Gates family purchased the property in 1964, they were one of the first Black families to move into the neighborhood. Charles Gates, who was originally from Mississippi, came to St. Louis and graduated from Sumner High School. When he was 37, he ran for mayor. He didn’t win, but it was a milestone just to run for public office in 1969.

The current occupant, Dee, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Gates and was a young child when his family originally moved into the home. He remembers the neighborhood so fondly. He knew the name of every single person on the block, he walked to school (and everywhere else), and just adores the neighborhood.

I cannot stress how rare it is to find a century old home (in this city) that’s only been occupied by two families.

The neighborhood continues to change. Skinker-DeBaliviere has lost 50% of its Black population over the last 20 years.

But Dee? Dee had no plans to leave.

Sadly, a tornado came along and tried to destroy Dee’s plans to remain in his home.

If you want to help Dee stay in his home, here are his immediate needs:

1) A lift and some help so that he can tarp his roof as soon as possible.
2) Quotes from roofing companies - he is finding it very difficult to get quotes from folks.
3) Roof repair
4) Legal aid - there is public record dating back to 2009 of Dee requesting the city remove a dangerous tree from in front of his home. That same tree is the one that fell onto his house and destroyed his roof.

Please message me if you need his contact info.
Stay tuned for fundraising info!

Also - if there is anyone you know who’s been impacted by the tornado who would be interested in having me research their home and share their needs, please message me!!!!

05/26/2025

05/17/2025

In 1927, a very stupid tornado came here and devastated parts of north and west St. Louis in the worst possible ways. It killed about 80 people and injured many more. Hundreds of buildings were condemned. People lost their homes, their businesses, their livelihoods.

Today another storm came to St. Louis and did some destruction to parts of north and west St. Louis. At least four people have lost their lives, some buildings have been leveled, and many more have been damaged.

ActionSTL and ForTheCultureSTL are partnering to provide support to neighbors. If you are interested in volunteering over the weekend, even just for a couple of hours, please sign up here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfJb4IUBFPB_K_lVUlWKrkgUYkQ1XqLsJGDJZNyhe98X-tH7g/viewform?fbclid=PAQ0xDSwKUxsxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABp4GcI79Lla3ofxg5VuiiuqUGcImOVurrmWhqh4hacP9f2Up-fwqwj-lxVUzr_aem_09Z9PpmPs6eGCjppRFLt8Q

05/04/2025

I am sure that Paul McKee has accomplished something in his life. Unfortunately those accomplishments don’t matter. He will be burning in the fiery pits of hell for eternity as a direct result of his pillaging the neighborhoods of north St. Louis.

This 5-story warehouse at 7th and O’fallon was just one part of the Sligo Iron Works complex. Sligo was a massive iron company and this complex of buildings was used as their warehouses and main office. They stored thousands of iron products here, ranging from tools to plates to car parts...the list goes on. St. Louis has a very deep, vast history with the iron industry but not much evidence left to show for it. This complex, which includes buildings on both 6th and 7th streets, is one of few reminders how important this industry was to us.

In the early 2000s, Paul McKee began acquiring vacant properties in north St. Louis under the names of various LLCs, as to not attract attention to what he was doing. He was collecting empty lots and vacant historic properties like candy. The neighborhoods he did this in were predominantly black and predominantly low-income.

He did nothing to maintain the properties. The plan was never to rehab historic homes or maintain any of the lots - the plan was to collect parcels so that he could broker huge deals with mega corporations to develop the land. In the last 20 years, we’ve lost dozens of historic buildings to Paul McKee’s neglect.

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but it’s wild that he applied to demolish this property in 2023, was denied, and over the weekend there was a massive fire that will ensure total demolition of the entire complex. It’s also wild how this exact same scenario has happened many times in the past with his buildings.

A common question is “what can we do to stop this?” Ask your aldermen. Ask the mayor. Residents of north St. Louis have been pleading for decades for our elected officials to do something. There has been a lot of talk, but here we are again in 2025, watching his buildings continue to burn, watching our firefighters and neighborhood residents risking their lives so that he can get richer.

04/27/2025

1525 Missouri Ave
Lafayette Square

I don’t talk much about the mansions in St. Louis because I feel like they all have the same story: they got built for some rich guy, probably became a rooming house during the Depression, got rehabbed in the 80s, and that’s all she wrote.

Still… I should probably add some to my repertoire because they look damn cool.

This guy was built in 1893 for Gustavus Schuchmann, founder of the AMERICAN MEAT CANNING COMPANY (a topic you will never see me discuss on here because my stomach can’t manage it). In 1882, in an attempt to avoid paying the water tax for his downtown business, Schuchmann was found tapping into the city’s water supply line and stealing the water so that it wouldn’t impact his meter reading. He stole the water for years before a guy he fired ratted him out lol.

I pulled some census data on this house. In 1900, a total of six people lived here: Schuchmann’s family and a servant. By 1940, it had been converted into a rooming house and had TWENTY FIVE PEOPLE living in it. The rooming house consisted mostly of couples in their 20s-40s. There was a ferris wheel operator, a doctor at City Hospital, a welder, seamstress, waitress, truck driver, etc.

That is all I have to say at this time.

04/19/2025

I think this might be a beer cave. I’ll post the receipts in the comments.

🚨 🚨

Major Sinkhole/Street Collapse in on Cass @ 17th!! 😳

04/14/2025

This is the Majestic Theatre in East St. Louis.

The Majestic was built in 1928, during the peak ~movie palace~ era. The guys who designed it, the Boller Brothers, made some pretty extraordinary theaters (I will show a few examples in pics).

The Majestic boasted modern air conditioning (a huge deal at the time). This was also a time when "talkies" (movies with audible dialogue) were just getting popular. As movies became longer and more entertaining, it only made sense for the buildings to match the vibe.

The Majestic closed in the 60s. The theater was put on the National Register of Historic Places in the 80s...but I don't think she is long for this world.