Gate City, Birmingham, Alabama

Heading north towards the outermost regions of Birmingham, we now explore Gate City, whose name is perhaps a little obvious. There was a pass through Red Mountain, which perhaps you can extrapolate received its appellation from the abundance of iron ore running through it (remember, iron ore is one of the three components of steel…

Alabama Avenue Between Blow Street and Loughborough Avenue

This is where it gets interesting, as there is a group of Gingerbread and Tudor Revival houses, similar to what we saw one block over on Vermont Avenue. I suspect there was a large tract of undeveloped land that came open in the 1920s. We then make it to Loughborough Avenue.

North Up Blair Avenue, Hyde Park, May 2026, Part Two

At Salisbury, we continue on past the fire station, which has been there for over a century, though the one below is not the original. The park is probably the original topography of the land. It starts to get very leafy north of the park as we continue up Blair Avenue. There have been many…

Carr Square, May 2026

I realized that while I investigated the Carr Square neighborhood in two pieces at St. Louis Magazine several years ago (you can read the first part here, and the second part here), I had neglected to take a look at what the area looks like now. To put it mildly, you would never imagine that…

Caroline Street Between Ohio and Southern Jefferson Avenues

Jumping over Park Avenue, where the historic fabric of the city has been completely erased, we arrive at a gold mine of houses from the 1870s and 80s. And Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis from 1876 gives us some interesting views of what was there 150 years ago. The first half of the block…

Geyer Avenue Between California and Ohio Avenues

Heading one block to the north to Geyer Avenue, it would be remiss to not talk about how Interstate 44, the Ozark Expressway, has altered the street forever. As I demonstrated above with the blue shaded area on the Compton and Dry Pictorial St. Louis from 1876, all of that land is now under the…

Allen Avenue Between Ohio and South Jefferson Avenues

Heading east of Ohio Avenue on Allen Avenue towards South Jefferson Avenue, there is a wide variety of houses, some older but many on the newer side relatively. This section of street seems to have developed slower. And the houses that are here look to be from the 1890s and 1900s. The house on the…

Ann Avenue Between California and Ohio Avenues

Heading yet another block north, we now head down Ann Avenue from California to Ohio Avenue in the east-west blocks of northeastern Fox Park. We see something new for the first time in this examination: single family houses like one might see Tower Grove Heights over on the long blocks around the intersection of South…

Accomac Street Between Ohio and South Jefferson Avenues

Heading east of Ohio Avenues on Accomac Street towards South Jefferson, we continue to see two family houses. The architectural styles are hard to quantify; take for example, above, where there is a little point sticking up above the pediment. Overall, the houses look more or less the same, and it can be seen that…

Armand Place Between Ohio and South Jefferson Avenues, Revisited

Moving along east of Ohio Avenue in the former St. Louis Commons on Armand Place, we see the continued unity of style consistent with being built in a relatively short period of time in the late 1880s and early 1890s as part of the Sarpy’s Partition of the DeVolsey Tract. I looked at this block…