Every year or so, I do a “North up Blair Avenue” post, and see the state of the neighborhoods slashed on their eastern side by Interstate 70. You can see the 2018 and 2019 posts from previous years. I did it again last Saturday, and things are looking good, but also some things are staying…
Tag: Old North St. Louis
Old North and Another Fire
There are still so many great things happening in the Old North neighborhood, where houses are being rehabbed, and other buildings, while still vacant, have been stabilized, leaving them secure for future residents to buy and renovate. Not so with properties still owned by Paul McKee. At the beginning of March, another one of his…
Webster Elementary School, Renovation Begins
Update: I revisited the school in January of 2022; the renovations are now complete and the apartments are open. Built in 1908 to replace two earlier school buildings on the circular Clinton Place, and closing in 2007, the William Ittner-designed Webster School is officially seeing new life as apartments. Clinton Place was the southernmost of…
Updates on the Inner North Side
Update: The remaining houses on the north side of the street have been demolished. Two buildings on St. Louis Avenue in JeffVanderLou apparently had become something of celebrities due to some graffiti someone had painted on them years ago. I came by while they were in the process of being demolished; the one on the…
Fireworks Stupidity and Perceptions, Old North
Update: Sadly, the house was not salvageable and has been demolished. The City of St. Louis Fire Department has an excellent and very well-updated Twitter account that I monitor on a regular basis to keep abreast of current events. On the night of the Fourth of July, the Fire Department always keeps a rigorous live…
Fires and the Northside TIF, Old North St. Louis
The Northside TIF and Paul McKee’s damage to North St. Louis is not some abstract academic discussion about what role government should play in financing and aiding private developers. It impacts real people, when houses that are left to rot for over a decade are set on fire by an arsonist, and the flames and…
Demolitions and Ruins
Update: The site is now a vacant lot. The three houses in Old North (last photo) just north of Crown Candy are now gone, but I’m noticing something new; they’re removing the basements now and not just simply pushing the dirt into the hole. Below, a four family I photographed on Hebert Street back in…
Updates East of North Grand
The two beleaguered four-family flats owned by out-of-town slumlords on DeSoto Avenue in College Hill have been torn down, which considering their condition, I was not surprised. Their owners may have never even seen them in real life (yes, people from around the world buy property in St. Louis sight unseen). You can see them…
Old Factory Coming Down, Old North
The large factory facing Jackson Park in the Old North neighborhood is being demolished. Its walls were weakened by the vibrations from the pile driving caused by the construction of the new pedestrian bridge across Interstate 70 last year. You can see what the factory looked like when I photographed it from the old footbridge…
North St. Louis, Late Summer, 2019
I met new people all over North St. Louis this summer, including members of the congregation of the Original Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in the Ville neighborhood, on St. Louis Avenue. Better Family Life had organized dozens of churches to host barbecues all summer long, and the Church had been one of the participants. I…