The famous blue house seems to be abandoned, unfortunately, much like the house below.
The abandoned houses in the footprint of the Northside TIF are still wasting away, as well.
Update: The houses above were damaged by a fire set to destroy a stolen car dumped in front of them in August of 2018. By the fall of 2021 there was only one left. I went back to view it in the winter of 2022. The houses below seem to be gone.
These little houses could have been nice starter homes, but now they sit trashed and collapsing.
That last house has a lot of Character, I can imagine how I would rehab it, but not in a rundown neighborhood , unfortuneately, I wish it would see a resurgence like the CWE or Soulard where many would come and bring change
Yeah, as long as Paul McKee holds this area hostage, there will be no revitalization.
While I agree that Northside is not helping the situation, I would argue that this area was seeing “revitalization” before McKee came along. Am I wrong?
That is the million dollar question; no, I don’t think the area would have turned into Soulard, but I know for a fact that there are houses that rehabber friends of mine wanted to buy, but McKee was not selling. They’re now demolished.
That last house is really something. Even though it is quite small, it has an outsized presence due to the bay window and its high quality masonry.
I agree with Chris that McKee has killed the area, but I think even if all the properties he owned suddenly became available for sale the area would not revitalize any time soon. I am not sure there are enough urban pioneers willing to put up with these neighborhoods’ problems, at least not enough to turn the neighborhoods around. Plus, these areas are so de-populated that there are not enough current residents who could work to turn things around. In addition, even if McKee was out of the picture, St. Louis’s city government would not be, and that entity certainly does not (and will not) provide any assistance to current residents and urban pioneers who want to restore these houses and revitalize their neighborhoods.
Chris, in case you and your followers are interested, I happened to stumble upon some videos posted on YouTube where some adventurous people went exploring in the inside of St.Augustine’s Catholic Church, Central High School an St. Mark’s Catholic Church and school and more. I started by googling St. Mark’s and the rest just came up. It’s very dismaying because you will see that none of these beautiful buildings will be rescued, St. Augustine’s still has at least one stained glass panel intact. The Clemmons mansion is on there also.
It’s tagged über Abandonded St. Louis
Sorry, under. I hate spellcheck