Continuing my practice of going up and down blocks in the City of St. Louis with interesting architecture, I’m going to look at some notable and very intact streets on the south side of Soulard. The first one I’ll be looking at is in Eighteenth Street from Sidney to Barton Street, passing over Victor. We’ll…
Tag: Alleys
Texas Avenue Between Arsenal and Pestalozzi Streets, Benton Park West, Revisited Fall 2020
I realized that my previous visit to the two blocks of Texas Avenue between Arsenal and Pestalozzi in September of 2019 (Crittenden cuts through there, but it’s practically just a glorified alley in Benton Park West) did not do this incredible stretch of street justice. In fact, the corner storefront, above and below, right on…
From the Vault: Downtown Palmyra
Downtown Palmyra is typical of many small county seats: an abundance of Italianate storefronts of about two stories high that were built in clusters so they create a “street wall” along Main Street. What is fun to see is how buildings, built at the same time or within the same decade, have taken on lives…
Salena and Cushing Streets, Benton Park
Just to the west of the old Falstaff Plant No. 10 and just south of Gravois there is an interesting pocket of house in the Benton Park neighborhood. Blues City Deli is nearby. What is also interesting is that there are some very old houses, including ones that probably date back to as early as…
Charless Street at Gravois Avenue, McKinley Heights
Update: I revisited the area again in November of 2020 in two posts here and here. I was back in the southern tip of McKinley Heights, which I first looked at in June of 2014. I’m endlessly intrigued with what was a little hamlet of small houses, some frame, some brick, and some “in between.”…
Gravois Avenue Between Compton and Minnesota Avenues
In my dreams I have this fantasy where I win the lottery, and among other things, I secretly purchase all the crumby autocentric stores and used-car lots along Gravois east of Grand through straw buyers, and rebuild a pedestrian-friendly urban environment–you know, like what used to be there one hundred years ago. I’m not expecting…
Menard Street and Environs
Menard Street continues the theme of older Greek Revival construction, and they even have some of their original (or at least tastefully reconstructed) balconies. Look closely at the houses below; the two Second Empire houses at the right are traitors to their earlier roots. As I always say, brick can never lie: those houses are…
The Mystery Houses, 13th Street and Shenandoah Avenue
Update: See the houses on the west side of the street here from 2020. I call these houses the “mystery houses,” and I’ll explain why. They seem to appear on Compton and Dry from 1875, and if you look closely in the lower right corner of the image below, just below the letter R in Summer…
The Beauty of Dutchtown, Part 3, California Avenue Between Osage and Keokuk Streets
Update: See the block of California to the north of here from August of 2020. On California Avenue in between Osage and Keokuk streets, some detective work was needed. Why are the houses several decades newer than the red brick buildings around them in Dutchtown, and why are they subsiding so badly? Compton and Dry’s…
Survivors Revisited Yet Again, Ohio Avenue, Fox Park
I hope my readers understand why these seemingly humble and insignificant houses on Ohio Street, just up the block from the stately St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church, are such wonderful buildings, and deserving of being saved. I looked at them originally back in 2014, and then again in 2016. These are very old,…