Coming soon to 7597 S Lindbergh: Harbor Freight Tools

Coming soon to 7597 S Lindbergh: Harbor Freight Tools

The site of 7597 S Lindbergh has a bit of an up-and-down recent history. It’s been vacant since Home Town Buffet closed in 2015, but it’s getting a new tenant soon: Harbor Freight Tools.

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What happened to Tipton Appliances

What happened to Tipton Appliances

Variously known as Tipton Electric Company, Tipton Appliances, Tipton Centers Inc., and Tipton Supercenters, Tipton was a St. Louis-based retail store specializing in home appliances and electronics. It had aspirations of going national the way Best Buy and Circuit City did in the late 1980s. But when its stock price faltered, it ended up merging with Silo, another now-defunct home appliance and electronics chain, on August 11, 1987.

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Cusanelli’s, St. Louis

Cusanelli’s, St. Louis

A very old white building stood for decades, and allegedly centuries, near the intersection of Lemay Ferry road and Bayless in the inner ring St Louis suburb of Lemay. The historic building, most recently home to Cusanelli’s, was demolished in 2023 after more than three years of vacancy. But colorful rumors about its history persist.

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Berlinger Dairy, St Louis

Berlinger Dairy, St Louis

Balthazar Berlinger, an immigrant from Switzerland, kept cows in his back yard where he lived on the 3400 block of Indiana Avenue in south St. Louis. In 1888, he started selling milk over a counter in his living room–fifty years before Prairie Farms.

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Red Bird Lanes, St. Louis

Red Bird Lanes, St. Louis

Red Bird Lanes was a popular hangout for all ages for a total of 37 and 1/2 years. Multiple generations have fond memories of bowling there, learning to bowl there, or just hanging out. It stood at 7339 Gravois Avenue, at the busy intersection of Gravois and Hampton, just north of River Des Peres.

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Mark Twain cinema, Sunset Hills

Mark Twain cinema, Sunset Hills

A sleek, modernist building with sharp angles stands on Lindbergh Boulevard, one door south of Gravois Road, with a prominent glass front and distinctive limestone walls. It stares down a Ford dealer across the street, flanked by an office building on one side and a vacant lot that used to be a gas station on the other, looking a bit out of place. It begs you to ask, what was this thing? Today, 4532 S Lindbergh is a union hall, as the sign says. But in its previous life, it was the Mark Twain Cinema. A 1960s movie theater. Read more

Is St Louis known for flooding?

Is St Louis known for flooding?

St Louis is nicknamed The River City. The reason for that is very simple. It sits approximately at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, the two biggest rivers in North America. But besides those, other, much lesser known rivers also flow through the area. One thing rivers do is flood. So that means yes, St Louis is known for flooding.

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Why East St Louis is so poor

Why East St Louis is so poor

East St. Louis is a legendary American city, for all the wrong reasons. Those three words conjure up thoughts of extreme poverty, extreme crime, and danger, sometimes perceived, and sometimes very real. It wasn’t always that way, to hear some locals talk. Others will tell you it was always that way.

In its prime, East St Louis was the place you went because if you couldn’t get a job there, you couldn’t get a job anywhere. And after the late 1960s, it became the place you stayed when you had no other options, but how it became that is something of a geographic and historical accident.

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Where is Route 66 in St. Louis?

Where is Route 66 in St. Louis?

Where is Route 66 in St. Louis? Two Missouri highways, 366 and 100, claim to be the old Route 66. Why? Because it changed over the years. Both have legitimate claims to Route 66 heritage, so let’s talk about the history, how far apart the roads are, and what makes both of them interesting.

There were at multiple alignments of Route 66 through St. Louis from 1926 to 1975, so no wonder it’s complicated. The two major ones are the 1926-32 version, along the modern MO-100, and the post-1932 version, which is approximately MO-366. There was also a bypass route, which served approximately the same function as the modern I-270/I-255 outerbelt today, but it was closer to the city, and all on the Missouri side.

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Fighter Jets on Chouteau Avenue, St Louis

Fighter Jets on Chouteau Avenue, St Louis

At the intersection of Chouteau and Cardinal avenues, near downtown St. Louis, there is a curious sight. Sitting outside the Bissell Auto and Body Company is a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star. And if you look behind it, you can see the hulks of numerous other airplanes and helicopters, in varying states of (in)completeness.

The airplanes on Chouteau Avenue near downtown St. Louis aren’t an airplane graveyard. They are the private collection of Dan Bissell, the owner of the garage whose lot they occupy.

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