Update: I went back to the area in January of 2024. For some unknown reason, I found myself heading east down Parkdale Avenue in Clayton a couple weeks ago. In many ways, it is sort of the perfect urban. First, there is a block of apartment buildings, for those who need or want a small…
Tag: Houses
Missouri Avenue Between Ann and Shenandoah Avenues, McKinley Heights
I went and photographed the 2200 block of Missouri Avenue, walking north looking at the west side of the street until I reached Ann Avenue, and then turning around and photographing the east side. As the Sanborn Map from August of 1909 shows, very little loss has happened on the block since then. There is…
Virginia Avenue Between Sidney Street and Halliday Avenue, East Side
I’m not going to apologize for or lay off my criticism of the crap that’s happening to innocent houses such as the one you see above and below. They’re the same house, before and after a certain firm gets ahold of houses that are in perfectly fine shape, and then proceed to destroy them, putting…
Tennessee Avenue Between Magnolia and Shenandoah Avenues, East Side
Heading north up Tennessee Avenue, there are more houses that come in pairs or in triplets. And again, most are actually two-families disguised to look like single-family houses. The architecture reflects the more linear and stern forms of early Twentieth Century building trends in the areas around Tower Grove Park. But there are also houses,…
Magnolia Avenue Between Virginia and Tennessee Avenues, North Side
I took a walk down Magnolia Avenue in Tower Grove East. There is a wide variety of different housing styles, and even a wonderful music school on the corner with Virginia, The Music Room. Interestingly, below, on the left is a house that looks like a two-family, and on the right is a two-family that…
Frenchtown, St. Charles
North Second Street in St. Charles goes through an interesting neighborhood named Frenchtown, not to be confused with the area of the same name in St. Louis just south of downtown. This area was developed after the original French settlement, and there is some really great architecture. St. Charles wants the area to attract young…
Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, Florissant
Update: I went back and looked at the neighborhood around the church in greater depth in August of 2023, including National Register properties. It’s a little difficult to photograph Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in the middle of downtown Florissant, but it is a fantastic example of Gothic Revival architecture, replacing the original church in…
Missouri Avenue Between Miami and Potomac Streets, West Side
News of some redevelopment in the 3500 block of Missouri Avenue brought me down to photograph the area, and I discovered two exceptionally interesting buildings that could date to at least the 1870s if not the 1860s. This is a very old subdivision of the St. Louis Commons; Henry T. Blow bought and subdivided the…
Missouri Avenue Between Pestalozzi and Arsenal Streets, Benton Park
Missouri Avenue between Pestalozzi and Arsenal streets has substantially newer houses than most of Benton Park. I am not sure why it was developed later, but it may have been because of the presence of larger sinkholes in the area. There are still some older houses, though, such as the one below. But for the…
Lemp Avenue Between Lynch and Pestalozzi Streets, Benton Park
Lemp Avenue continues on far north of the original subdivision that Adam Lemp laid out by his cave down by Cherokee Street. In fact, at one point the northern part of what is now Lemp Avenue was called Buena Vista Avenue, probably named after the battle from the Mexican American War. As part of the…