Update: First, a fire broke out in the interior in May of 2024. Then, in October of 2024, another much more severe fire inside required the demolition of the building due to the cork insulation inside the walls. Demolition began less than a week after the last fire was extinguished.

Supposedly the largest cold storage facility when it was built in 1922, the Federal Cold Storage Company demonstrates the once and continued importance of North Broadway to the transportation and warehousing of food to the area around Produce Row.

As such, there obviously no need for windows for the refrigeration rooms. This type of warehouses, albeit older, still stand further south just north of Laclede’s Landing. S. Scott Joy was the architect, and the building functioned as a warehouse until the 1960s after undergoing ownership changes at least once.

The small amount of Art Deco detailing makes the building, though strictly utilitarian, strike a prominent presence on North Broadway, just north of the new bridge.