Picking pumpkins just across the river in Millstadt, Illinois.  Eckert's is a local supplier of apples, peaches, pumpkins, and other miscellaneous produce.  The farm allows people to come and pick the fruits and vegetables when they are in season.  The three people on the right are my kids and wife, minus a boy not pictured.  The two on the left are neighbors (literally, just up the street) we coincidentally ran into at the farm....a half hour's drive from our houses.  And, you can see the St. Louis skyline in the background on a gorgeous fall day.

Linnean House at Missouri Botanical Gardens

The Linnean House in St. Louis, Missouri is the oldest continuously operating greenhouse west of the Mississippi River.  It is also the only remaining greenhouse in the Missouri Botanical Garden property built during Henry Shaw's lifetime.  The Linnean House was built in 1882; Shaw, the garden's founder, died in 1890.

The greenhouse was originally built to overwinter citrus trees and bushes, but today houses many subtropical cacti and camellias.  Camellias steal the show in late winter with their blooms, and several of these plants in the Linnean House date back to the 1930s and 1940s.

The greenhouse was named in honor of Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern nomenclature or "the father of taxonomy."  The Linnean House has been through several renovations before arriving full-circle at it's original design and purpose.  The house has also endured a major hailstorm in 1927, which spurred one of the renovations.

This photo is done with an almost HDR processing "look" to overcome the horrible skies with which I had to deal last week.  I like how it turned out.  Please comment with your opinion, too, as I may dabble a bit more with this technique in the future.

Shaw's Roses

A couple of pictures from Missouri Botanical Gardens.  A walk from Tower Grove House to the Climatron will yield a stroll for rose lovers.  Stop and smell them.  It is said roses can calm anxiety like lavendar and echinacea.

Let's Take a Walk..

Let's meander around the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, MO, shall we?  I ran out there last week.  I try and get out there once per season to see all the beautiful plants evolve through the seasons.

For today, let me give you the view from atop the observatory near Tower Grove House..

Henry Shaw lived in this "country home" on the left as he built his gardens.  The building on the right is the research library.  You can also see the Victorian Garden between the house and library.  The garden was opened to the public in 1859 at no charge.  Several years later, Shaw had this observatory built for the public to offer a better view of the land.  Apparetly, Shaw grew tired of the patrons' requests to climb the tower in HIS house to view the gardens from several stories up.  Can't say I blame him, either.

Monday Mystery..

Where in St. Louis am I?

In answering last Monday's Mystery, I was at the top of Art Hill in Forest Park.  The statue was the backside of the horse carrying King Louis IX, the city's namesake.

Detailed Architecture in Compton Heights

This will likely wrap up our brief dip into Compton Heights Neighborhood for awhile.  But, since you've seen some of the pretty houses, I wanted you to also notice the attention to detail 100 years ago...so different from the pre-fabbed homes we live in today.  It bothers me that so many neighborhoods are so sterile and void of any personality; neighborhoods in which the only difference is the color of paint the owner slaps on the siding.  Compton Heights is very much the opposite of today's boring homes.

This Hawthorne house was likely built only a couple of years past the turn of the 20th century.  The window and eave details blew my mind.

Here is a closer view of the detailed architecture.  Below is a house designed by William H. Gruen in 1908.

Look at the balusters around the front entryway and the plaquards above the front door.  Even the concrete trim surrounding the windows and edges of the house aren't done these days.

This last house was designed in 1903 by Ernst Janssen at 3263 Hawthorne.  You may notice the German in the architects' names.  Most of the architects, contractors, and original residents were first or second-generation German-Americans.  Janssen, himself, designed over fourteen homes in The Heights neighborhood.

Thanks for sharing this tour of Compton Heights with me.  It was fun to discover. 

Tomorrow, we dive into another "Mystery Monday."  Where will I be?

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Compton Heights continued..

As posted before, the Compton Heights Neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri is one of the oldest, planned residential areas in the city dating back to 1889.  However, this neighborhood was not a smashing success overnight.  It had plenty of adversity to fight through before it became a popular area in which to live.

Investors like Adolphus Busch, James B. Eads (namesake of the Eads Bridge crossing the Mississippi River downtown), Governor Thomas C. Fletcher, and a famous surveyor Julius Pitzman (who was responsible for laying out most of the city's private streets) worried about the slower than planned development of the subdivision.  The lots were expensive, plenty of property was available nearby in Tyler Place, complaints about summer water pressure, and aggressive competition from new private streets in the suddenly fashionable Central West End, all coupled with an economic depression in 1893.  This caused several of the investors to buy back their lots.  By 1894, confidence had been restored only to have a devastating tornado rip through Compton Heights in May of 1896.  This tornado was famous for also destroying Lafayette Square and Soulard causing a downward shift in popularity at Lafayette Park, then the city's favorite and most glamorous.

The Great Depression hurt the neighborhood yet again when a small number of houses on Hawthorne and Longfellow were abandoned.  Despite the abandonments, very few homes in The Heights were demolished.  Other neighboring streets suffered more severe fates at the hands of bulldozers.  This instability in the immediate area served to only erode the neighborhood further.

The low point of the area was in the early 1970s when $25,000 would buy about any house pictured.  However, thanks to a resurgence in city living, by 2002 these same homes were selling for well over 10 times the 1970s prices.  A success story indeed.

Compton Heights is an entire neighborhood I never knew existed before a couple of weeks ago.  There are so many hidden pieces of history around this city.

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