I looked around the residential areas north of Niedringhaus Avenue in Granite City back in early April.

The town’s heart is still the steel mill, which lies on the southeastern part of town, but the houses on this side of Niedringhaus are not the workers’ homes.

They date from the early Twentieth Century, and are a wide range of styles.

Someone solved their flat roof problems by building a sloped roof over it.

The architecture, including that of churches, is distinct from that of St. Louis across the river.