I zigzagged around Tower Grove South recently, starting over at Morgan Ford and working northeast towards the intersection of Arsenal Street and South Grand. Of course, the housing styles go back in time as you head east, with the 1940s being prominent in the west. Remember, the clay industry was still moving along until after…
Tag: Tower Grove South
Tower Grove South Coal Diggings, Beckville, Tholozan Avenue and Environs
Moving to the north side of Beckville, which is the south side of Tholozan Avenue, there are more old houses that most likely date back to the early days of coal mining in the area. There is even a rare Italianate wood frame house. Below we see another one of those tract duplexes with the…
Tower Grove South Coal Diggings, Beckville, Beck Avenue, North Side
Heading back east on Beck Avenue in what was once the small town of Beckville, laid out in 1871 as the Beck Addition (we looked at the south side of the street yesterday), we spot a very, very old house above, sitting at angle in disregard of the street grid. It almost certainly was built…
Tower Grove South Coal Diggings, Beckville, Beck Avenue, South Side and Alley
Speaking of really, really old buildings, I spotted this one above out of the corner of my eye at the intersection of Meramec, Morgan Ford and Beck. This is the entrance to a fascinating chapter in St. Louis history, and a continuation of my brief introduction to coal mining in Tower Grove South that I…
Weird and Wonderful Tower Grove South: South Spring Avenue Between Potomac Street and Gravois Avenue, West Side
I noticed something strange about the west side of South Spring Avenue when I started looking at the houses. There are a striking number of older houses, sitting far back on their lots, constructed of wood, which I suspect could easily date back to the 1870s when this was far out in the countryside. This…
Weird and Wonderful Tower Grove South: South Spring Avenue Between Potomac Street and Gravois Avenue, East Side
Formerly Cabanne and Morrow avenues, South Spring Street forms part of a rare part of Tower Grove South, where the north-south streets are dominant, most likely due to being laid out relatively early right off Gravois it seems before the rest of the neighborhood. But despite being laid out early the east side of the…
Weird and Wonderful Tower Grove South: Potomac Street Between Bent and Oak Hill Avenues
Wait a minute, I thought as I turned onto Potomac Street. I know I’ve been here before, but not quite exacty. I figured it out. This street is a very similar to the 5600 block of Labadie in Wells-Goodfellow, but it is just not abandoned and half-demolished. It is a textbook example of how the…
Weird and Wonderful Tower Grove South: The Area Around Potomac Avenue Between Gustine and South Spring Avenues
Around the former site of the House of the Good Shepherd, the land is rugged, with dramatic drop-offs and massive retaining walls. There are also at times huge differentiations between the street and the front doors of buildings, as you can see in these photos. There is also a preponderance of multi-family housing.
Weird and Wonderful Tower Grove South: Oleatha Avenue Between Oak Hill and Roger Place
You never know what sort of surprises you’ll find when looking around the streets of St. Louis, and in this case I found these unique porches added to the fronts of otherwise common houses. A little bit of a mix of Spanish and Tudor influences, there were only about four or five of these in…
Weird and Wonderful Tower Grove South: Oleatha Avenue Between Bent and Oak Hill Avenues
Tower Grove South was still being built up in the southwest corner well into the 1930s, as these Cape Cod houses attest. There are also Gingerbread style houses, as well, which were being built to the southwest in the rapidly expanding St. Louis Hills neighborhood. This subdivision is the Russell’s Second Addition, and while it…