Please join me on July 24 at 6:30 at the Central Library in downtown St. Louis for a lecture about my new book. Please register here. North of Koeln Avenue, which is the Germanish spelling of Cologne, we first past by Lyon School, which we’ve looked at before and then we see a more diverse…
Tag: Italianate
Side Streets, Downtown, Keokuk, Iowa
Off Main Street, there are many interesting buildings in downtown Keokuk, the majority in the Italianate style showing the rapid growth of the city after the Civil War. They are in varying degrees of repair and renovation. The building below is actually the YWCA. I suspect the building in the background could easily date from…
Main Street, Downtown, Keokuk, Iowa
Main Street in downtown Keokuk is also U.S. Highway 218, which is usually not the best arrangement as it brings heavy traffic that does not want to stop at local businesses, but still brings the negative effects of automobiles, particularly tractor trailers and their pollution. Nonetheless, Main Street is overall in good condition and has…
Residential Neighborhood West of Dowtown, Keokuk, Iowa
“The town has a population of fifteen thousand now, and is progressing with a healthy growth. It was night, and we could not see details, for which we were sorry, for Keokuk has the reputation of being a beautiful city. It was a pleasant one to live in long ago, and doubtless has advanced, not…
Up The Hill from the Dam, Keokuk, Iowa
“Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in 1857, an extraordinary year there in real-estate matters. The “boom” was something wonderful. Every-body bought, every-body sold-except widows and preachers; they always hold on; and when the tide ebbs, they get left. Any thing in the semblance of a town lot, no matter how situated, was salable,…
Around the Courthouses, A Survivor
At the southwest corner of South Eleventh and Walnut streets is this lone survivor, one of what was once dozens of commercial buildings in the southwest side of downtown. One by one, they were demolished and replaced by courthouses, to the point today where it is the last survivor. According to City records, it was…
Northeast Peoria, Early June 2025
It wouldn’t be a complete visit to Central Illinois without checking in on Northeast Peoria, those streets that stretch out in a diagonal fashion from downtown Peoria. It is an interesting mix of rehabbed and abandoned buildings. This gas station is a find; if you look carefully, there are the letters for Standard Oil on…
Sidney Street Between Lemp Avenue and Salena Street, South Side, Revisited
I’ve looked at this stretch of Sidney Street in Benton Park almost exactly four years ago to the week, but the light was looking so right that I thought I’d revisit the houses and storefronts that make this streetscape one of the most interesting in the city. These first buildings above are sandwiched between Interstate…
McNair Avenue Between Lynch and Sidney Streets, West Side
Continuing north past Lynch Street, we look at the west side of McNair Avenue in Benton Park. We looked at the east side of the street back in November of 2019. These first few houses are interesting, in that they are perhaps more dense than what we see in what was originally the “suburban” Benton…
Rising Stove
I love ghost signs, and this one on North Broadway is one that I hadn’t seen or photographed before. I like the name.