Northeast of downtown Belleville, the housing stock clearly dates to the early Twentieth Century with a mix of different revival styles on larger lots. But it is deeply concerning to me that right in the middle of extremely well-maintained and… Continue Reading
Just north of downtown Belleville are a cluster of beautiful Italianate houses, many of which have been adapted for other uses over the years, as is common as the commercial core of a city grows into nearby residential areas. There… Continue Reading
I’m really worried about Jennings. I have visited a couple times over the years (yes, I understand that a couple of visits is not good enough to get a complete understanding of a community), and every time I go back,… Continue Reading
I looked around the residential areas north of Niedringhaus Avenue in Granite City back in early April. The town’s heart is still the steel mill, which lies on the southeastern part of town, but the houses on this side of… Continue Reading
I’ve done a series of posts on the “Borderlands,” that strip of land left between St. Louis and the northern suburbs separated by Skinker/Kienlen (two of them you can read here and here). The most relevant one to this post,… Continue Reading
North of the Delmar Loop, and even north of Olive Boulevard, there is an intriguing cluster of old, very old houses, dating back to perhaps the late Nineteenth Century west of the City limits. The east-west streets have the same… Continue Reading
Historic aerial photography reveals that Bircher Boulevard used to be just that, a tree-lined, elegant boulevard in North St. Louis, separating the Penrose and Walnut Park neighborhoods. But then Interstate 70 came along, and annihilated it, turning Bircher Boulevard into… Continue Reading
I’ve been bringing people up to Mount Grace Convent for years, and this house is out in the strange triangle out in front, and I just realized it has really gone downhill. I’m afraid it is abandoned now.
There are many well-maintained streets, such as Zealand Avenue (second photo), in College Hill, where we saw homeowners sweeping their sidewalks out in front of their bungalows. But there is also abandonment, sadly, such as this stately house below, which we… Continue Reading
Moving north, the street grid changes, and there are a series of north-south streets that break up the dominance of the east west streets, as well as some north-south streets that continue up from the south. There are also more… Continue Reading