Constructed in 1930, the apartment building at the southeast corner of Dunnica Avenue and Alexander Street warranted Isaac Siever’s attention when he photographed it on May 4, 1931. Sadly, when I came by to photograph almost a century later, the northern half of the building is not boarded up and abandoned. But there is so…
Tag: Tudor Revival
The Beauty of Dutchtown, 81: 3841-47 Gustine Avenue
North of the Leona, this building from 1930 gives off a more rustic appearance, but likewise shares its southern neighbor’s abandoned state. It also retains elements of mass produced terracotta elements arranged in original ways along the pediment. Overall, as the new decade began, the design was more austere and plain. I also would like…
The Beauty of Dutchtown, 80: The Elm Tree Apartments
A smaller version of the giant apartments at Alberta and Giles, the U-shaped building built in 1931 now christened by a 1970s-era sign as The Elm Tree Apartments rounds out a row of complexes on Keokuk Street. Including two J-shaped halves linked by a Tudor Revival arch in the middle and plenty of half-timber jerkinhead…
The Beauty of Dutchtown, 77: Keokuk Street and South Spring Avenue
Crossing South Spring Avenue, we run into this building built in 1930. It is an unconventional design in that it is J-shaped, embracing the corner in a concave curve facing the intersection. Mature, if not particularly straight trees have grown up to partially obscure the front façade of the building. We can see a photo…
The Beauty of Dutchtown, 74: 3801-07 Keokuk Street
Built in 1930 and clearly a cousin of the apartment complex at Alberta and Giles, this building with an address of 3801-7 Keokuk to the east of Amberg Park shows an interesting contrast to its relative. It is perhaps more stiff and formal, rejecting the rusticated stone and emphasizing more rectilinear brickwork. But its form…
The Beauty of Dutchtown, 71: Alberta Street and Giles Avenue
Let’s start out this tour of these magnificent apartment buildings in northwest Dutchtown with a bang. One of my favorite complexes is the giant apartments at the t-bone intersection (or is it a dog-leg in Giles Avenue?). Built in 1931, like most apartment buildings of its type in St. Louis, it is really just a…
The Beauty of Dutchtown, 70: The Beautiful Apartment Buildings West of Grand Boulevard
I don’t know how I stumbled upon them, but one day I realized that in an area of Dutchtown, shaped like an irregular pentagon bordered by Chippewa Street on the north, Grand Boulevard on the east and southeast, Meramec on the southwest and Gravois Avenue on the northwest, are a collection of special, unique and…
Cabanne Castle, August of 2022
I had been concerned back in November of 2021 that the Cabanne Castle, which had been gutted back in April of 2021 for redevelopment, was no longer going to be rehabbed. But when I went back two Saturdays ago, the construction site looked active again, so that is good news. There was evidence of tuckpointing…
Checking In On Mark Twain and Central High Schools
St. Louis voters recently overwhelmingly passed Prop S, which will allow the St. Louis Public Schools to issue bonds for much needed improvements to buildings, most of which are now over one hundred years old, though as anyone who will admit it, are extremely well built and will last for centuries if properly maintained. The…
Lindell Boulevard Between Vandeventer and North Boyle Avenues
Heading west of Vandeventer, this stretch of Lindell Boulevard is perhaps the most devastated of the entire street in the Central West End. There is hardly anything left from the Nineteenth Century left on the north side. Even the AAA was once threatened with demolition for a drug store several years. Perhaps the most notable…