My discoveries usually begin with a question: why does Clemens Avenue just north of the old St. Luke’s Hospital on Delmar curve in the middle of the block, for seemingly no reason? Looking at old Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, we… Continue Reading
Well, isn’t this interesting? Another large cluster of wood frame houses on Conde Street. I had spotted this cluster a while back (fifth photo), and I finally got back to take a look at them. There are one story versions,… Continue Reading
College Avenue is an interesting mix of buildings, to say the least. There is the famous house above, and there is the stately Tudor Revival house below. We first spotted the house above in May of 2010 (fifth photo), and… Continue Reading
DeSoto Avenue also has some surprises, such as this Tudor Revival latecomer to the neighborhood, which sits on a corner. The architect factored the corner lot into the composition, and the house works from different elevations. But moving west, more… Continue Reading
So what is going on here? The only homogeneous blocks in all of College Hill are the Modernist bungalows and duplexes, and in they fill 80% of the 1500 block of Gano Avenue. What was here? Compton and Dry and… Continue Reading
There is no demand for autocentric strip malls in North St. Louis. If I am wrong, then why is this strip mall still sitting empty two years after being built? Oh alright, there is now finally one store that’s moved… Continue Reading
Ferry Street heads southeast at a diagonal down towards the river, but has been cut off by Interstate 70. The remaining houses are a cross section of Hyde Park. There are some extremely old houses, such as the wood frame… Continue Reading
Continuing on, we see more mid-Twentieth Century in-fill, like one would expect to see in St. Louis Hills in Southwest City. I think what I find so fascinating about these streets is the wide variety of housing stock from the… Continue Reading
“Vine Grove Avenue? Wow, that’s a street I’ve never heard of before,” I said, as we walked up Labadie Avenue. For whatever reason, surveyors left an awkward amount of land in between Labadie and Ashland Avenues, making it too wide… Continue Reading
I’ve long documented St. Louis Avenue between N. Florissant and Parnell, and from Parnell to Grand, so now I will take a closer look at the secondary artery cobbled together from a series of streets that stretches the length of… Continue Reading