Tennessee Avenue Between Miami and Potomac Streets

Crossing Miami on Tennessee, we see one of those classic St. Louis apartment buildings that is really just a series of four-families built contiguous to each other. I love these houses where they used white glazed brick to mimic ashlar stone. This house below looks perfect for a transplant from Baltimore, the land of Permastone….

Two Midwestern Towns, 500 Miles Apart

The town of Rushville, Indiana, possesses one of the more exceptional courthouses out in the country that I’ve seen in awhile. Built in 1896, it still sports its central clocktower, which sometimes is removed, as was done in Kirksville, Missouri, after structural problems appeared. I really love the Damascus arch for the main entrance. The…

Near North Riverfront, Early Fall 2023

Update: The building in the background was completely destroyed by fire on February 3, 2024. Oh, the Near North Riverfront! So potential and so much not going on. Well, a warehouse goes up in flames every so often, so that happens. There doesn’t seem to be any long term plans. I do like the new…

Downtown, Alton

We’re going to swing back through Alton for a few days. Like Hannibal, Quincy or even Cairo, and a bunch of other towns, I can’t help but imagine that except for a few twists of fate, Alton could have been the center of a metropolitan area of two million people, or at least maybe a…

Fairfield Avenue, Newport, Kentucky

We’ve looked at Newport, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati before, but this time we’re going to look at Fairfield Avenue, starting at Ward Avenue and heading east. As I’ve said before, one of the great tragedies of St. Louis and its relationship to the Metro East is that civic and business leaders have not…

Vine Street Over to Race Street, Over the Rhine, Cincinnati

“Lord, on this day of thanksgiving, we thank you for our loved ones, family and friends. We also thank you, oh Lord, that Chris has almost run out of photos from his trip back in August.” Heading down the hill from Clifton, passing through some other neighborhoods, I reached what I call “upper” Vine Street…

Clifton, Cincinnati

Up north, the Clifton neighborhood was an independent town dating to the 1850s, but street car lines, which made the arduous climb up the steep hills feasible, transformed the area in the 1890s. Much of the housing dates to the first years of the Twentieth Century, however, and filled in what had originally been the…

Reading Road, Avondale and the Riots, Cincinnati

I’ve looked at Fourteenth Street NW before in Washington, DC, and probably elsewhere, so I was interested in what had become of Reading Road in the Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati. High up in the hills, there were two riots, one in 1967 and then less than a year later in 1968. The first one revolved…

West of Downtown, Part Two, Cleveland

Just west of the Flats is the Ohio City neighborhood, which of course takes its name from the fact that it was once an independent town in competition with Cleveland across the Cuyahoga River valley. The West Side Market was opened in 1912, and designed by W. Dominick Benes and Benjamin Hubbell; I have to…

Lake View Cemetery and Little Italy, Cleveland

A little bit of a latecomer in the Rural Cemetery Movement, Lake View Cemetery was founded in 1869, east of downtown Cleveland on rugged, steep terrain. While due to the growth of the city and mature trees, the name comes from what had once been a commanding view of Lake Erie. The grounds are lush,…