I love the architecture of the Benton Park West neighborhood. That said, I will not live there any time soon. Crime rates are dropping in most areas of South St. Louis, with a very notable exception. Wonder what happened to those shady looking people down your street who moved a while back--making your life much more peaceful? Many of those people causing trouble in another neighborhood are now living in the irregular trapezoid piece of land bordered by Chippewa, Jefferson, Gravois and Grand. There is a somewhat lively discussion going on at
Urban STL right now with both sides of the reality of crime in Benton Park West weighing in.
But like I said, the architecture, originally built for what I would call, upper blue collar German-Americans in the late Nineteenth Century, is really fantastic in its uniqueness.
As seen above and below, two story houses with Mansard roods camouflaging the second floor abound in this area, and these are two relatively normal examples of this style of house, dubbed "
Micro-Mansions" by Built St. Louis.
The bungalows such as this one below represent good, solid housing stock that St. Louis needs to preserve. Each house may not be the most amazing house you've ever seen, but combined with thousands of other houses that exude their own quiet confidence, and you have an outstanding neighborhood of houses working in architectural symphony together.
Likewise, these four houses, once built speculatively at the same time, illustrate how each house can slowly become unique, even after starting out identical to its neighbors. These houses also, unfortunately, represent houses that are probably owned by an absentee landlord: unkempt lawns, long dead shade trees that were never replaced, and just the general feeling that the inhabitants of the houses don't care. These little bungalows, in my opinion, would make the perfect just-out-of-college first home for young home-buyers. Big enough to make the recent college grad feel like an adult, but small enough to be priced reasonably.
In the future, I will bring many more pictures of Benton Park West when I get the chance to do more photography of this intriguing area.
I saw a show on KSDK talking about the Macklind Avenue Business District, so I went and checked it out a few months back. It is relatively small, but it has a cool mixture of local businesses. No McDonalds here.
Streets like these are what gets people out of their cars and walking to do their basic shopping.
Below is an example of your typical, stable Southwest St. Louis street with tidy homes within two minutes of a coffee shop and deli.
Check out the beer selection at the Macklind Avenue Deli. Not quite as good as the place on Jefferson in McKinley Heights, but still respectable; they need more German and Belgian brews.
You can even worship within walking distance of your house.
