The greater Dutchtown area, including Benton Park West, Gravois Park and the Dutchtown South neighborhoods, is still one of the most beautiful parts of the city. Stately brick houses, with a variety of styles, shows what the future could be in St. Louis, or what could have been. Learning from the mistakes of demolition to save neighborhoods, new leadership down this way will keep the foolishness of destruction at bay. And in time, the beautiful homes of this area, as typified by these houses on California Avenue south of Cherokee Street, will be refurbished and reoccupied, if they haven’t already.

Above, this house almost looks like it could be from the Netherlands or northern Germany.

Look at that copper cornice on the left with that tan brick! And then right next door, a small worker’s cottage from the 1870s or so.

And these two simple but stately Italianate houses.