So far out in the country that this section doesn’t appear in Compton and Dry, this section of Southwest Avenue, formerly Old Manchester Road or Market Street Road, was developed incredibly early due to its role as a major trail and highway out west.

As can be seen in this fire insurance map from 1903, the area was heavily developed, with many of the current houses already built. In fact, this is the southern portion of Balson’s Addition, the northern part of which we’ve already looked at before but was cut off by a rerouted railroad track for St. Louis Marketplace.

As a testament of how early people settled out here, there is a super rare, and very old half-flounder house on this block. Since these were not built much past the 1870s, who knows how early this built.

I suspect that many of these houses were built for workers in the nearby clayworks and mines, some of which were relatively close by. There was also the Cheltenham train station.

Nearby are old buildings left behind by Sculling Steel.

Occupied by new owners, we’ll look at them in more depth in the future.