Courthouse Square, Perryville

We’ll start our tour of Perryville in the courthouse square, with the Perry County Courthouse, constructed in 1904. The architects were Caldwell and Drake of Columbus, Indiana and the building cost approximately $32,000. It is on the National Register. And of course there’s a statue of a Union soldier in the lawn out in front….

Twenty-Three Years of Paul McKee: JeffVanderLou

Over the next six days, starting today, we’ll look at areas in the footprint of the Northside TIF, and see the effects McKee’s purchases and land banking have stalled redevelopment and also accelerated decline, as properties he’s purchased have gone vacant and been demolished. We’ll start in JeffVanderLou, driving up Webster in the two photos…

Park Lane Between Harney and West Florissant Avenues, Walnut Park West

Formerly Butler Avenue, the street that bisects many of the streets in Walnut Park West is now named Park Lane, no doubt a result of the platting of the North Pointe neighborhood across West Florissant Avenue. While most houses are built facing the northeast/southwest facing streets, there are a handful of homes built on the…

Riverview Boulevard, West Side, Walnut Park West

Riverview Boulevard has been known by many names over the years: Tracy Road or Avenue until 1907, Kingshighway Northwest until 1925 and Partridge Avenue at some point. Regardless, it forms the southeast boundary of Walnut Park West and has been a major artery since the Nineteenth Century, traveling to the northeast where it intersects with…

St. Anthony the Hermit Maronite Church

Wait a minute, I said to myself, the home of William D’Oench, one of Eberhard Anheuser’s early business partners, has the same address as the early Maronite church of St. Anthony the Hermit. It sat in the neighborhood we looked at the last couple of days. And yes, it was not hugely common, but down…

Clinton Peabody, Yesteryears, Part Two

Continuing our tour of the Near South Side streetscapes demolished in the 1940s for the Clinton Peabody Housing Project, we move over to Dillon Street. William Swekosky seems to have been drawn to St. Ange Avenue, with its strong mix of different architectural styles predating the Civil War. This was actually the suburbs before the…

Clinton Peabody, Yesteryears, Part One

As I began to research the business community in pre-Civil War St. Louis, the addresses of some of the most important factory owners often seemed to come up in the later footprint of Clinton-Peabody. Certainly the Cracker Castle is a well-known example, but there are many more. It turns out that streets such as St….

Rock Island, Illinois, Part Two

We next headed down to what I think is the Old Chicago neighborhood of Rock Island, which has seen redevelopment and the construction of mixed-income public housing. The color blue has also been a popular choice for the older houses. Unlike Davenport, Rock Island has most definitely chosen to have a levee, which is straight…