We pick up our Beauty of Dutchtown series where we left off with Part 11, now on Keokuk Street, northwest of Marquette Park.

The brick masons used different colors of brick to make little designs, and created cornices and other details with their trowels, which would have been made of wood in previous decades of St. Louis architecture. Note the house above still has its original glass storm doors.

These houses are built well (where does the term “brick house” come from?), and they are sturdy, but they still need maintenance and cannot be ignored when their mortar begins to crack and fall out.

But it’s amazing that just this one block is filled with such beautiful examples of brickwork.