North Side of Lynch Street, Benton Park

Heading east down Lynch Street, we skirt the southern edge of the slender Barsaloux Addition, platted in 1866 after having originally been surveyed in 1858. It’s another one of those French farm fields that came up from the river; you can see the addition surveyed on the left in the plat above. Lynch is an…

Indiana Avenue Between Lynch and Pestalozzi, West Side

Turning around at Pestalozzi and heading north, we see that originally the west side of Indiana Avenue was fully built up like the east side, if not as densely. It’s also interesting to see that already in 1876, towards the north end of the block, a substantial portion of a hill had to be cut…

Indiana Avenue Between Lynch and Pestalozzi, East Side

A reader recommended I look at the 2800 block of Indiana Avenue in Benton Park, which is in between Pestalozzi Avenue and Lynch Street. I’ve looked at the block of Indiana just to the north back in December of 2022, as well as a section to the south back in June of 2015. I’ve also…

Pennsylvania Avenue Between Haven and Fillmore Streets, Carondelet

Leaving behind Haven Street, formerly Nebraska, which we’ve looked at before back in March of 2021, we then see newer construction, including an early Twentieth Century gas station and then even more recent in-fill. Beyond Mott Street, formerly Malt and Miller streets, the next block is completely dominated by the retaining walls of the Sisters…

Henrietta Street and Environs, Compton Hill

I am still trying to understand the so-called Gate District, which I still stridently refer to as Compton Hill, its historic name. I wrote an article about it back in 2020, but one thing I can’t do is go back in time and see the area before redevelopment began. Was it as bad as claimed,…

The Streets Around Norwood Square

One of the most interesting neighborhoods in St. Louis is Norwood Square, which I first looked at way back in August of 2009. It sits on the site of an old quarry, which is settling badly (I tried to figure out what kind of quarry it was, but it does not show up on this…

Mount Adams, Cincinnati, Ohio

We’re going to take a break from Over the Rhine to visit Mount Adams, an example of a successful community fit into a tight space. As the name implies, and as can be seen above in the historic photograph, the steep slopes of the hill have kept the outcropping isolated northeast of downtown Cincinnati. Eden…

Lockerbie Square, Indianapolis, Indiana

Moving on on our tour of Midwestern neighborhoods and their relation to downtowns, we next come to the Lockerbie community of Indianapolis, Indiana. First of all, I had never realized that Indianapolis had a planned street grid, with radiating arteries coming out from a central roundabout (we’ll look at that sometime in the future). Lockerbie…

Hammett Place

Hammett Place is one of those special places that I found on accident and that I suspect most people in the St. Louis region have never heard of before. Whilte technically part of a neighborhood created by the City government in the late Twentieth Century called Kingsway East, it’s tucked away on the edge of…

Penrose Street Between Blair Avenue and North 11th Street, Hyde Park

I ended up on Penrose Street in Hyde Park recently east of Blair Avenue, which is blocked off with Schoemehl Pots. On the east, Interstate 70 cuts the street off from North Broadway, with which it had long been connected. Some houses are abandoned, like the one above, but others are in great condition and…