not so intimidating.

The news seller on the corner will not get rich here. Counting ghosts there are about six potential customers. The tramlines extend the Gothic piles gloom.

This building screams ancient Rome meets steampunk. I wonder what it would have looked like in color with a good pressure washing?

... when you said "Stop and Goethe."

I agree with RoccoB. I can't tell you exactly why, but there is something repulsive about the look of this structure, at least how it's presented in this photo -- almost a nightmarish quality. I'm glad it was torn down eventually.

As Wednesday Addams once said, "It's so nice and gloomy!"

Dave, I'm sure Gounod who wrote this opera.

[Indeed adieu. He used a French libretto based on Goethe's Faust. - Dave]

That's one impressive opera house. I wonder what's playing.

The exposition hall was designed by Jerome Bibb Legg and completed in 1884. It was part of a larger complex including a music hall and arena. The complex was torn down in 1907. The St. Louis Central Library (designed by Cass Gilbert of Woolworth Building fame) was completed on this site in 1912 and remains to this day.

This building was torn down a year after this picture was taken to make way for a public library which is currently undergoing a restoration. It housed the St. Louis Symphony for years and purported to have one of the largest performing stages in the world, along with being one of the first buildings to have electric lights.

"Stay the hell away!"

Imposing, out of scale, and covered with soot. Keep walking, kids.