Well, interesting. A large sinkhole has formed on Potomac Avenue between Michigan and Minnesota avenues in the Gravois Park neighborhood.
Should be cut and dry, right? Let’s go to Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis and find the sinkhole that was filled in…
But what do we find? There’s just an orchard? There is a small sinkhole, but it’s too far east. And no, I don’t think someone filled in a sinkhole to plant an orchard; there was far too much open land in the St. Louis Commons, and buyers simply purchased parcels that were ready-to-use, and wouldn’t have incurred an expense like that.
So sometimes the cause of a new sinkhole is not readily apparent. It could be a broken watermain, or some other underground feature that has begun to open up.
Yikes! I’d imagine that sinkhole is causing more than a few cracks in the plaster for the affected house.
The street view on Google shows a lot of patching the street surface in front of that house right where it’s collapsing, so this has been going on for some time.