Tag Archives: Sherman

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Day 96-Good bones but not a lot of meat

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This route took me back to Kenwick, this time walking lengthwise, parallel to Richmond Road, on Menifee and Monroe Avenues.  In terms of typology, there’s not a lot to add.  These houses are similar to those in the same areas of my previous walk down Sherman and Bassett on Day 76.  The houses on the north end of the area I passed through, on Owsley and Marne, tend to be older–1920’s era, then the late 1930’s and 1940’s houses on Sherman but are similar in other ways, rounding out the diversity in housing stock that I proposed made this neighborhood so economically diverse.

I like Kenwick.  It’s probably my favorite neighborhood so far.  Its relatively regular street network contributes to walkability and its diversity without a lot of obvious tension is unique.  Neighborhoods like Kenwick provide insights that planners and developers should take into account in planning future neighborhoods. But it has its problems which should also be addressed.  Block length is one.  The blocks heading northeast and southwest are long–close to a quarter mile.  The northwest/southeast blocks are very short, around 350 feet long.  The short blocks are dominated by the sides of houses that front the longer blocks which tends to make these blocks feel more desolate.  There also aren’t many destinations that are truly within walking distance.  National Avenue is close but still well over half a mile from the average home in the areas I passed by. The shops in the neighborhood are small and their location within the neighborhood rather than at the interface between neighborhoods probably limits their ability to serve as more than a convenience store. And even though there is a community center with a small park, it feels like there aren’t a lot of other public spaces. The net result is to delegate walking to recreational uses, even here.

View down Henry Clay Boulevard
View down Henry Clay Boulevard.
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Day 76-The Third Block

day 76My last walk in 2014 passed through the Kenwick neighborhood , northeast of Richmond Road.  This was an exciting walk for me for a couple of reasons.  It’s my first good opportunity to test out a method of covering streets in which I will walk along a set of parallel streets on one day and then cover the intersecting streets at later date.  (There aren’t a lot of areas that have a good string of parallel streets.) On a personal level, this was neat because it took me past a house that looked at and that was at one time high on our list of potential homes.

Sherman Street
Sherman Street

When we were looking at houses, I remember being told multiple times that this was a neighborhood in transition.  Look for a house in the first couple of blocks, closer to Richmond road.  That third block, we were told, was a little rougher.  The character definitely changes as you progress northeast from Richmond toward Robertson and the RJ Corman tracks behind the neighborhood.  The contrast between the first block of Bassett and the third block of Sherman is especially clear.  The houses on the southwest end of each street typically date from the 1920’s or early 30’s.  The houses on the northeast are smaller, and generally seem to have been built in the late 1930’s.  Especially on Sherman, there seems to be a lot of infill, with many houses clearly newer than the 1930’s or 40’s.  There is a lot going on–not only new construction but also remodeling. It may be a neighborhood in transition, but it doesn’t have the degree of tension that I found nearby on Day 17.  I think diversity may have been built in with the variance in housing stock and, since it’s always been there, it’s less of a concern.  It’s perhaps more a lucky accident of timing than anything else, as the Depression certainly had an impact on how these blocks developed.