Maryland Avenue Between North Boyle and Newstead Avenues, North Side

Heading west on Maryland Avenue, there first is a very nice in-fill building, which I think is a condominium with three units. It looks good, and fits in well with the neighborhood. Next up is a historic building, and I wonder what is going on here. Is this an example of the eastern part of the apartment building having been torn down, or was it never built in the first place?

I suspect it is the latter, and you can even see the incomplete parapet wall up there at the top right of the photo.

Also, looking to the west, we can see that the other building is longer, and to make the composition of the two apartment buildings bisymmetrical, the one on the right would need to extend for another couple bays.

Also, there is no ornamental front entry like we see on the building to the west.

This has some of the nicest sculpting in stone on a building of this size in St. Louis.

I’ve never seen those little descending divots before, though, and don’t know of a classical precursor.

Then it’s a nice mix of houses that are typical of the early Twentieth Century with apartment buildings mixed in, as you might see throughout the city west of Grand Boulevard.

A new cornice has replaced the original on the apartment building below.

Its massive front entryway is impressive, and it has been painted white.

Sadly, the beautiful apartment buildings that come next were demolished and replaced with some in-fill in what looks to be the 1970s.

4359 Maryland Avenue, Photograph by Oreon E. and R.G. Scott, 1951, Missouri History Museum, N39054

This next building looks like it stepped out of the Sixteenth Century and is now a drug rehab facility. It was originally built as the Methodist Orphans Home.

Fire insurance maps also show that it originally had a wood front porch that was one story tall; looking at it now, I can see where there is that awkward copper lip below the ornate terracotta windows above the front door.