As I mentioned yesterday, Missouri Preservation listed the “JeffVanderLou Green Board Buildings” as one of their 2024 Places in Peril. South of Cass Avenue, which I have erroneously included in my Near North Side neighborhood for years, is actually also part of JeffVanderLou, and the following photos are from the well-preserved (for now) 2800 block of Dayton Street.

Sadly, the houses above have been demolished, replaced with a vacant lot.

Mennonite missionaries had a strong presence in JeffVanderLou back to at least the 1960s, and Bethesda Mennonite Church, with an African American congregation, blossomed from that meeting. Sadly, the church closed several years ago; back in February of 2012, I photographed it when it was still in operation (third photo down).

But there are really some stunning Second Empire houses; someone claims Lafayette Square has the most, but I don’t know how they proved that. There are certainly many on the North Side in neighborhoods such as JeffVanderLou.

Then there are these two fabulous houses right next to each other with a later, probably Twentieth Century storefront.

We can imagine the density of the neighborhood to have a store squeezed in the middle of the block like this.

And even more amazingly, we have this fantastic photo of what it looked like back in the day, when this was the densest neighborhood in the city, with tens of thousands of people living with a mile radius.

JeffVanderLou simplified the roofs by removing dormers, which is understandable when they were trying to stabilize as many houses as possible.

This church is holding on, thankfully.

Long vistas are afforded due to demolition.

There are also plenty of beautiful Italianate houses.

These houses below are still standing and I just missed photographing them, but again, look at the corner store at North Jefferson; it would just be a side yard in modern development, but it was squeezed in because there was the demand. It’s gone today.