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Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Brilliant Urban Design in the St. Louis of the Past

Check out this row of buildings in the 5000 block of Louisiana in the very southern tip of the Dutchtown neighborhood.


The photograph is courtesy of the St. Cecelia National Register District nomination form, compiled and submitted by Lynn Josse and NiNi Harris. You may click here to view the full nomination, but be warned that it is a large PDF document with several photographs. Be patient.

This beautiful historic district has several rows like that of the above. The fanciful, stark white "bakery brick", a St. Louis original, creates striking patterns that almost literally "tie" streetscapes together. In the above example, some buildings have crowns; some have small porches; others don't.

The result is a neighborhood that is delightfully cohesive--never monotonous, but certainly harmonious. Brilliant.

2 comments:

Jason M. Stokes said...

Stop posting stuff like this. It just adds another neighborhood to my list of places to live in. So far, it's down to: Fox Park, Soulard, Benton Park, The Grove, The Hill, Old North, Shaw, and Tower Grove South.

Decisions, decisions.

Anonymous said...

^ i know! i'm gonna have to buy like five houses when i move back home!

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