Joseph Lacroix House, ca. 1870 and 1888

The caption for the photograph suggests the house was the oldest in St. Louis at that time; the Joseph Lacroix house was the only home built during the 18th century at the corner of Olive and Third streets. According to the National Park Service, Lacroix built the home himself as a vertical log house sometime around 1797. The photograph itself was from Boehl and Koenig photographers (ca. 1870), and it is the original for the sketch seen below. The full resolution scan of the above image is located on Wikimedia:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Oldest_House,_St._Louis,_Missouri,_by_Boehl_%26_Koenig.png

From Commercial and Architectural St. Louis by George Washington Orear (1888). This scene depicts an "old stockade house" in the oldest portion of St. Louis, at Third and Olive streets.

Eads Bridge and Riverfront, ca. 1870

From an eBay listing of a stereographic print originally from the photographers Boehl and Koenig (ca. 1870s). A lovely image of the riverfront with passerby.

St. Louis School Library, 1878

From Camille Dry's Pictorial Guide to St. Louis (1878). Here is a sketch of the St. Louis Public School Library (later, in 1884, the St. Louis Public Library) located in the Polytechnic Building of the St. Louis schools at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut streets.

The library had some 55,000 volumes and various works of art; the main library building was replaced in 1912 with Cass Gilbert's Central Library (now itself the target of a renovation and expansion plan).

St. Louis Morgue, 1878

From Camille Dry's Pictorial Guide to St. Louis (1878). Although it's unclear why a guide to St. Louis would include a trip to the local morgue, Dry dutifully shows the reader what sort of morgue the great city had. According to Dry, "The house of the dead stands just back of the Jail at the corner of Spruce and 12th streets. Here behind a glass partition are three marble slabs, on which are deposited the unknown dead, awaiting identification and burial." I'm sure the marble was quite lovely. The morgue is still located at 12th and Spruce, more than 130 years later.

Vandeventer Place in Google Earth

To help visualize Vandeventer Place as it was, I created a Google Earth overlay file for it.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=833653&filename=VandeventerPlace.kmz

Included are a plat map created using Sanborn Fire Maps (adjusted for color, spliced together, and cleaned up) and individual plat polygons with placemarks and images for individual houses. Included are:

7 Vandeventer Place (Charles H. Peck House)
27 Vandeventer Place (John R. Lionberger House)
40 Vandeventer Place (Henry C. Pierce House)
51 Vandeventer Place (John D. Davis House)
64 Vandeventer Place (Henry C. Scott House)
72 Vandeventer Place (Dexter P. Tiffany Sr. House)
Vandeventer Place Gates

Vandeventer Place Gates at Grand Avenue

87 Vandeventer Place, ca. 1900

This view of Vandeventer Place (and, at the foreground, 87 Vandeventer) comes from the St. Louis City Development Corporation history site online. The end of Vandeventer on the west often showcased much smaller homes than on the east; this also was the last portion of the private street to be demolished in the 1950s by the city. 87 Vandeventer Place, the house at the corner of Vandeventer Place and Vandeventer Avenue, was built for Irwin Z. Smith, a local investor and real estate tycoon. Smith fathered a veritable tribe of children who went on to do good things in their community; according to various sources, he liked raquetball, hunting, and fishing.