The other day as my wife, Laurie, and I were strolling down Summit Avenue after lunch and marveling, as usual, at the grandeur of the mansions that make up that Victorian-Edwardian magic kingdom, she asked me if I had ever been down Irvine Avenue.

I hadn't even noticed this modest-looking street, which begins across the street from where Western meets Summit—across the street, too, from the tiny Nathan Hale Park with its bronze statue of the Revolutionary War hero.

"Let's go," she said. "It's amazing."

Laurie often suggests urban adventures like this in zones she has discovered on her walks. I always say yes, since my wife is only really pleased by very interesting things. And Irvine Avenue (technically West Irvine Avenue) is very interesting, amazing even.

Irvine runs down Summit Hill at a right angle to Summit for a while, then curves to parallel it, down below the backyards of the Summit mansions. Interestingly enough, a second West Irvine Avenue runs up from Ramsey Street and then parallels the first one from this point on; both appear to be two-way streets, so I guess you get your pick.

The more westerly Irvine is the good one, if you ask me. It sends you into a green world that couldn't be more different from the tidiness, the landscaped perfection, the sheer Gosford Park-ness of Summit itself. Here the greenery is bushy, boldly overgrown; it tumbles over and around crumbling walls with the wild freedom of the grass and trees I saw on a visit to  Serbia and Bosnia years ago. Walking along, you feel you might come upon an outdoor table full of dark-haired, dark-eyed men drinking plum brandy and singing sad songs about Sarajevo.

Colorado? France? Italy?
    
It's a residential street, but not a cozy, regular, little-houses-and-lawns-in-a-row Midwestern kind of residential street. Tucked in among the greenery and disheveled old masonry walls are oddball houses, some run-down, others trim and painted eye-catching colors.

Here is a tiny one-story you might see in Telluride, Colorado--a funky converted miner's home. There is a rambling, tree-crowded dwelling that gives off the moneyed-but-earthy feel of San Rafael or Santa Rosa. There is a dramatic tumbling garden that belongs in Italy (bottom photo). And there—there is 311 Irvine, an exquisite, utterly French dwelling (fourth photo at left) all ready for the first scene of an Eric Rohmer movie. Did the dwellers therein put up the blue sign that charmingly misidentifies Irvine as "Rue Eugène-Dupont" (photo)?

(I did a little research and discovered that the original Rue Eugène-Dupont is a tiny one-block street on the Lake Geneva waterfront in Geneva, Switzerland—and it's named for a 19th-century socialist leader who supported Karl Marx.)

And then there is the ruin: see the third photo.

It's well up the hill toward one of the mansions, and must be some kind of outbuilding or shed  that hasn't been used for many decades. It's such a pure example of the "picturesque" kind of European ruin as depicted in paintings from the Baroque era to the nineteenth century that it really completes the impression that you have not only left Minnesota—you may have left the modern mind-world entirely and are now dwelling in the climactic chapter of a novel whose hero has four names.

That's the magic of the street--the sense you have having wandered briefly into a kind of pan-European neverland, lush and almost dreamlike. You feel as displaced as the painted jockey figure (see top photo) who stands wondering all by himself next to a part-brick, part-concrete wall, holding out a lantern in an empty green field.

Photos by Laurie Phillips