The St. Louis Palladium.

This is very cool! Famous St Louis architectural photographer Peter Wilson came along one day to the Palladium building and set up a tripod for a couple of shots while we talked about the history and the Club Plantation. He was so casual about what he was doing, that I suspected that he was just snapping reference shots. Then last week he sent me this -

Wow. What a beautiful shot!

This isn't what I saw that day. When I was standing on the sidewalk across from the building, I could find no other view of the structure other than a straightforward composition. Also, it was getting dark early and I assumed there wouldn't be much light to work with. So I am very impressed. Wilson's image really creates an exciting scenery out of the blank shuttered building. No trick floodlights, the photograph shows the natural condition of the building. And in his artwork I can see the antique elegance of the old building - something I now know that Wilson was capturing, but I didn't see while standing in the cold late afternoon on Delmar.

Mr. Wilson's website is here: peterwilsonphotography.com

And this is cool too! Andrew Torch is a fellow artist and proprietor of Andy's Toys. He mentioned to me one day that he had a poster of a montage of St Louis-related ephemera that showed tickets to the St. Louis Palladium Roller Skating Rink. So I rushed over and got a couple of pictures of them.

Looks to me like it's from the 1930s.

Thanks Andy! Go see his store at 9620 Gravois in St. Louis, it's got all the cool stuff your mom threw away when you went away to school.