Over the next three weeks on Thursdays and Fridays, I’ll be looking at the three east-west streets parallel to Cherokee Street in Gravois Park, the neighborhood to the south of the famous commercial artery. This is where the east-west streets are “Indian Tribes” and the north-south streets are the “State Streets.” For the following weeks of Miami Street, click here and for Winnebago, click here.

Heading west from Jefferson Avenue on Potomac Street just past the old Lutheran Hospital, we hit a row of beautiful four-family apartment buildings, one of which has been renovated, and the other one which sits empty.

The neighborhood is incredibly dense, with very little demolition, and a vacant lot like the one below is a rarity.

The overall orientation of the built environment in this neighborhood alternates between east-west to north-south, like below, and four-family apartments predominate.

 

But there are single family houses, such as the ones above and below.

But then the orientation of the built environment switches to east-west again.

As old cornices crumbled, and the neighborhood declined in prosperity, people did what they could to fix up their buildings, as you can see below.

There is this peculiar complex with this almost Modernist apartment complex.

At this point we reach Oregon Avenue, which unlike all of the other blocks in this area, comes to an abrupt dead end at this staircase.