South of downtown Belleville is an interesting mix of houses, with everything from brick foursquares you might see in Tower Grove South, to below, old Second Empire houses that would fit in down in Carondelet. Some of the best Italianate… Continue Reading
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
Update: See the second post in this series here and third post here. Historic photographs prove the valley between Chouteau and Forest Park Avenue was never some Lafayette Square-type neighborhood full of beautiful houses that deteriorated into a wasteland. No, it… Continue Reading
Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad they saved the houses left in LaSalle Park, which I’ve photographed before. But they did some weird things, like leaving these two houses above and below cut off from the street on a pedestrian… Continue Reading
Back in early 2018, a group of veterans got together in East St. Louis, responding to the sad state of the World War One Memorial I had photographed in November of 2017. People didn’t think they could do it, but… Continue Reading
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I created a new Special Topics tag a month or so entitled “South Jefferson.” South of Interstate 44, the original Nineteenth Century streetscape is incredibly well-preserved, so for the next couple of days, I’m… Continue Reading
Back in the 1960s, Monsanto and Ralston Purina worked with the city to demolish a huge swath of the historic housing in the Frenchtown neighborhood. They agreed to leave a little pocket for posterity. It’s a wonderful group of Second… Continue Reading
St. John Nepomuk sits just to the east of Tucker Boulevard, originally Twelfth Street, and possesses most of its original buildings, including a school building and parish hall, I believe. I was particularly interested in the building directly across the… Continue Reading
There is much to report on this spring, starting with a collapse of an out building on Utah Street in Benton Park. It can still be salvaged, though. Below, as I suspected would happen, another of the houses sitting on… Continue Reading