Much like St. Louis and its Woolworth Building in Grand Center, Birmingham also has a two story base that was designed with the intention of later having an upper office building added. The Florentine, which is not surprisingly in the Renaissance Revival Style, was built in 1925-27 according to designs by the architect, David O….
Tag: Romanesque Revival
East Lake United Methodist and Other Churches, Birmingham, Alabama
I’ll have to admit when we first spotted East Lake United Methodist Church, I had assumed it was Roman Catholic. But it’s not, and has never been! It traces its roots back 136 years, and a couple other buildings, before this giant Italian Romanesque Revival powerhouse was built. The campanile is attached to the church,…
Alabama Avenue Between Haven Street and Holly Hills Avenue
Houses rapidly become much more ornate north of Haven Street. Houses are more typical of what you might see in Dutchtown or Gravois Park. It seems the flippers have arrived. There are more corner stores, as well, which were not common south of Loughborough Avenue. Perhaps what is the best way to describe the street…
North Up Blair Avenue, College Hill, May 2026
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…
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…