Tom Pickel of DeSales Housing took me down this wonderful one block street recently, tucked away in the narrow blocks in between Eiler and Eichelberger. This block, the 500 block of Eiler, was obviously, and according to city records, built by one developer in 1915.
A search of the addresses in local records reveals no one particularly famous, but lots of German last names. But that’s not surprising since this is the far south part of Dutchtown (some might consider it the furthest northern edge of Carondelet).
Of course, it is riddled with properties left vacant by out of town slumlords.
But the beauty remains, even if it has gotten a little rough around the edges.
According to my friend Toby Weiss, surveyors screwed up the platting of blocks down here, and you have the strange situation of people’s backyards facing a normal street, in this case Eichelberger.
Make sure to catch my lecture on my photography at the International Photography Hall of Fame on March 7th at 6:00 PM. More details here.
Hmmm, I seem to remember that during our house search, one of the houses we looked at was a converted two-family on this block. It wasn’t really the most competent conversion I’ve seen. I mean, when there’s a copper pipe running from the second floor, sitting proud of about a foot from the wall in a corner of the dining room, c’mon. And the way they handled the stairs to the second floor was too bizarre to describe.
They look to be about the same vintage as our home, 1912. I wonder if one of the Degenhardt boys built these.