I realized that I had never looked at Walnut Park West, which is nestled far up in the northern reaches of the city. Bounded by Interstate 70 on the southwest, Riverview Boulevard on the southeast, West Florissant Avenue on the northeast and the city limits on the northwest, Goodfellow Boulevard cuts through just to the southeast of the northwestern border.
The first area we’ll be looking at is the West Walnut Park Subdivision, rather appropriately named, laid out in 1906 according to plans by Julius Pitzman. While Pitzman is perhaps most famous nowadays for his invention of private streets in St. Louis, in reality he was the city surveyor who laid out hundreds of streets and additions. You don’t have to be wealthy to live on a street surveyed by Pitzman.
For the most part, it seems like Walnut Park West was laid out relatively quickly along the blocks along Riverview Boulevard first in the 1910s and 20s, and then the second block in, including this block came later in the 1930s and 40s.
The only streetcar line available in the late Nineteenth Century was along West Florissant, so development seems to have been stunted for the most part until the automobile was democratized.
For the most part, there are small Cape Cods and Arts and Crafts bungalows.
This is an era where the red brick for front facades is firmly in the past and dark umber, tan or pink have replaced it.
