California Avenue Between Wyoming and Arsenal Streets, Benton Park West

North of Wyoming Street, California Avenue has the normal Benton Park West style houses, influences by the German immigrants who settled here around 1900. There is the heavy influence of the Romanesque Revival. My friends nicknamed the houses below “cyclops” houses because of their large Roman style front windows. The front doors are on the…

Ohio Avenue Between Wyoming and Arsenal Streets, Benton Park West

Those little bungalows from after World War II pop up on Ohio Avenue just north of Wyoming, but then the normal architecture one would expect appears in two story Second Empire houses. There is also a mixture of other housing styles, many of which have been modified over the last century to simplify maintenance costs…

Texas Avenue Between Wyoming and Arsenal Streets, Benton Park West

Texas Avenue in Benton Park West in between Arsenal and Wyoming streets is due west of Benton Park, and it sits on top of a huge old sinkhole, which was still largely visible in Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis, published in 1876. As you can see above, the large sinkhole stretched across Texas Avenue…

Iowa Avenue, Northern Benton Park West, September 2019

Benton Park West is easily one of the most beautiful and most balanced urban neighborhoods in the city of St. Louis. It is just the mix of densities to provide something for everybody. Its future and health will help determine where the entire city goes in the next thirty years.