Whoa, wait a minute, I thought, what’s going on here? Why are there are a bunch of houses from the 1940s and later on the next block between Courtois and Schrimer? The explanation is easy, coming from old fire insurance maps; this was the Reiss-Rapp Lumber Company, and it clearly was later redeveloped as housing…
Tag: Alleys
Enclaves of St. Louis #3: 2700 Block of Osceola Street
It’s been a little while since I’ve done an Enclaves of St. Louis feature, so I thought I’d look at the 2700 block of Osceola Street in Dutchtown, just east of South Broadway and west of Interstate 55, which now artificially truncates the block. This must be a very interesting place to live, with just…
Half Flounders, Over the Rhine, Cincinnati, Ohio
Half flounders are not somehow unique to St. Louis. I found them all over the Over the Rhine neighborhood, mostly north of Liberty Street where there is more demolition and vacant lots, making it easier to see the rear of buildings. Like I had mentioned when visiting the town of Blois in France, while certainly…
Main Street, Over the Rhine, Cincinnati, Ohio, West Side
Going back to the south and heading north again looking at the west side of Main Street in the Over the Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, we see more of the newly rehabbed, and a little of the old. I love this old storefront church, which is a remnant of when this was not a “hot”…
Liberty, Sycamore and Thirteenth Streets, Over the Rhine, Cincinnati, Ohio
We’ll look at a variety of streets next. Liberty Street is a classic example of a narrow street that was widened by the demolition of historic structures, creating what I call a traffic sewer. The north street wall is preserved, as you can see above and below, but on the south side, there’s a jagged,…
Over the Rhine, Cincinnati, Ohio
We’re heading to Cincinnati, Ohio next, to look at Over the Rhine, which is one of the best preserved early Nineteenth Century neighborhoods in America. St. Louis used to have numerous neighborhoods like Over the Rhine, but we annihilated them like fools. Kosciusko, Carr Square (read part two) and Mill Creek, all neighborhoods in St….
German Village, Columbus, Ohio, Part Three
We’ll look at a few more streets in German Village today. I think what makes this such a beautiful neighborhood is that even if the houses are different sizes, they maintain a certain architectural uniformity that creates that harmony. Likewise, with only a couple of different roof types, such as the gable above and the…
German Village, Columbus, Ohio, Part Two
Like Lafayette Square in St. Louis, the side streets of German Village in Columbus are where I found much of the more intimate and interesting views of the neighborhood. What really struck me were the alleys! Wow, talk about clean and unobstructed! I think St. Louis’s decades-long experiment with dumpsters has failed. It just makes…
The Squeezed Streets, Wabada and Highland Avenues, The Western Greater Ville
This is a little hard to explain, but the streets of the western Greater Ville were not laid out by any higher authority, and they were once part of a larger estate known as the Papin Tract. Consequently, they’re all messed up, becoming incredibly narrow, having houses on only one side of the street, dead-ending…
North Third Street, Laclede’s Landing
What’s there to say about what’s left of North Third Street in Laclede’s Landing? First of all, to exit the parking lot, which is currently the only way to get out of the neighborhood and onto Third Street on the south side, you have to walk out into traffic lanes because there is a fence…