Update: I went back and looked at the Greater Ville, including Vine Grove Avenue, in July of 2019. The roof of the house on the left below collapsed sometime after I took the picture. There was extensive demolition of abandoned and deteriorating houses in September of 2019, particularly on the west side of the street, but also a few on the east side. I went back in the Spring of 2022.
Continuing on, we see more mid-Twentieth Century in-fill, like one would expect to see in St. Louis Hills in Southwest City.
I think what I find so fascinating about these streets is the wide variety of housing stock from the 1870s to the 1940s, which is so unlike many neighborhoods that are architecturally homogeneous.
But I’m always so impressed by the resiliency of so many homeowners, their houses carefully maintained and decorated for the holidays before Christmas.
Often those well-maintained houses sit right across the street from equally beautiful but bombed-out and trashed houses that possess so much potential but no hope for redevelopment.
This woodframe Italianate duplex is old, and rare, but it is probably not long for this world.
And then we reach Ashland Avenue, where a row of early Twentieth Century houses sit in a neat line.
