I’ve become intrigued by the physical forms of neighborhoods where the dominant orientation of buildings face only one orientation. For example, in Tower Grove South, houses and apartments face north or south on east-west streets, even at the intersections with the north-south arteries. But…there are disobedient houses on those north-south arteries that choose to face east or west. I chose Gustine Avenue, and made a census of sorts of the handful of buildings that do just that, starting in the south at Gravois Avenue and working my north to Arsenal Street. First up, above were a couple of houses.

New construction filled in the whole lot here, building in the backyard and facing Gustine Avenue, as you can see above.

But then there were a couple of very large apartments buildings at Utah Street. Now this is where the boulevard ends, so perhaps it was somehow more logical to have the buildings face east?

But then there are a couple of one-off apartment buildings. Maybe it was to maximize the number of units on a given piece of property?

I think that seems to be the case; as you can see, you can put a larger apartment building with doors accessing the street when it faces east.