I realized that I had never looked at California Avenue in Fox Park, just like I had never looked like Pennsylvania Avenue north of Cherokee Street in Benton Park West. This part of Fox Park was a wild and undeveloped section of the St. Louis Commons, filled with crevices, ponds and sinkholes.

We’ll look at the street between Magnolia Avenue and Sidney Street first. Development came in the 1880s and 1890s, and the housing stock is typical of that time period, where ornament moved from wood from planing mills to terracotta and brick.

Also, metal cornices, such as what you see below, also became popular.

There is also this row of four-family apartment buildings, where the terracotta roofs alternate with slightly different details.