Two notable fires happened in the last week or two, and we’ll start with one in the 2800 block of Cherokee Street. I have to admit I didn’t even realize the building was vacant; it has hosted a rotating cast of different carryout restaurants.

It’s a sad turn of events on a major thoroughfare. It looks like there might have been squatters in the back part of the building. As I suspected, and confirmed with Sanborn maps, it was built as a house and later acquired a storefront built up to the property line as the streetcar converted Cherokee Street to a commercial district.

Heading up north to Hyde Park and North Park Place, we also saw a fire in the garage of a notable house right on the eastern end of the street at North Eleventh Street. I first reported on the problem of fires on this beautiful street back in June of 2022.

I looked at the house which owns this garage in a fair amount of depth in this post from December of 2017; it’s an interesting story. Like other fires on the street, there looks to have been some squatters in the garage.