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Summary: Photos of a bygone age
Review: My wife got this book because she's from St.Louis, though not from this neighborhood. It's a compilation of photos from the turn of the century and before, depicting mostly architecture of the neighborhood known as the Central West End, once a tony area where the city's wealthiest residents lived. While it was for a long time a slum, it's apparently undergoing a renovation, and hopefully will regain it's luster.For those not familiar with the Images of America series, these are slim volumes (this one's 128 pages) with typically two photographs per page, and a small caption. There's sometimes an introduction of several paragraphs or a page or two at the beginning of the book, though in this one it's at the front and runs to only slightly more than one page. The focus is on the photos of the buildings of a bygone era, mansions, churches, government buildings and businesses, sometimes with quaint people standing in front of them looking sharp for the camera. This book centers on the Central West End of St.Louis, a neighborhood that grew up in the late 1800's to accomodate the wealthy of the city who wished to avoid the riffraff. There's a large park in the center of the neighborhood, and the 1904 St.Louis World's Fair was held there. There's a whole chapter devoted to the Fair itself. There's also a chapter devoted to a tornado which devastated the neighborhood some years later, and several chapters devoted to the renovation efforts. A book like this lives or dies by its photos. This book has some beautiful pictures of houses that used to belong to wealthy people, and some of relatively modest accomodations that housed once-famous people. Some of the captions are a bit erroneous or unhelpful, and one that shows a pair of kids riding a turtle is somewhat humorous. It says they're riding the turtle for fun, but their facial expressions say otherwise. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and it makes me want to visit the area portrayed in the book.
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