We finish our trip north of Blair Avenue by looking at College Hill. As I suspected would happen eventually, that wood frame flounder house, which I last looked at back in March of 2024, has been demolished. Things look mostly the same, including the wood frame houses that I’ve often noted before, below. I’ve always…
Tag: Romanesque Revival
North Up Blair Avenue, Hyde Park, May 2026, Part Three
Continuing north up Blair in Hyde Park, we see a Gingerbread house and then the styles go back to what we would expect to see in the neighborhood. Windsor Park was a former quarry, which I’ve talked about before in the past. This little church is still in great condition. But there’s a lot of…
North Up Blair Avenue, Hyde Park, May 2026, Part Two
At Salisbury, we continue on past the fire station, which has been there for over a century, though the one below is not the original. The park is probably the original topography of the land. It starts to get very leafy north of the park as we continue up Blair Avenue. There have been many…
North Up Blair Avenue, Hyde Park, May 2026, Part One
Now, as we head north up Blair Avenue into Hyde Park, we see this substation. A pet peeve of mine is how AmerenUE makes no effort to integrate its utilities into city neighborhoods. They’re not so ugly and obtrusive in West County; trust me. I’ve seen lots of abandonment in southern Hyde Park in the…
Two More Churches, Breese
There is a second Catholic church in Breese, St. Augustine’s, which is on the south side of town and surely was opened as the population surged. Constructed in a Lombard Romanesque Revival style, it again like many churches in the region, reminds me of the houses of worship I’ve seen in Milan, Italy. This church…
Hickory Street Between South Jefferson Avenue and Missouri Avenue
After looking at the fascinating surviving urban fabric of Hickory Street and others in the Compton Hill neighborhood that survived urban renewal, I wondered if there were any similar streets across South Jefferson Avenue that weren’t mansions in Lafayette Square. And lo and behold, Hickory Street bears a similar working class character as the streets…
Caroline Street Between Ohio and Southern Jefferson Avenues
Jumping over Park Avenue, where the historic fabric of the city has been completely erased, we arrive at a gold mine of houses from the 1870s and 80s. And Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis from 1876 gives us some interesting views of what was there 150 years ago. The first half of the block…
St. Vincent Avenue Between Ohio and South Jefferson Avenues
We now jump ahead to the north a bit due to the redevelopment that annihilated a large swath of Compton Hill, which I wrote about at St. Louis Magazine. First known as Lafayatte Town and then the Gate District, I still call this neighborhood by its historic name. While the majority of the urban fabric,…
Lafayette Avenue Between Ohio and South Jefferson Avenues
Crossing over the interstate, we reach Lafayette Avenue, which is the 1854 James Eads Addition on the south side of the street, which we see in the photographs below. The pink building above was original an Ice and Fuel building. There has been extensive renovation and redevelopment on Lafayette Avenue in what I call Compton…
Geyer Avenue Between California and Ohio Avenues
Heading one block to the north to Geyer Avenue, it would be remiss to not talk about how Interstate 44, the Ozark Expressway, has altered the street forever. As I demonstrated above with the blue shaded area on the Compton and Dry Pictorial St. Louis from 1876, all of that land is now under the…