Just north of downtown Belleville are a cluster of beautiful Italianate houses, many of which have been adapted for other uses over the years, as is common as the commercial core of a city grows into nearby residential areas.
There is a yellow brick factory, whose original function is a mystery to me, nearby, as well.
It has been renovated, and looks occupied, and fits in well with the rest of the neighborhood.
Nearby, the beautiful housing stock of Belleville begins, which is much older than what is left over in St. Louis, since much of the same architecture was demolished by later development in the early Twentieth Century.
But there are amazing variants of the Italianate style, which surely belonged to the wealthy, highly educated German industrialists and professionals that built Belleville before the Civil War.
The house below shows the gradual transition from the Italianate to the Second Empire, and the low pitched roofs began to elevate up to the Mansard Roof style.
And wow, a rarity on the Missouri side: a Gothic Revival cottage, which I see more over in Illinois than in St. Louis, though I did write about a couple of them that survive over the Mississippi River.
And speaking of the Gothic style, here is a severe, simple German Hallkirche, with the main sanctuary clearly on the second floor, which was not uncommon at all; take Centenary Methodist Church in St. Louis, for example.
