My mom found this illustrated map of St. Louis in my grandparents’ basement and brought it to me. It needed to be saved, and I am the one who saves things. Isn’t it the greatest?
It’s a promotional map from the old department store Stix-Baer & Fuller, and is dated 1935. Who knows where it came from. Probably a garage sale or something along the way.
It was stapled to the hand-cut mat. (Truly, one of the strangest framing choices I’ve seen.) The backing was being eaten by something. The frame was grimy. I took it apart, re-glued the frame, and cleaned everything up. The mat and the backing had to go obviously, so I bought a piece of presentation board from the art store, placed the map on top, and put the frame back together.
It’s worth noting this is not the official, archival way to frame something. In fact, the experts suggest that the thing you are framing shouldn’t touch the glass. But If I framed everything according to the experts, I would be spending a small fortune. This map has made it 80 years in a frame with horrible moldy backing. This is an improvement. So we’ll just go with it.
Most of the landmarks noted are still around, but there are a few I’ve never even heard of. Going to have to do some research.
I like the vintage find you are featuring (the St. Louis map), but I _love_ that leaded window! It’s such an unusual shape and seems to have latching mechanisms on it. Do you have any idea how or where it was originally used?
Hi Linda,
I love the window too! I found it a few years ago at an antique mall, so I don’t know anything about it really. There are more closeup photos in this post. The latches shift pins that were presumably used to keep the window in place. I guess you couldn’t really “open” the window since it doesn’t appear to have hinges or anything, but probably could remove the entire thing from the opening.
Oh, and I think the yellow and orange parts were actually painted at some point. The glass itself does not look to be colored like true stained glass.