I call the St. Louis Mart and Terminal Warehouse the tallest historic skyscraper in St. Louis that everyone forgets about. It sits to the south of the main cluster of skyscrapers, off by itself in many ways, alluding to its original use. Constructed originally as the headquarters of the Terminal Railroad Association, the cooperative in…
Category: Downtown
Posts about downtown St. Louis
Merchant Laclede Building
Update: I revisited the building in the spring of 2021 with photos from the summer of 2019. Along with the Security Building, the Merchant Laclede Building is the other major remnant of the early office buildings sitting on Fourth Street in the old financial district. Shorn of a corner dome and classical pediment in an…
Security Building
The Security Building is an important link to the commercial core of St. Louis before the arrival of Chicago School skyscrapers further west, not particularly tall, and architecturally unique. Located on what was once called the “Wall Street of the West,” surely it is no coincidence the Federal Reserve is located next door. The Security…
Broadway, Looking North
I really wish the city would reconsider having Broadway and Fourth Street function like highways in downtown St. Louis. One-way streets are not historic, and only date to the last half of the Twentieth Century. They encourage speeding, discourage business because of the high speeds, and give commuters the feeling that the street is not…
Laclede Gas Building
Is the Laclede Gas Building really an historic building? I would argue yes, as it represents a moment in architectural history when the theories of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier were reigning supreme around the world. The building represents St. Louis’s response to the Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building (now impotently…
Marquette Building, Revisited
Wow, it’s been a really long time since I looked at the Marquette Building, one of the first major historic office buildings rehabbed in downtown St. Louis. The last time I was there, it was still under construction, and the cornice had not been restored. It is truly an amazing building, and standing in front…
LaSalle Building
Update: The LaSalle Building and its neighbor on Broadway were renovated in 2019., opening as a Hotel Indigo in 2020. Stripped of much of its ornament, the LaSalle Building sits quietly on Olive Street, a few blocks from its more famous colleagues. Never abandoned, it still anchors this corner across from the Metropolitan Square and…
Field Boxes Available!
Cupples 7 is coming down.
Modernist Re-Skin, Western Downtown
Starting in the 1950’s, it became common for building owners to “update” their old buildings with new fronts; some are more successful than others.
Civil Courts Building From Chestnut Street
The Civil Courts Building is one of my favorite buildings in downtown St. Louis, but it is so often viewed from straight down the Gateway Mall. I like seeing it from among the buildings of downtown.