I came across this short block of Obear Avenue in the Fairgrounds neighborhood. It’s a good example of a street that has been battered by abandonment and demolition. But there are several houses left standing that are occupied.
Category: North
Posts about North St. Louis
Former Christian Hospital, Abandoned
I looked at the former Christian Hospital back in October of 2021 when it had turned into the Prince Hall Senior Services building, and it looked perfectly fine. But now it’s abandoned and totally trashed! What the heck happened?
Bryan Hill Elementary School
Opened in 1911, Bryan Hill Elementary School serves the College Park neighborhood. Designed by William Ittner, it is squeezed into a narrow parcel of land, making photographs of the building difficult. Named after Dr. John Gano Bryan, a famous educator in the late Nineteenth Century, that appellation still does not explain the “Hill” portion. Perhaps…
Ames Elementary School
The original Ames School was built in 1873, at the northeast corner of Hebert and 14th streets. It received an addition in the later Nineteenth Century to the east which has now been torn down. The new Ames Elementary School moved over to Hadley Street, just north of St. Louis Avenue and east of Interstate…
Jefferson Elementary School
We’ll start looking at the schools slated for potential closure in order of age and working out from downtown, more or less. That means we’ll begin with Jefferson Elementary School, which as evidenced from these historic photos, has a long and rich pedigree in St. Louis. Judging from the two photographs above, I suspect the…
Enright Avenue and Delmar Boulevard, June 2026
I wandered around Enright Avenue and Delmar Boulevard west of Vandeventer and took in some of the sights. There’s an old fires station that looks to have been converted into a house. There are a lot of original buildings but there’s also a lot in-fill from the early Twenty-First Century, such as the houses below….
End of Spring 2026 Odds and Ends
It’s that time of year, so it’s time for odds and ends! Above is a spandrel from a storefront in downtown Belleville, looking suspiciously like something Louis Sullivan would design. Below is just another house we found while driving around town. Cleveland High School is looking really, really bad compared to earlier visits; I first…
North Up Blair Avenue, College Hill, May 2026
We finish our trip north of Blair Avenue by looking at College Hill. As I suspected would happen eventually, that wood frame flounder house, which I last looked at back in March of 2024, has been demolished. Things look mostly the same, including the wood frame houses that I’ve often noted before, below. I’ve always…
North Up Blair Avenue, Hyde Park, May 2026, Part Four
I always enjoy the moment when Blair starts heading up the hill towards the Bissell Stand Pipe and the houses sit high up on elevated earthen plinths on the left and right sides of the street. I’ve always liked this extremely old wood frame house below. I still love the Bissell tower, which is one…
North Up Blair Avenue, Hyde Park, May 2026, Part Three
Continuing north up Blair in Hyde Park, we see a Gingerbread house and then the styles go back to what we would expect to see in the neighborhood. Windsor Park was a former quarry, which I’ve talked about before in the past. This little church is still in great condition. But there’s a lot of…