Site Report 1: The Deep Read

My block, between 11th and 12th and 43rd and 45th, is an almost fully built on piece of land containing professional offices and apartments. The biggest buildings are an office complex and a parking garage which serves the surrounding area and has around 6 levels. Across from the office building, a vacant lot covering around a fifth of the block is fenced off and labeled with a land use proposition sign from the city. An alley roughly bisects the block and separates the garage and office from a couple of apartment buildings. The office is called the University District Building and houses medical offices such as ATI Physical Therapy and a dentist’s office. Generally, the block appears to be used by professionals such as these, and by apartment residents on the south side. I counted approximately 2 or 3 different apartment buildings. The offices are built on an existing infrastructure, made of stone pieces stacked together, that levels the sloping street. In addition to this base, the block also features several mail drop boxes, some of which appear to be pretty old. If I hadn’t been looking, I doubt I would have noticed many of the block's details, especially the stone base and the old mailboxes. Exploring my block made me wonder about several features: Was this always business or was it residential at some point? What was where the vacant lot is now? What businesses used to be here? These are the questions I'll try to answer. When visiting, I expected to find some kind of store (since the U District has so many of those) and was surprised I didn’t. My theory is that there was once a store of some type on my block, but it was since shut down, so to find that out I’ll look for old pictures or perhaps real estate records.