Details of the Spire, St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Oratory

You probably noticed over the last three to four months my photographs were becoming increasingly blurry, overexposed, underexposed and just all around incredibly lower quality (even more so than usual). This was because my old camera was coming to the end of its life. Thankfully, I received a new camera for Christmas, and with it…

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,…

Magnolia Avenue, From Tower Grove East into Fox Park

It’s one of the laziest statements to make, but Magnolia Avenue traveling eastbound from Tower Grove East into Fox Park really is a study in contrasts. Take the Italianate rowhouses above: they are old; probably dating to the 1870s, and suffering from a terrible muddling. They could be brought back to life by restoring their…

Updates on Demolitions, Fires and Other Collapses

There is much to report on this spring, starting with a collapse of an out building on Utah Street in Benton Park. It can still be salvaged, though. Below, as I suspected would happen, another of the houses sitting on the old quarry, whose porch had collapsed in the last six months, has been demolished…

The Magnificent Town Houses

This magnificent row of houses looks like many row buildings in St. Louis: like a cogent composition of a single palace or grand residence like you would see in the middle of a grand estate. But upon closer inspection, you realize there are multiple front doors. And my, what a beautiful set of houses this…

Odds and Ends, Fox Park #2

The building above was just renovated; it looks really great now, after being abandoned. This interesting, long Romanesque Revival house intrigues me as well. And these old Italianate houses, which need to be renovated, are painted in red. They have so much more potential. This front porch below seems to still have some of its…

Odds and Ends, Fox Park #1

There is a wide variety of architecture, often right next to each other on diverse blocks, such as these in Fox Park.   

Party in the Front, Business in the Rear

Update: As of the Spring of 2021, this house has seen a complete renovation. This house has received some weird sort of renovation, with a different porch. On the side, a chimney flue sticks out from the wall. I normally see that when a building is torn down next door, but there seems to no…

Early Twentieth Century Houses in Fox Park

And then, and what makes Fox Park so interesting, you walk up to a whole section of the neighborhood built in the Early Twentieth Century, just blocks from houses from the 1870s. I know the Fox Lumber Company took up much of the neighborhood, or alternately, more sinkholes might have been filled in here. There…

Fancy Four-Families

Update: See a variant of these types of four-family apartment buildings in the Greater Ville. Shenandoah Avenue has some amazing buildings, including these two four-family flats. They were built for the middle class, dispelling myths about these buildings being for low-income residents. Bob Reuter lived in the above building.