Straddling the city of Peoria and suburb of Peoria Heights, Grandview Drive offers panoramic views of Lake Peoria, a widening of the Illinois River as its wends its way through the prairie, buffeted by bluffs to the west. Originally envisioned in 1894, construction began in 1903 and was completed several years later. Laid out like…
Tag: Arts and Crafts Style
Enright Avenue Between Pendleton Avenue and Whittier Street
Enright Avenue is the street one block north of Delmar, and it is often in the news nowadays, first for a series of arsons, and also as the target of redevelopment–or gentrification–depending on your perspective. The architecture is just as impressive as the Central West End, just to the south, and to be honest, more…
Museum Hill, Part One, St. Joseph
East of the civic center of St. Joseph, the terrain rises quickly up to what is now called Museum Hill, which is a veritable treasure trove of late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century housing styles. There are also many churches near the bottom of the hill. Look at how much the houses to the east…
Forsyth Boulevard from Forest Park Parkway to Big Bend Boulevard
Normally I photograph a lot of historic architecture because it is at risk of demolition due to the declining economic fortune of the neighborhood around it. But in the case of Forsyth Boulevard in the blocks just east of Clayton’s downtown, I am documenting these beauties due to the real threat of them being demolished…
North Up Blair Avenue, South of Penrose Street, Hyde Park, March 2024
Heading north up Blair into Hyde Park, we pass by those streets with little bungalows built in the early Twentieth Century. I know there are many more that are abandoned now than when I first came up this way in 2008. The house below hasn’t changed for the better since I photographed it in January…
Kinloch Park, Berkeley
I recently stumbled upon the plat map of Kinloch Park, which as its name suggests, has to do with the street grid of Kinloch, the historically middle class African American suburb in North County. But it is not so simple. Kinloch Park formed only the northwest portion of Kinloch, and that part has actually been…
Louisiana Avenue Between Walsh Street and Taft Avenue, Part One
Up next is this whole row of houses that look like they’re frosted like cakes! They’re mostly two-families, though of course in true St. Louis style they look like single family houses. The archetypal one story southern Dutchtown house appears, as well. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, though. Then the houses are more…
Louisiana Avenue Between Eiler and Walsh Streets
Now Louisiana passes by the west side of the St. Cecilia’s campus, and I have to wonder if the reason there is this elegant house is in some way originally related to that church. Certainly it was built here to be close by. The more humble houses are no less elegant going north on the…
Louisiana Avenue Between Wilmington Avenue and Eiler Street
We continue past Wilmington Avenue at this point. Where the Arts and Crafts style dominates in the early Twentieth Century. And we reach Bellerieve Boulevard, which we remember is a remnant of an incomplete parkway system that was never completed. When we reach Bates Street, Louisiana dead ends at a row of apartment buildings. We…
Louisiana Avenue Between Holly Hills and Wilmington Avenues, Part Two
Then we hit a pocket of really old vernacular houses, wood frame and all. It makes me wonder why there were houses out here so early. Frequently there were truck farms and also a lot of greenhouses. Of course, there were also a lot of quarries. This is a very interesting house, with strains of…