VERY HOT WATER

There is a steam loop under downtown St. Louis. What's a steam loop? The first electric generating station here was built along the Mississippi for the 1904 World’s Fair. As the city's needs grew and more power plants were built, the old one was put to a limited use. It created vast amounts of steam that was circulated through the city center in heavy pipes. These branched off into many buildings to provide heat in the days of radiators and, in some cases, to power electricity generating turbines for a particular location. I can't imagine that it is very widely used these days but it still exists. You don't want to open this manhole cover and have a peek.  

 

Today is Mrs C. and my 47th (gasp!) anniversary and we're off for a little getaway to someplace interesting. Pictures to follow soon.

                   

FOSSIL FUELS

St. Louis' oldest power plant is a bit north of the Arch. It opened in 1904 and lit all the bulbs in the World's Fair that year. It remained the main source for electricity to downtown for decades, converting in turn from coal to oil to natural gas. It still operates in a limited capacity. It feeds a steam loop throughout downtown so buildings don't need their own boilers. Um, do buildings still need boilers? 

Don't see it from the river very often.              

Power & Light

Black and white week continues:

A little north of the Arch by the Mississippi sits the old Union Power & Light plant, St. Louis' original electrical generating station. The classical architecture contrasts sharply with the industrial equipment jutting out of it and the new bridge to the right.

The generators within powered the lights at The Palace of Electricity at the 1904 World's Fair here. As best I can tell from research it still produces something, although I see very few workers' cars when I walk around it.                       
                       

Power For Industry

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An old power plant in the area north of the Arch. The architecture is beautiful: take away the smokestacks and it could be a museum. Still, it looks as if it is holding off an encroaching prairie. The place still pumps steam through a large downtown loop, used to heat many buildings.

WHAT I LEARNED AT JIM RICHARDSON'S SEMINAR YESTERDAY: I am making much too little use of my wide angle lens. You can do much more at night with new DSLRs than I imagined. You can get really good candid street shots of people by using pre-set manual focus and exposure, taking the camera away from your face and putting it on your lap aimed at the area of interest, using motor drive on the shutter, then just firing away when something interesting passes. You should take two external hard drives for backup when you travel, leave one in the hotel and keep one with you when you are out.

TOMORROW: two windows - and a kidnapping?