I ended up on Penrose Street in Hyde Park recently east of Blair Avenue, which is blocked off with Schoemehl Pots. On the east, Interstate 70 cuts the street off from North Broadway, with which it had long been connected.

Some houses are abandoned, like the one above, but others are in great condition and well maintained.

After this house below, we reach Randall Place, which I looked at recently back in June, when things were much more lush.

We’ve seen this mansion below before, which was one of several houses that sat on large pieces of land. In fact, such properties were very common, with wealthy landowners sited among smaller, more humble properties. I photographed the house when it was more pink back in April of 2015.

You can actually see it below, at the end of the curvy little path that starts at the top this plate from Compton and Dry’s 1876 Pictorial St. Louis. The two people are standing right behind it.

Right below it, labeled “7” was Mrs. Elizabeth Eddy’s house in that grove of trees. It survived for decades, before being demolished for a new housing tract in the mid Twentieth Century, seen below along North 11th Street. I looked at the 4000 and 3900 blocks just to the south of here back in January of 2018.

Then there’s that depressing abandoned housing complex, which I first photographed back in April of 2015 and then revisited in February of 2019 (last photo).

In other news, we lost a beautiful corner storefront to fire over on the other side of Hyde Park, on North 20th Street. I apparently didn’t photograph it when I looked at the stretch of just to the north in this post from January of 2019.

Across the street is another storefront, which will hopefully survive to be renovated. Intact corners are so important to the health of the streetscape.