Nebraska Avenue Between Utah and Wyoming Avenues, West Side

There are still some interesting four-family buildings north of Utah on Nebraska such as the one on the northwest corner above, but then the block turns over to two-family houses.

As I’ve frequently remarked before, St. Louis builders were masters of concealing multi-family houses right next door to single family houses (though I suspect there have been some recent conversions on this block), giving the neighborhood the “respectability” of being only single family houses.

Regardless, they are handsome houses, showing the move away from Nineteenth Century styles to more brick and terracotta-based ornamentation that we see in the early Twentieth Century.

Cast iron elements such as we see on the top of this house, I learned from a man who made these with his father, were fabricated during the cold winter months, and then installed during the summer when warm temperatures returned.

There are some abandoned buildings mixed in, but most houses are occupied.

The wreath decoration in the pediment has fallen off, but it can still be seen slightly below.

Then we get to this travesty, which has been abandoned for a decade. It is sagging badly in the middle, which would lend me to believe it was built on a poorly compacted sinkhole. But Compton and Dry reveals there was nothing but a farm field here in 1875, so I do not know what happened. Regardless, according to city property records, the owner does not live in the neighborhood, and he does not have to put up with this disaster in his daily life like the people who live on Nebraska do. Either spend the (enormous amount of) money to fix it, or let it go.

2 Comments Add yours

  1. Slevin Kelevra says:

    that last building looks a good candidate for demolition, IMHO.

    1. Chris Naffziger says:

      I love old buildings, but sadly that is my judgment, as well, if no one is willing to spend the money to correct its major structural problems.

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