Riverside Antiques

Riverside Antiques has been dealing in architectural salvage on Cherokee Street since 1979, which makes it one of the longest-established shops on the Row and one of the few anywhere in St. Louis working at this scale.

Architectural salvage is a particular trade, and St. Louis is a particularly good city for it. This is a city built of brick and millwork, and a great deal of it has come down over the past century – which means the doors, mantels, staircases and light fittings of demolished houses have to go somewhere. Riverside is one of the places they go. The stock runs to doors and door hardware, mantels, windows, millwork, lighting and plumbing fixtures, along with the assortment of odd and unusual objects that any salvage yard accumulates and that is half the reason to visit.

The shop is worth knowing about for two quite different kinds of customer. One is restoring an old house and needs a five-panel door of the right period, or hardware that matches what is already on the other seven doors – the sort of thing no modern supplier sells and no reproduction quite passes for. The other has no project at all and simply wants to spend an hour among salvaged things, which is a perfectly good use of an afternoon.

Riverside sits at the western end of Cherokee Antique Row, among the antique and vintage dealers that give the street its name, and it is the first stop for anyone whose interest runs to buildings rather than furniture.