For those who know of the Central West End and the great private places north of Lindell this is the formerly private places north of Delmar.



This area is refered to as the Mount Cabanne-Raymond Place district built out with upscale revival-style dwellings between 1890-1910s. Many homes were designed by or influenced by architect Alexander A, Fischer and his trademark broken frieze. This was once a very Jewish area due to the location of B'nai Amoona Temple at Academy and Vernon along with United Hebrew once at Kingshighway and Enright and the YMHA (Young Men Hebrew Association). None of the three organizations exists in the City anymore, and have moved west with the Jewish population.



Oakherst Place Concrete Block District is first, and was built by Pendleton Realty with main architects being A. Blair Ridington and Edward F. Nolte and Eames & Young. All of the homes demonstrated the potential for interpreting Arts & Crafts idioms in a new material (concrete). The homes in Oakley Place were built in 1906.



























A great and helpful website called Built St. Louis (okay my second favorit STL website) showcases these homes too.

http://www.builtstlouis.net/northside/cabanne06.html





http://www.builtstlouis.net/northside/cabanne07.html

SET - thanks again for great pics. There are some stately homes up there!!



I always thought they used the wrong house or wrong type of house in the movie, Meet Me in St. Louis. In the movie, they show big frame houses with big frame porches that are rather far apart. They lived at 5135 Kensington Avenue which would be the Cabanne area. I am surprised to see in this set of pics a couple of big frame houses with big porches. Guess I was wrong. It could have happened.

SMSPlanstu wrote:#6 I think

Must live here.



Awesome, simply awesome.

TransitPlanner = SMSPlanstu

Could someone please update the Forum on the status of these neighborhoods?

I work/live in Dallas now.

Hi,

I live on West Cabanne Place (my home is pictured, but this was taken before we bought it). WCP is progressing slowly. We have an on-off active association with a small handful of active members. Our problems are: a small number of problem property owners, many elderly owners that either cannot maintain or are absent from their homes, and a lack of payment of dues and involvement. A couple of houses sold last year to new owners that are doing some nice rehabbing.

The outside neighborhood is also transitioning. The 5900 and 6000 blocks of Clemens, Cates, and Enright are experiencing lots of good rehabbing. The downturn has caused this to slow a bit and there are still some vacant houses that are near collapse, but overall this area is solid and I expect will get even better with the coming trolley and associated development. Design Alliance has just begun construction on a new mixed-use building at the corner of Hamilton and Delmar. They are also renovating the very large pre-war apartment building at Hamilton and Enright. The weak links for this area are the remaining apartment buildings on the east side of Hamilton. There are 3 of them, two are run by slumlords and have questionable folks hanging out at all times and the third is a very large vacant block that is consistently broken in to by homeless people.

The blocks of Cates and Cabanne east of Hamilton are in very poor shape. There are a few good homeowners scattered in amongst many vacant houses and lots as well as some really bad neighbors. Cabanne in particular, between Goodfellow and Hamilton is a constant problem area. There are a couple of large apartment buildings overrun by bad seeds. We never fail to see bad behavior when walking or driving this block, from drug dealing, to trash cans or cars set on fire, to gang graffiti in the nice little kids park.

To the north of WCP, the area is more of a mixed bag. There are pockets of some really nicely maintained homes. The New City Church people continue to move in to the area and renovate houses for members. They are a great stabilizing force and this area would be much worse off without them. There are some bad pockets, but this area is moving in the right direction, although slowly.

The Oakley concrete block area, I'm sad to say, is moving in the wrong direction. When we moved in 4 years ago, it had many vacant houses, but several nicely maintained ones. One of the nicely maintained ones had a fire last year and a couple more have been foreclosed on. The downturn and housing problems hit working class homeowners like those in this area really hard. This area is also vulnerable to any shifts in stability because of the subsidized apartments along Hodiamont just west of here. These are a large source of gang activity and once the scales of vacant / occupied tipped in the concrete block district, the bad activity metastasized very quickly. I love the houses in this area and I am not looking forward to watching them disintegrate. They are in a tough spot, though, with the very bad apartments directly west and several blocks of vacant houses just to the north.

Thanks for the update. There are many great homes left up there. Those that are lost are a tragedy.
I tried to buy 5927 W Cabanne ( the white frame one c. 1885) back in 2009 but Freddie Mac didn't understand how much it was really worth and the amount of work it needed. I gave up when they wanted $185K, and I offered max $127K. It eventually sold for $80k. Stupid. It was for the best n the end. I realize now I couldn't handle that big of a project. I hope it is in good hands.
Some of those apt buildings are in rough shape. Also a shame are the two little dumps along Hamilton in the backyard of the first house on W Cabanne.