Oh, that is nice. Is it nice inside?
It is! I think it has been recently renovated, because they were re-painting and re-finishing the floors of the two downstairs units when I moved in.
The only problem is that the second bedroom was clearly meant for a child/a person who doesn't want a full sized bed. So my roommate lives in the living room (we installed folding doors). The dining room is now the living room, and the second bedroom has become... the weird room full of crap.
Also, our refrigerator fills up with water. Research tells me that the place the water leaks from means that our drain is clogged, but I cannot for the life of me figure out where the drain is. I think it is inside the back wall of the fridge.
Saint Louis has an incredible wealth of beautiful apartment buildings like this. You'll see them boarded up all the time if you drive around. There is one in particular that I really like that is completely abandoned, with the windows not even boarded up... it's just open to the elements. But it is near this big new "green" housing development I've been reading about, so maybe property values will go up and someone will buy it.
Apparently the big problem is that fixing these buildings up costs way more than you could get from selling/renting them. This is why the place I did the informational interview at a few weeks ago does "gap financing" where they eat the difference. (maybe that is a commonly known concept, I just hadn't heard of it.)