An Anonymous Row of Houses, Crumbling

I discovered this beautiful row of houses a month or so ago, but I didn’t get a chance to photograph them.  I went back and took a series of pictures, more or less looking at each house one by one.

The westernmost is starting to crumble, its ashlar falling off, revealing brick underneath.

The tree dominating the next two in many ways sums up the state of the houses: once grand but now devoid of life.

The three Second Empire houses have an Italianate neighbor, perhaps surviving because it shares a wall with the easternmost house.  But it too is starting to show the effects of abandonment.

It wasn’t always like this; these houses were once part of a thriving but very old neighborhood of St. Louis. Property records say they were built in 1890, but they are owned by Paul McKee’s shell company, so they are probably doomed to end up as rubble.