Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
What's behind this door in the basement of City Hall?
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
"Any kind of utility you can imagine," says Rich Bradley, the city's chief engineer. The tunnels do run from City Hall to other government buildings, but are not escape paths.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
The various pipes carry water, fiber optic, electric and steam to the buildings.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
Looking out from Soldiers' Memorial, there's no evidence of that tangle under the streets. The previous tunnel runs roughly along this path.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
This map from Trigen St. Louis Energy Corp. shows in detail the steam pipe system near Soldiers' Memorial. Trigen operates the city's steam system, including the pipe that burst.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
Paint on the streets near the ruptured steam pipe shows just how much crews have to deal with when they dig.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
The Lemp Brewery in south St. Louis.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
Like most 19th century brewers, Adam Lemp built his business on top of a cave - it provided temperature-controlled storage in the days before artificial refrigeration.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
A conveyor belt on the cave ceiling once carried kegs of beer from storage.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
The company used this opening to bring down machinery used in the brewing process.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
Scars in the wall show where workers used dynamite to widen what started as a natural hole.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
After the invention of artifical cooling, the Lemps used the cave as a private playground. These are the remains of props from an underground theater.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
The theater included state-of-the-art (for the time) lighting and a ceiling painted to look like the blue skies of the Bavarian Alps.
Photo by (Rachel Lippmann/St. Louis Public Radio)
The caves then found a third life as a natural dump for rubble from buildings that were once part of tourist attractions built around the caves. Most of the 30 caves in the city were eventually filled in this way.
