I have some leftover photos from the summer that I needed to clear out. Above, this house has collapsed on West Florissant Avenue just north of Grand Boulevard in the College Hill neighborhood, unfortunately. The house below is in Hyde Park, and I originally looked at it back in August of 2018. The infamous gas…
Tag: Central Illinois
Perry Street, Northeast Peoria
It’s presidential election season, so it’s time to go to Peoria! In this visit we head up Perry Street in the northeast streets of the city, which I have now created a tag named Northeast Peoria due to the frequency I visit the area. For the life of me I had no memory of a…
Eureka College, Central Illinois
I bet you always wondered where Ronald Reagan went to college, didn’t you? I’d driven by a million times but I finally detoured and photographed the leafy campus of Eureka College in Central Illinois. Unlike many other small colleges around the country, it is holding on and continuing to enroll students. Like any Midwestern university,…
Grandview Drive, Peoria Heights
Straddling the city of Peoria and suburb of Peoria Heights, Grandview Drive offers panoramic views of Lake Peoria, a widening of the Illinois River as its wends its way through the prairie, buffeted by bluffs to the west. Originally envisioned in 1894, construction began in 1903 and was completed several years later. Laid out like…
Washington, Illinois, Spring 2024
At the intersection of Holland and South Main streets is an ensemble of Victorian Period houses in Washington, Illinois that I have revisited over the years, the first time in 2009 and the second time at least in 2022. This first house is on the northwest corner of the intersection. On the southwest corner is…
Around the Family Farm, Spring 2024
I checked up on the family farm east of Peoria in Central Illinois the last weekend of April, and things were looking good even if the fields were very wet, delaying spring planting. It was very windy, and it was alternating sunny and cloudy all day long. No longhorns could be spotted at the neighbor’s…
Deer Creek Township, Late January 2024
A dense fog blanketed the area around my family farm in late January as snow and ice persisted on the ground. January in the country is a time of hibernation and preparation, as the spring is closer than you think. If you look closely, you can see the neighbor’s longhorns, an ubiquitous presence now for…
Family Farm, August 2023
My last stop on my August travels was my family farm east of Peoria in Central Illinois. As longtime readers know, the cattle barn was destroyed by a tornado in late March. These photos are from late August, but the destroyed barn is now completely cleaned up. I also had a surprise, as the last…
Down By The River and the South Side, Peoria, August 2023
The public housing down by the river, which I first spotted way back in December of 2008, are finally being demolished. I had discovered they were built when Peoria demolished the red light district where Richard Pryor had grown up. The new buildings going up are nice, and they even feature the latest navy blue…
Grain Elevators, South of Peoria
These massive grain elevators south of Peoria along the Illinois River are slated for demolition–or maybe they aren’t. They’ll probably sit around for a long time until they’re finally, or completely, demolished.