The Beauty of Dutchtown, 64: Louisiana Avenue Between Osceola Street and Taft Avenues

The Beauty of Dutchtown Series left off with No. 63. It continues with No. 65.

South on Cleveland High School, we proceed southbound on Louisiana Avenue, first looking at the east side of the street.

There are your standard middle class Second Empire houses, along with the transitional modes of that style.

But there are also houses where brickwork dominates, such as the unique bungalow below that was surely built in the early Twentieth Century.

And those little working man palaces as I call them appear, which are so common south of Chippewa Street, as you can see here.

And of course, at the corner with Taft Street, where the rigidity of the “Indian Tribe” street naming system is disrupted, there is a corner store.

Turning around at Taft Street, we head back north, looking at the west side of the street.

The housing stock has a lot of variety; while it might be consistent with Dutchtown housing, much of it has idiosyncratic details.

I really like these little bungalows, which are compactly designed to maximize living space on the interior. Wood ornament has been banished in favor of terracotta and brickwork.

But then things get interesting, as we see a whole row of wood frame houses, which surely date to the earliest period of settlement of the area, back when quarries and other rural industry dominated.

Most likely one of those industries existed near this site.

This standard wood frame houses has received a porch at some point.

And more of those early workers’ cottages continue up the street.

More permanent brick houses replace the wood ones.

And the wood frame houses then are replaced by more early Twentieth Century “streetcar suburban” housing.

Back up at the top of the hill near the high school with Osceola, another Second Empire sits.

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