Northwest of the old LeTourneau works, we pick up Northeast Madison Street again, no doubt looking at the former workers’ homes of that once massive factory that helped win World War II. Houses are built close together, and there is a rhythm to their placement and massing. There are very few abandoned houses in this…
Tag: Queen Anne Style
Northeast Madison Avenue Between Spalding and Voris Avenues, Northeast Peoria
I revisited the neighborhood in Peoria that I’ve dubbed Northeast Peoria, which are those streets that come out of downtown and have a wide variety of styles and ages of construction. I chose to view the entire length of Madison Avenue Northeast, starting at Spalding Avenue but really beginning at the giant trench that takes…
Westminster Place Between Lake Avenue and Kingshighway
Now that we’ve looked at some of North St. Louis, let’s head south of Delmar and check up on how things are doing on the long blocks north of Portland Place and Westmoreland Place, which was the Forest Park Addition. These subdivisions were laid out in the 1890s, a couple of years after the aforementioned…
Birthplace of Blessed Fulton Sheen and Good News at The Pines, El Paso, Illinois
Update: Title updated to reflect Fulton Sheen’s Beatification in September of 2026. First of all, there’s great news for the old Elms Restaurant in El Paso, Illinois. I spotted two people working on the roof, so it seems its long-awaited rehabilitation has begun. I first looked at the historic house and restaurant back in July…
Grafton, Jersey County, Illinois
Founded in 1832, Grafton is the oldest town in Jersey County. There were once large numbers of limestone quarries in the area very early on in the town’s history, and it reflects in the building materials of Grafton. Above is the Slaten LaMarsh House, dating from 1840 and the home of the first mayor of…
Enright Avenue and Delmar Boulevard, June 2026
I wandered around Enright Avenue and Delmar Boulevard west of Vandeventer and took in some of the sights. There’s an old fires station that looks to have been converted into a house. There are a lot of original buildings but there’s also a lot in-fill from the early Twenty-First Century, such as the houses below….
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…
Dale and Spring Avenues, Old Orchard, Webster Groves
We next turned into the residential streets to the north of the commercial strip along Big Bend in the Old Orchard area. As was typical of suburban neighborhood movements in the late Nineteenth Century, and as can be seen in Julius Pitzman’s Clifton Heights and Compton Heights additions, there is a move away from rigid…
North Taylor Avenue, Kirkwood
Looking at other houses on North Taylor Avenue, it becomes obvious that the overall context of the streetscape is that of large lots and houses. So when I read about these lots being cut up and stuffed with four or five houses, or replaced with a house that is not architecturally sympathetic, it weakens the…
West C Street To North 10th Street Via Voss Place, Belleville
We now turn onto West C Street in Belleville, and discover a building whose originally purpose remains unknown to me. Was it a Turnverein or some other German social organization? I don’t know, but perhaps a reader does. We next come up to a short private street, Voss Place, which betrays its obvious Teutonic origins…