Maplewood History: From Up In The Air – Part 3

By
Doug Houser
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4
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The spot left vacant by the fire at Golde's has been filled with another retail building that for a time held P.N.Hirsch. The phtogrph was made in 1973 by the venerable Arteaga Photogrphy firm, long the photographers of choice for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team with whom you may be familiar.

Everyone seems to enjoy looking at these aerial photographs so here are a few more in this post.  If you still have questions after you have looked at these, go ahead – ask away. We all learn from the comments of the readers.

If you are just joining us you may want to take a look at the previous two posts in this series.  Part One.  Part Two.  Or if you’ve never heard of the Maplewood History blog before now, you might want to take a look at some of the previous 300+ on the subject that have been drifting in the ether for the past decade.   Just Google “Maplewood History”.

My wife tells me that there are other cities named Maplewood in the United States.  That may be true but I bet none of the others have 300+ blog posts out there about the history of their virtually unknown small burgs.

Now and then someone is moved enough by a post from long ago to comment.  Usually I see these comments and try to respond. So have at it. The odds are in your favor.

I have several interesting posts in mind for the near future.  Coming up right away will be the photographs taken by Glenn Haley (and kindly submitted by Mike Jones) just before the demolition of the downtown buildings that we have been discussing.  Following that we’ll revisit William Lyman Thomas. Then Nancy Fennell Hawkins has loaned me a fabulous collection that I still haven’t gotten to. Wait until you see her family treasures.

Last I will be at the Maplewood Public Library with my traveling road show this coming Thursday, September 19th at 6:30 in the evening.  The presentation will mostly be about my soon-to-be-released new book, “Maplewood History – Volume Two” which currently is apparently jammed somewhere in the machinery at the printing factory where the manuscript has been since May 14th.  I hope to see you there. At the library, that is. Not the printers.

I think this is an interesting viewing angle in this image from 1965.
In this image from 1967, the bank has completed an expansion. The original Western Auto building has been demolished in the process. Western Auto is now located on the NE corner of Manchester and Oakview Terrace in the heavily modernized original Bank of Maplewood building.  The debris from the Golde’s conflagration has been cleared.  Golde’s fire – Part 1
In this image one can see that the spot left vacant by the fire at Golde’s (Golde’s fire – Part 2) has been filled with another retail building that for a time held Golman’s and the P.N.Hirsch Company (Both were department stores). The photograph was made in 1973 by the venerable Arteaga Photography firm, long the photographers of choice for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team with whom you may be familiar.
In this close up from the previous photo, one can get a good look at the Swink block just east of the remodeled bank building. That entire block of early twentieth century commercial buildings was lost during the redevelopment. Dang.
I believe this mid 1950’s aerial image is from the collection of the Maplewood Public Library. I realize you won’t be able to see much with your small screens so I’ll follow up with a couple of close ups.

See Jim Scheidt’s comment below. I used Photoshop to flip one half of the matchbook cover.

I have just a couple more aerial photographs.  I have run them before.  One was by Syl Beletz.  The other was about the Big Bend Quarry.

We have had many interesting comments on this series.  As always we all learn bits of unexpected information.  If you feel a comment coming on, don’t hesitate.

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Til next time.

Doug Houser  9/16/2019

4 COMMENTS

  1. It looks as though the second photo reproduced on this page may show the one hold-out house remaining on the north side of Marietta, where all the others on that side of the street have already been removed and replaced with the present parking lot. Do other eyes see that?

    It’s curious that the same situation cropped up again behind the new Menard’s. Only there it’s like a house in a box.

  2. Doug, On the last photo in part 3, the building on the Southeast corner of Big Bend and Manchester was a Plymouth dealership. I don’t remember if it was Whitey Dorn’s dealership, but I do remember the large showroom windows across from the City Hall with cars on display.

  3. Thanks Doug. From the 1955 pic in Part 2, to the 1965 pic in Part 3, that ten year gap sees the loss of the two large houses north of Citizens Bank. More parking needed, clearly. We’re still recovering from the mid-century obsession with the automobile.

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