Update: I went back and revisited the Tenth Street Mall in the Winter of 2021.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad they saved the houses left in LaSalle Park, which I’ve photographed before. But they did some weird things, like leaving these two houses above and below cut off from the street on a pedestrian mall, facing a housing project that is poorly managed and largely vacant.

And now, as seen above, the absentee slumlord has allowed the building to be threatened with demolition. What a sad ending to this saga.

But then, on the other side of an impenetrable hedge of bushes, is the perfectly beautiful and quaint Morrison Avenue, which is lined with houses that would be the envy of any neighborhood (and remind us of what was demolished around them).

The greater Frenchtown neighborhood just south of downtown was filled with Germans, with famous names such as Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch before they moved further south. Much of that amazing housing stock was demolished for now failed housing projects.

Look at this amazing storefront below; it is a type that is now slowly fading away in much of the city, and I hope that this area is preserved and possibly expanded with new in-fill in the future.