Continuing north up Blair Avenue, we leave St. Louis Avenue behind and enter the northern portion of Old North St. Louis.

Perhaps what is most notable is the number of trees and how much more shaded the streets are, and how many more houses there are.

Many of these houses appear in Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis from 1876.

There are many occupied and rehabbed houses…

…but unfortunately, on stretches such as Palm Street, there are vacant houses that have been like that ever since I first started coming up here.

The rains have caused the foliage to grow lush in the spring.

Old wood frame houses sit vacant next to brick.