Day 13: More St. Louis Area

Let’s start with a couple of midcentury modern buildings in St. Louis. This former bakery thrift store has been abandoned for years. I’m worried about it.

This round-ish restroom building in Beckett Park with mushroom canopies:

This theatre in St. Louis is now used as a community center:

An Art Deco detail from the Vandeventer Building in St. Louis (which now houses a Mexican restaurant):

The Paristyle Building (now lofts) in St. Louis with its nice-preserved 1942 facade:

A former Standard Oil station in St. Louis which was it lousy shape until it was restored for the Olio restaurant:

This former canopy gas station in Webster Groves has housed Roger’s Produce since 1978:

The White Knight Diner in St. Louis was built in 1952:

This Lustron house in St. Louis was recently restored as a bed & breakfast. What’s a Lustron, you ask? I’ve got 6 pages of them at my website here:
https://www.roadarch.com/modarch/lustron.html

And there’s a Plycrete hippo in front:

This nasty-looking snake is at the Pirate’s Crusade mini golf in St. Louis:

This serpent fence surrounds the parking lot at the City Museum in St. Louis:

This giant ice cream cone in Affton from 1942 was originally at a Velvet Freeze ice cream stand. It was restored by the local fire department and is now installed in front of a school:

Moving on to a big batch of signs. This one is in St. Louis:

I’ve been worried about this sign in St. Louis for years since the donut shop sat vacant for decades. I’m happy to see it’s now a cafe:

This bar is in St. Louis is closed but the sign is still there:

The flame on this shopping center sign in Affton was originally animated:

The Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale mural sign in St. Louis was originally installed in 1968. It had fallen on hard times and was replaced with this replica last year:

Speaking of Anheuser-Busch… This quite famous sign in St. Louis right next to I-64 was originally installed in Los Angeles. When a new building went up in 1962, the sign was moved here. In 2022, the incandescent bulbs were replaced with LED versions and the Budweiser channel letters beneath this panel were switched from neon to LED tubing. Fortunately, the 33-foot-wide eagle is still lit with neon:

This sign in St. Louis was built in 2023 when the indoor mini golf opened. It features a woman putting on the other side:

I’m obsessed with Weather Balls and have shot a number of them for my website. They changed color depending on the weather forecast. This one in St. Louis, originally built for General American Life in 1956 was lit with blue for cooler weather, red for warmer weather, green for no temperature change, and flashed when precipitation was expected.

The sign was dark for decades and the neon letters were long gone. When it was converted to lofts in 2001, the ball was relit at night with red neon. I don’t know if they still keep it maintained but at least this piece of history is still there: