The Beauty of Dutchtown, Part 43: Virginia Avenue Between Mount Pleasant and Taft Streets

Passing by Mount Pleasant Street, we see four two-family apartment buildings, obviously built at the same time by the same developer, but yet each one is slightly different in the fenestration and brickwork, so that a casual observer would see unique houses while passing by on the streetcar.

Then there are more commercial spaces, built right up along the sidewalk line; I suspect the building below received a new front that simplified its design sometime in the mid Twentieth Century.

This final building on the west side of the street at Taft Street looks like it was a corner store that was converted into a rental unit on the first floor.

Turning around and heading south and looking at the east side of the street, there is a well preserved corner store front with some nice bay windows for the apartments upstairs.

While the storefronts sit right on the sidewalk line, the apartment buildings are placed a little bit back from the street in the early Twentieth Century away from the rumble of the streetcar tracks. The designs in the brick and pressed tin have replaced wood from planing mills for ornament.

Some businesses do still operate, such as this auto supply store below.

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