This lovely picture from the Missouri Historical Society’s archives caught my attention right away. I wonder if any of the buildings are still there. I could find Vandeventer on a map and 29th street, but not where they intersected. Streets can be renamed though, and if the buildings are still standing, I’d be willing to bet they occasionally receive visits from some spectral inhabitants!
29th and Vandeventer.
Missouri Historical Society: IDENTIFIER: N07224
old spirituals 
Beautiful!
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I thought so too!
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As usually, you have piqued my interest, so I went on a search to learn about the “Vandeventer” neighborhood.
Peter Lewis Vandeventer and his brothers were Wall Street stock investors who decided to move West to acquire land. “Vandeventer Place” was developed by them as a gated community with mansions and a fountain as the center piece. Half of the homes were demolished in 1947 for the Veterans Administration’s Hospital and, years later, the other half by the City for a new detention home. (There is a photo dated 2011 of some of the remaining houses on Cook Ave.)
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Ahhhh! So the houses are gone! That makes sense. At the turn of the century, St. Louis was a very violent place. I love that old blues song, Stagger Lee (or Stack O’Lee depending on who’s singing). It was a really famous story of a real murder that happened in 1895. I found out years later that it was only one of something like 22 murders that happened that night in St. Louis. I wrote about it about 8 years ago, if you want to check out the song https://oldspirituals.com/2016/06/26/cruel-stack-o-lee/
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Fascinating stone work on those buildings!
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Yes! I love the old architecture. Jax investigated and it looks like the buildings are gone, but they were lovely in their day!
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