Penrose Street Between Blair Avenue and North 11th Street, Hyde Park

I ended up on Penrose Street in Hyde Park recently east of Blair Avenue, which is blocked off with Schoemehl Pots. On the east, Interstate 70 cuts the street off from North Broadway, with which it had long been connected. Some houses are abandoned, like the one above, but others are in great condition and…

Around Blair Avenue, Hyde Park

If you wondered what that giant forty foot deep hole looked like before it was almost completely filled in, this is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago. MSD was working to get the sewer line fixed. Interestingly, it broke in the same place one hundred years ago. I suspect, looking at old…

Blair Avenue Between Newhouse and Angelica Streets, West Side

Speaking of anomalies, and I always tell people to watch out for this, if you ever seen a cluster of newer houses in a neighborhood of much older housing stock in a part of the city that was platted out early, you need to be curious. In this instance, we are looking at the west…

North Up Blair Avenue, Spring 2021

Every year or so, I do a “North up Blair Avenue” post, and see the state of the neighborhoods slashed on their eastern side by Interstate 70. You can see the 2018 and 2019 posts from previous years. I did it again last Saturday, and things are looking good, but also some things are staying…

North Up Blair Avenue, Again

Update: I went back up this way again in late summer of 2019. Last fall, I did a post entitled “North Up Blair Avenue,” which looked at a cross section of the neighborhoods that were affected by the construction of Interstate 70, but that also show signs of rebounding. Beginning above, a house long admired…

South Down Blair Avenue, Afternoon, Early February 2019

The undergrowth has been cleared from around the old Jewish Orthodox Old Home, and it looks like it has been secured to keep people out. It is still owned by a non-profit in Florida, though it owes considerable back property taxes. Moving further south down Blair Avenue, there is such an interesting mix of wood…

North Up Blair Avenue, Fall 2018

Update: I retraced my path in early and late summer of 2019. Many of the buildings seen below have now been demolished and are now vacant lots. The house featured in the pictures above and below was demolished in 2019. Blair Avenue gives you a great cross section of the neighborhoods just to the west…

Hyde Park in the Morning Light #24, One House on Blair Avenue

The house on the left has been suffering for a very long time, and it probably seems even longer for the owners of the building next door. Sadly, it’s a good illustration how houses fall apart over the passage of time. First the hard, high-temperature bricks go on the exterior and then softer bricks are…