Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Old Post Office - St Louis



I wish I could have told you about Local Harvest, but they abandoned me before I got around to posting this. For years I went into their Old Post Office location, and every time, I caught a glimpse of this amazing sculpture in the building's atrium. Every week I thought to myself that it would probably make a great post, but for some reason I never walked through the doors to get a better look.


This sculpture is Peace and Vigilance With Eagle, by Daniel Chester French. If that name sounds familiar to you, it might be because he went on to create the seated figure of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. This sculpture was originally on top of the building, but the marble was deteriorating in the elements, so it was moved inside in 1990, and a concrete replica is now outside. You can see it from the Olive St  side of the building.


The Old Post Office has a great little free museum about the history and construction of the building. It was designed shortly after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, when the area was flush with cash from supplying troops during the Civil War, and the architecture is fascinating, lavish, and inventive. I highly recommend stopping in sometime to check it out. If you're not in the St Louis area, you can read more about it on their website.

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