The Beauty of Dutchtown, Part 33: Iowa Avenue Between Keokuk and Chippewa Streets

I could have sworn I’ve photographed these beauties on the west side of Iowa Avenue just north of Keokuk Street. They were clearly built at the same time, but each one is unique in their decoration (though probably largely the same on the inside).

Only one, above on the right, is abandoned, which is too bad. It drags down the rest of its partners in the row.

Christian Meyer Residence, Northwest Corner of Iowa and Keokuk, Photograph by Henry Richard Fuhrmann, Missouri History Museum, P0764-00744-4a

Update: Additional information from October of 2020.

Thanks to a reader, we learned that the first seven houses on the west side of Iowa north of Keokuk, along with two apartment buildings on the east side of California Avenue, were once the country estate of Christian Meyer, whose house you can see above facing Keokuk Street. If you look below at the Sanborn map from the first decade of the Twentieth Century, you can see it still standing along with another smaller house facing south (the left), and the property went up to the T-alley. There was a gazebo, labeled “summer house,” as well as several other outbuildings. I think some of the retaining wall still stands, and you can see that the alley and platting of the block is still strange, due to the earlier presence of the Meyer estate.

Then the variety returns with those little Modernist in-fills right next to a very old Greek Revival house, that is also sadly abandoned.

The houses are a wide all over the place architecturally and stylistically.

This late Second Empire house is abandoned, on the east side of the block, and has so much potential.

One Comment Add yours

  1. Angela Pancella says:

    The houses in the first four photographs were built where the Meyer Mansion once stood: https://www.stlmag.com/history/architecture/a-pharmaceutical-magnate%E2%80%99s-mansion-long-vanished/

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