Found St. Louis

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

07/13/2025

I just love this cutie on Chouteau near 18th.

It was constructed in 1892 for the St. Louis Kuenstler Verein, an association of German-American artists. This was created as a public art gallery for members of the association to exhibit ther work.

In 1908 it was converted into a factory that made overalls.

In 1914, it was taken over by the Lafayette Brush Manufacturing Company, who received a contract from the German Army to manufacturer 2200 cavalry brushes (whch I think were brushes to groom their horses with?)

From the 1940s-60s it was a printing company.

I don’t know. Something about our buildings having more lives than a cat. So cool.

Chouteau has lost a mess of extremely cool buildings. Somehow, this guy survived. What a babe.

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