There was a recent Riverfront Times story about this house in McKinley Heights, located in the southern portion of the neighborhood. It’s a very interesting house, and I’ve tried to figure out what the heck its original configuration was. there was clearly an addition window or doorway in the middle, and then it was altered. Fire insurance maps don’t help out in solving the mystery, as Whipple shows it as a one story by 1896. Was there a second floor? That would make sense if this were a Greek Revival duplex with a mousehole in the middle like something you might see in Soulard.

I strongly suspect it was originally shorter (note the obvious extension out the back), and I spied a house on Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis that shows a house in that location in 1875 that matches my suspicions.

Also, the very nice and sensitive in-fill has been completed on the site of the former Charless School, which I looked at back in June of this year. They look much like what I think the house above probably looked like.

While having the original historic building still standing is the optimal outcome in any situation, this is the next best thing, and it brings a lot of life to what had been a desolate stretch of Shenandoah Avenue.

I apologize if I seem a little obsessed with this area! There was a whole mini-city here back in 1875 that has now largely been annihilated, and I find it endlessly fascinating.