What happened to this neighborhood!? It looks like the houses were hit by tank shells, and the apartment buildings look like they were the scene of room-to-room urban warfare.
I stumbled across this cluster of houses, scattered with older houses but also relatively recent apartment buildings, and wondered, "At what point does it get to this?"
There is still a fair amount of people living around the neighborhood, between the burned out houses and forested lots. Because much of East St. Louis was built of wood, most of it has disappeared, leaving no vacant lots but often times dense copses of trees.
All of it only a five minute drive from the Arch.
There are tons of really gorgeous and architecturally significant Craftsman-era, and turn-of-the-century homes scattered around the East STL area. It's such a shame that practically every building in the entire city has been neglected or damaged beyond repair.
ReplyDeleteI work near downtown and drive by these neighborhoods every day. It really does look like a war zone or a scene out of some post-apocalyptic movie.
I agree about the many beautiful homes still left, and I want to let readers know that I'll be focusing on the better preserved parts of the city in the future, but I wanted to first register my dismay at how far this once thriving city has fallen.
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