It’s a little hard to explain, but Benton Park has two “half blocks,” accidents of surveyors and pre-existing landmarks that prevented the laying out of full blocks. Senate Street and Congress Street are two short streets that go one and… Continue Reading
I looked at Wisconsin Avenue north of Arsenal Street last November, but it’s such a great street that it’s worth revisiting. Take the house below; it is one of the oldest homes in the City, and it is impeccably restored.… Continue Reading
Lynch Street is an interesting east-west street. It starts by the river, goes through Soulard and Benton Park, and then ends ignominiously as an alley with a street sign in Fox Park near St. Francis de Sales, squeezed out by… Continue Reading
Well, then. There was a cottonwood tree that was snowing on Benton Park on the day I was photographing the neighborhood, so you’ll see little white dots in a lot of the photographs in the next week. Pestalozzi Street is… Continue Reading
Starting out in the countryside near Augusta, Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church dates back to 1851. Its building is a wonderful example of a wood frame Gothic Revival church; I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Catholic church that… Continue Reading
The local news is reporting that the City has gotten a grant to tear down more abandoned buildings in the St. Louis Place and JeffVanderLou neighborhoods. If Las Vegas were open right now and taking wagers on St. Louis blight,… Continue Reading
I love this corner storefront on Cass Avenue. It looks like it once had a turret that was higher, as there is no decorative terracotta on its parapet. I suppose it was removed at some point. It has sat abandoned… Continue Reading
It’s hard to believe it, but the houses above were once an almost completely ruined pile of smoking timbers and collapsed brick walls a few years ago. I wrote an article about those two houses, and the other Civil War-era… Continue Reading
The Cathedral of St. Raphael was completed in 1861 in brick, with the front facade in limestone finished later in 1876. Dubuque is actually an archdiocese, despite being by far a much smaller city than many other metropolitan areas in… Continue Reading
At the corner of West 5th Street and Bluff Street is the Augustine A. Cooper House, a restored Romanesque Revival mansion that is now a bed and breakfast. Cooper was a wagon manufacturer in Dubuque, and his wagons were shipped… Continue Reading