Crossing Holly Hills Avenue, we near the end of our trip up Alabama Avenue in Carondelet, as the interstate will stop us from proceeding further. There continues to be a mix of styles, showing the slow development of the neighborhood. This is the last house, at Iron Street, where the interstate cuts through and ends…
Tag: Early Vernacular
Alabama Avenue Between Haven Street and Holly Hills Avenue
Houses rapidly become much more ornate north of Haven Street. Houses are more typical of what you might see in Dutchtown or Gravois Park. It seems the flippers have arrived. There are more corner stores, as well, which were not common south of Loughborough Avenue. Perhaps what is the best way to describe the street…
Alabama Avenue Between Loughborough Avenue and Haven Street
Just like one block over on Vermont Avenue, like yesterday, the houses are older and brick on Alabama Avenue, and they’re quite nice. Even the houses look similar, such as the one below. This was clearly the more different part of Carondelet. There are still many working class houses. But brick predominates. Note the house…
Alabama Avenue Between Robert Avenue and Blow Street
We turn the corner to continue up Alabama Avenue. We continue to see many fascinating wood frame buildings, which are so common in Carondelet and what I like so much about this neighborhood: the survivors. These in particular are perhaps the oldest on the block, and were built before street grading occurred with the annexation…
Alabama Avenue Between Primm Street and Robert Avenue
I realized that I have looked at all of the main north-south streets in Carondelet with the exception of Alabama Avenue, so I went down to the southernmost block and proceeded north. The first part, leaving behind Primm Street, has light industrial with a series of warehouses and other buildings. Then there is some in-fill,…
North Up Blair Avenue, College Hill, May 2026
We finish our trip north of Blair Avenue by looking at College Hill. As I suspected would happen eventually, that wood frame flounder house, which I last looked at back in March of 2024, has been demolished. Things look mostly the same, including the wood frame houses that I’ve often noted before, below. I’ve always…
North Up Blair Avenue, Hyde Park, May 2026, Part Four
I always enjoy the moment when Blair starts heading up the hill towards the Bissell Stand Pipe and the houses sit high up on elevated earthen plinths on the left and right sides of the street. I’ve always liked this extremely old wood frame house below. I still love the Bissell tower, which is one…
North Up Blair Avenue, Hyde Park, May 2026, Part One
Now, as we head north up Blair Avenue into Hyde Park, we see this substation. A pet peeve of mine is how AmerenUE makes no effort to integrate its utilities into city neighborhoods. They’re not so ugly and obtrusive in West County; trust me. I’ve seen lots of abandonment in southern Hyde Park in the…
North Up Blair Avenue, Old North, May 2026, Part Three
Continuing north up Blair Avenue, we leave St. Louis Avenue behind and enter the northern portion of Old North St. Louis. Perhaps what is most notable is the number of trees and how much more shaded the streets are, and how many more houses there are. Many of these houses appear in Compton and Dry’s…
Hickory Street Between South Jefferson Avenue and Missouri Avenue
After looking at the fascinating surviving urban fabric of Hickory Street and others in the Compton Hill neighborhood that survived urban renewal, I wondered if there were any similar streets across South Jefferson Avenue that weren’t mansions in Lafayette Square. And lo and behold, Hickory Street bears a similar working class character as the streets…