Continuing my practice of going up and down blocks in the City of St. Louis with interesting architecture, I’m going to look at some notable and very intact streets on the south side of Soulard. The first one I’ll be looking at is in Eighteenth Street from Sidney to Barton Street, passing over Victor. We’ll only be looking at the east side here, because the west side was annihilated by the construction of the Ozark Expressway in the 1950s, so is now a depressing fence choked with volunteer trees.

Soulard obviously is one of the oldest neighborhoods in St. Louis, but it was itself actually built as a suburb out in the country originally. Much of the house stock, like the rows shown above and below, are Greek Revival rowhouses.

There is a half-flounder that sneaks in, illustrating the real reason such rooflines exist: to channel water from the roof to one side of the property where there is a gangway.

More beautiful Greek Revival townhouses continue the streetwall.

This house below almost certainly was either Italianate but more likely Second Empire originally but was simplified at some point in the early Twentieth Century.

Next up are some vacant lots, that have a history. They are the old parcels on the east side of Eighteenth Street before the interstate came through and destroyed their frontage. They still exist, but the only access is from the alley and Barton Street.

On the other side of the alley is that amazing row of houses on the west side of Thirteenth Street that I looked at in extensus last fall. Interestingly, all of those lots above are privately owned, but what their future will be is unknown; they’ve been sitting like this coming around now for seventy-five years.