The Continental Building as a blimp port

Years ago, a friend asked me to find out what the blinking tower light on top of the Continental Life building was for. Fast forward a couple weeks to a conversation with another friend about architecture.  I mentioned my Continental Life Building mission, and he said that he had read that it was originally intended as a dirigible docking mast. How cool is that? And it coincided with me watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the first time!

Nerd that I am, I had to fact check this before I ran to share it with the blog. I Googled everything I could think of and even spent an hour flipping through The Queen of Lace: The Story of the Continental Life Building at Barnes and Noble. One day when I had nearly given up, I had the eureka moment of finding the right search terms, and Google took me to page 168 of The Queen of Lace on GoogleBooks.

"While there are a number of urban legends about the Continental Building, two of the most prominent tales are the 'Superman Building' and the 'Dirigible Mooring Mast.'"

BUMMER! I was really hoping this one was true. While it IS true that the skyscraper docking mast was attempted at the Empire State Building, it only worked once and that was for less than 3 minutes. The Continental Life's blinky light was never intended as anything more than a radio tower. Today, after the restoration of the building, it's just a light feature.

More information about the Empire State Building's dirigible mooring mast.

Built St Louis's page about the Continental Life Building.

Urban Legends

Hello, Readers! In the process of researching a future topic, I found out that something I thought to be historical fact is actually an urban legend. That got me thinking that it would be really fun to throw in some urban legend nuggets during the weeks I don't have time for adventuring.

I would love to get your input on this one! Whether you know it's an urban legend, or you've always wondered, leave comments or send me an email (see the "About Me" page) and I will get to sleuthing!

Pink Elephant Antique Mall

The Pink Elephant!
Onward to the next adventure! On my birthday, Keith and I went to find the Pink Elephant Antique Mall in Livingston, Illinois. It's about 45 minutes outside of St Louis. When you see it, go to the next exit and circle back via the service road.


The antique mall is in the old high school. This is the outside of the gym.


Beach Guy and Elephant

The Beach Guy, aka Swimmer Giant, is not the same as a Muffler Man. You'll see a Muffler Man inside; they're not as tall. To answer the most popular question: He should be holding a frosty beverage.


Keith said, "You need to get one from a 'This is really tall' perspective."


I forget what Keith called this. Some kind of hand-crank gun. At some point it was painted pink.


Lawn statuary garden


Plywood cutouts in the front vestibule. Every time the door opens, a recorded "Welcome to the Pink Elephant" message plays. Don't forget to sign the guest book!


Not sure if this was a wax figure or mannequin, but there are lots of wax figures inside. Everyone agrees: wax figures that are missing limbs are creepy.


Hank the Muffler Man! The Muffler Man should, of course, be holding a muffler. You can see the gym scoreboard behind his head.


View from the stairs to the second floor


Unknown Bank Robber. We know he was a bank robber because he has a bag of loot next to his feet.


Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley.

You know I'd buy up all these wax figures for my own wax museum, but like most things in the mall they are rather pricey for the condition they are in. I didn't look for tags on all of them but the bank robber was $325.




Waaaaay back in the basement, a Handicapable... um... Cattle Rustler? Member of the James Gang? Baldknobber?


The good wax figures use real human hair. I'm just saying.


Upstairs. Not sure why Jolly Green Giant has been separated from his lower limbs.


Original Hopalong Cassidy and Annie Oakley children's costumes, complete with original boxes.


And finally, the piece de resistance, my birthday present from Keith. Isn't it glorious?

Old St Marcus Cemetery

While researching Concordia Cemetery, I found mention of Old St Marcus Cemetery and the fact that "many, but not all, of the graves from Old St. Marcus were moved to New St. Marcus Cemetery." "Many?" What? This bears investigating.


We're getting fancy this week!

The first thing I want to point out about that satellite picture is that it shows Old St Marcus Cemetery as being rather large and kind of a backwards L shape. I assume that technically that is the original boundary of the cemetery. However, today you have to walk from Loughborough all the way to that path that starts right around Christy Drive before you see any signage or monuments.


So, it's a park... with bodies. I see.

There's a small sign at the bottom of the hill, and you follow that winding path up to to top of the hill where you see this larger sign closer to Gravois. As you walk up the path, you start to see various large scattered monuments.



This is all at once on of the eeriest, saddest, most moving sight I've ever seen. Apparently, the previous owner let the cemetery fall into a sad state of neglect, and due to innumerable access points, there was a lot of vandalism and grave robbing and no way for the property to be effectively patrolled.





Here's an interesting letter I found on Rootsweb about the situation. I don't know who that person is or how accurate the information is, so take with a grain of salt. In any case, it's very interesting.



So, one wonders, if there were no records of the grave placement, how did they move "many" of the bodies to New St Marcus? Like that letter writer said, there wasn't one stone within 25 feet of it's grave the first time he saw the cemetery in 1964.



According to one genealogical researcher, it was the graves in perpetual care that were moved to New St Marcus. The rest remain, relatively in their original location.


This is my favorite picture from the afternoon. It says, "RUH IM STILLEN FRIEDEN MILD GATTE VATER STETS UNS TEUER DANKBAR HEGEN WIR DEIN BILD BIS ZUR AUFERSTEHUNGS FEIER." I don't know if this is a sentence or a list of names or what. My German is spotty at best.



For you ghost hunters, I did find one online reference to "spectacular orbs" that can be seen in the cemetery from Gravois after dark. I would love to check the place out at night, but I respect that the compromise made between neighborhood residents, families, and the city was specifically to keep yahoos like me out of there at night.



At the top of the hill is a sort of memorial garden, the walls of which contain the small headstones that were salvaged. The rest of the pictures are wide shots of each wall, and then closeups of a few of the more interesting ones.