A Little Off the Top

One of the things I have been silently doing in the background is watching huge portions of the former St. Louis Centre come down. It's an eerie feeling to watch it being dismantled when I remember so vividly when it was being built.


Just as a reminder, here's what the old abandoned mall looked like back in mid-April.

They were really just getting started then, having the site blocked off and some of the large equipment had been moved into place. Entryways and first-floor windows were starting to rapidly disappear.



You can still see stairways, light fixtures and the outlines of some of the vendor booths within the building.

Fast forward just over two months to late June. It is starting to look a little bare as a lot of the inside work begins to wrap up.

Now spring to July 21. I think you might find the place looking just a little different!

See what I mean? I had missed visual updates for just a few days and most of the front framework had disappeared! Then, last week, I noticed that they had started to remove the individual panels of the skylight. Since I look down onto the rooftop, I noticed that in just a few short days they had managed to strip bare several rows of the panels.

And so, on Monday, workers were doing this. Isn't that cool? It's not often that you get to see this kind of job, up-close and personal. But I did!

Gutting St. Louis Centre

When I was going to high school -- in the years before CD was old enough to drive us there -- before I was old enough to have a job (even with a work permit) I took two buses a day to get there.

The first bus would let me off at 10th and Washington. I had to catch the second at 6th and Locust. If it sounds like there was some distance there, there was. I only mention it because I did some walking around Friday to see how the skybridge demo was coming and to get a closer look at the former St. Louis Centre which is being transformed into the Seventh Street Garage. I stood there, just across the street, transfixed on it for a few minutes.

For some reason, I thought about the many times I'd stood on that corner back when it was home to a Woolworth's store. Back before I'd be using the employee entrance to the old Famous Barr that was just across the street.

I'd been to that Woolworth's a bazillion times in my life. The mother and I had eaten lunch and shopped there when I was little. I only vaguely recall it being torn down though I vividly remember the construction of the mall. Funny how selective our memories can be sometimes.

At any rate, here's a few shots from the gutting of the center. The signage is now gone from over the entryway, the windows to its skyway are boarded up and the windows on the first few floors have been removed.

As I walked by, a guy was dismantling lights on the third floor. At first, I didn't see the guy, only the sparks from his blowtorch.

The camera's fabulous zoom fixed that for me! It made for kind of a cool shot.