Photo courtesy of @stlgasm, Jeff Vines
One medium in particular is fascinating the National Trust's Community Outreach team these days: Instagram. We have an Instagram account that we use for our on-the-ground work, and several other preservation groups do too -- for example, the Young Friends of the Preservation Alliance in Philadelphia is using the hashtag #LovePhillyBuildings2014 during February, and Modernism Week in Palm Springs, Calif., is using Instagram for contests and promotion.
For our final St. Louis Cities in Focus post, we wanted to highlight some of the exceptional St. Louis Instagrammers we discovered as well as some of the places readers mentioned we missed in the first blog post. To quote Instagrammer Jeff Vines: "The reports are true -- St. Louis is dangerous. Dangerously beautiful!"
#STL #House -- @dmeek
Demond Meek is a photographer in St. Louis who has been featured on Instagram for his photographs of buildings with the hashtag #SlumBeautiful.
RISE Coffee in the grove has a beautiful mural on the side of their building executed by the folks at @work_play. Public art is everywhere in #STL. -- @stlmuralproject, STL Mural Project
St. Louis has many great neighborhoods, and one of our blog readers mentioned The Grove as offering "... a fun blend of upbeat energy with relaxed, easy-going ambiance." This photo of a mural in the Grove has us anxious to see the STL Mural Project come to life!
#fall #forestpark #stl #slam #stlouisartmuseum -- @pattieofurniture
Another neighborhood several commenters mentioned was Forest Park. The area around the park is a beautiful residential neighborhood, and the Park itself was home for both the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 (known as the 1904 World's Fair) and the 1904 Summer Olympics. One of the only structures designed to remain after the Fair was the Palace of Fine Arts, now known as the St. Louis Art Museum.
#lemp #stl #mo #stlouis #midwest #missouri #sky #building #day2night #day # street -- @mixxxftiarmy, Matthew Goodman
The Lemp Brewery complex of 27 buildings (the main building is pictured above) is a storied part of St. Louis' history, though it hasn't been used to brew beer since 1920. The underground caves used for storing and brewing beer before refrigeration also provided a route to the Lemp Mansion, which now operates as the Lemp Mansion Restaurant & Inn and is rumored to be haunted.
Where am I? -- @makossa1
If you guessed this scene as the view from the St. Louis Gateway Arch, you are correct! This picture is looking west from the top of the Arch (the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial) toward downtown St. Louis. You can see the Old Courthouse in the middle of the picture; the second green patch is Kiener Plaza; and the third is CityGarden!
"Hey, my name is St. Louis and I'm the coolest city in the world." @stylevines, Randy Vines
Randy Vines is a major STL booster and one of the two brothers (Jeff has the cover photo for this post) who run STL Style. We couldn't agree with the caption on his photo more: "Hey, my name is St. Louis and I'm the coolest city in the world."
Next up for our Cities in Focus blog series: Boise, Idaho. Do you have suggestions of projects, people, or general awesomeness we should profile? Send 'em to Grant Stevens, gstevens [at] savingplaces [dot] org. Thanks!