Failoni Consultants

09/27/2021

Ann Miller Titus is a fiber artist whose work touches on themes that vary from maps and diagrams to dealing with a life-threatening diagnosis. She also creates work reminiscent of soda, because, as she puts it, "Sometimes I need a little fizz." You can see and purchase her work at the Historic Shaw Art Fair, October 2-3.

07/14/2021

3954 Russell Blvd,
Historic Shaw Neighborhood
St Louis
This lovingly maintained Victorian beauty is the one you have been waiting for!
Natural wood, stained glass pocket doors and a gourmet kitchen with solid surface counter tops and island and Viking range. Includes 1st floor half bath, and laundry room/work area. Historic beauty and modern convenience combined. 2nd and 3rd floors offer a master suite, 3 additional bedrooms and a full bath. Beautifully landscaped low maintenance yard.

07/07/2021

Great Shaw Home
5 Bedrooms
2.5 Baths
$399,900

05/21/2021

Great Apartment Available
3903 A Folsom
This lovely 2 bedroom, 1 bath, second floor apartment was renovated just a few years ago.
It’s got newer kitchen, bathroom, appliances, light fixtures, flooring--you name it!
You'll enjoy:
* Light filled living room
* Kitchen with all appliances - stove, microwave, dishwasher, fridge
* Washer/dryer inside the unit
* Easy care vinyl plank flooring in living room, kitchen and hallways, carpeting in bedroom
* High efficiency heating/cooling systems
* High ceilings
Certain income limits necessary to qualify.
Students welcome.
Contact Julie at Failoni Consultants
314-772-8407 ext. 110
[email protected]

01/21/2021

11/02/2020

Neighborhood History
Compton Hill Reservoir Park
In 1855 J P Kirkwood selected one of the highest elevated sites within the city limits. The reservoir occupied 18 acres of the site, the remaining land turned into a park. The top of the reservoir structure was at one time covered with elevated tennis courts.
The water tower was retired in 1929, after 30 years.
Reservoir and water tower’s 1999 renovation cost $19 million.
In 1901, more than 423 stand pipe style water towers existed in the US, now about a dozen remain, three in St. Louis.
The 179 foot tower was built to disguise a 6 foot diameter, 130 foot tall standpipe., controlling dangerous surges in the city's pipes
The observation deck at the top of the water tower is opened to the public, allowing visitors to see 360-degree panoramic views of the city.
watertowerfoundation.org
The Compton Hill Water Tower was declared a city landmark in 1966, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

The Naked Truth
The statue unveiled in 1914, was a gift to the city by the German-American Alliance in honor of Carl Schurz, Emil Preetorius and Carl Daenzer, editors of the German St. Louis newspaper Westliche Post.
Controversy erupted over the statue's nudity before the monument was built when a jury selected the design of Wilhelm Wandschneider. Adolphus Busch, contributing $20,000 of $31,000 cost, requested the statue be made of bronze instead of white marble to deemphasize the nudity.
The statue was designated a city landmark in 1969.
Wikipedia

09/22/2020

Tower Grove Park's History. In the years after the Civil War, Henry Shaw decided to donate nearly 300 acres of his land to the City for a public park. It required exceptional vision for him to foresee the development of the treeless and waterless prairie into the magnificent park that it was to become.
Acceptance by the City included the provision that public funds would be used for the Park's upkeep. Since the site was beyond the City limits of that time, the Park was created by an act of the State legislature on March 9, 1867. It was to be administered by a board of commissioners with Shaw a life-time member. Shaw was also the chief designer for park improvements, with civil engineer Francis Tunica in charge of construction. The Park tract was three-tenths and one and one quarter miles in length from Grand Boulevard to Kingshighway. It was the intention of the donor that a 200 foot wide strip around the Park's perimeter was to be reserved for the er****on of handsome residences, with their revenue to go toward the support of the Botanical Garden. This plan did not work out and the only "villa" remaining is the one designed by George I. Barnett and occupied by the park superintendent at Tower Grove and Magnolia Avenues. Until recently, the superintendent has been Miss Bernice Gurney, grandaughter of James Gurney who was brought by Shaw in 1868 from Regent's Park in London to act as the Garden's chief gardener and landscape architect. She was succeeded by her son as park superintendent in 1920.
Tower Grove Park was laid out as an English walking park, in a semi-formal arrangement, with fanciful gazebos and pagodas in gay colors scattered around the grounds. More than 20,000 trees were planted and curving driveways were laid out in a "gardensque" style. A straight center drive runs westward from the Grand entrance, interrupted at several points by circles containing statuary, terminating at the transverse drive from the Tower Grove entrance. The "villa strip" was purchased by the City and added to the Park in 1926, making it the City's second largest park, covering 285 acres.
All of the Park's entrances are reached through ornamental gateways with wrought iron work and stone pylons. The East Gate at Grand was designed by Shaw in 1870. It is marked by large limestone piers topped by zinc weeping lions. Tall thirty foot columns, with limestone bulls at their tops, located at the Tower Grove entrance, once supported galleries under the dome of the old Courthouse. They were acquired by Shaw when the rotunda was remodeled. Marking the 200 foot strip, at this point, are limestone markers topped with stags. This gateway was erected between 1868 and 1870. At the Arsenal Street entrance or South Gate, also dating from 1870, is a stone gate house designed by George I. Barnett. This was the last Park building built by Shaw before his death. Nearby is a "well-house", one of twelve built in the early 1870's, as the only source of water for the Park. When a water pipe was laid in Arsenal Street in 1872, a tap was made providing the Park with City water.
As a result, a lily pond and fountain were built near the north entrance. On its north side are the "ruins" a picturesque arrangement of stone blocks from the 1867 fire ruins of the first Lindell Hotel. East of this is the Music Stand, completed in 1872 and surrounded by polished granite pedestals bearing busts of famous composers. All of this was made possible by the generosity of Henry Shaw. Also donated by Shaw are major pieces of statuary in the Park, representing von Humboldt and Shakespeare. All are the work of sculpture Ferdinand von Miller of Munich. The Shakespeare and Humboldt statues were unveiled by Shaw in 1878. Humboldt's figure is located in a drive circle east of the pond and Shakespeare's is in the circle of the transverse drive near the center of the Park. The two statues are mounted on red granite pedestals designed by architect Barnett.
As a memorial to the Park's donor, a battery of tennis courts with a stone entrance house was erected by the City in 1952. A bronze portrait medallion of Shaw, formerly on the base of the Humboldt statue, was remounted on the west wall of the gate house at that time.
In 1968, a statue of Baron von Steuben was presented to the City and erected in the Park north of the "ruins". It had formerly decorated the Liederkranz Club on South Grand.
At the Park's Kingshighway entrance, is a stone castellated gateway with forty foot towers, designed by Barnett.
Supplementing the traffic entrances to the Park are four pedestrian gateways interspersed at convenient locations on the Park's perimeter. Another evidence of Shaw's concern for walkers was the thoughtful provision for shelter given by the many summer houses in the Park. Tower Grove Park today is a highly prized and intensively used recreation space for South St. Louisans.
Thanks to stlouis-mo.gov for this info.

09/08/2020

Missouri History with a Shaw Connection
The Missouri Loyalty Oath
Missouri once had a state loyalty oath. It was part of the constitution written by Radical Republicans at the end of the Civil War in that convention that started on January 6, 1865. The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial museum (the JNEM is the formal name for the Gateway Arch complex in St. Louis) has a copy of an Oath of Loyalty Book with signatures of men holding or seeking public office from 1868-1871.
If you did not take the oath that you had been a loyal citizen to Union-controlled Missouri during the Civil War and that you would uphold the provisions of the 1865 constitution, you were denied many basic citizenship rights including the right to practice a profession including preaching and teaching, to hold public office, to serve as a corporate trustee, or to vote. Violators could be fined $500.
More than 800 sheriffs, judges, and other officials were thrown out of office under the constitution. Two members of the three-member state supreme court were removed from their offices by the state militia, their positions filled by Radicals who would make sure the constitution’s provisions were upheld.
The Catholic Church launched a strong opposition movement with St. Louis Archbishop Peter Kenrick telling priests they could not take the oath because their “does not emanate from the State, and we cannot, without compromising the ecclesiastical state, consent to take it.” And he flatly stated, “No Catholic Priest in Missouri will take it.”
Dozens of priests and nuns and Protestant ministers were arrested. One was Father John Cummings, the pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Louisiana, in Pike County, who was arrested after preaching to a group of railroad workers on September 3, 1865, and fined $500 for preaching without having taken the state loyalty oath. He refused to pay the fine. The restructured Missouri Supreme Court made sure his conviction was upheld. The case went to the United States Supreme Court.
The First Amendment Freedom of Religion was not the issue in these proceedings, as one might think it would have been. The legal issue was the loyalty oath as a legal standard.
Cummings’ attorneys argued that the loyalty oath in the constitution was an ex post facto law–a law that criminalized past acts that were not crimes at the time they were committed and that it assumed the clergy (and others by reference although this case was only a clergy case) was guilty of treason until proven innocent. That would be a “bill of attainder” which is forbidden by the United States Constitution that establishes a person is innocent until proven guilty.
The court ruled 5-4 on those legal points to overturn Cummings’ conviction and find the loyalty oath unconstitutional.
Thanks to The Missourinet Blog and The Missouri Historical Society

09/01/2020

JUST SOLD!!!!!!!!!
4953 Chippewa
Another great St Louis City 2 Family Home
Sold By
Failoni Consultants RE