The former Pet, Inc. headquarters building at 400 South Fourth Street was originally built in 1969. It was designed by the supposedly noted architect A.L. Aydelott. When completed, it was 300,000 square feet and cost $7,500,000 to construct.

It has now been converted into apartments and rebranded .400, a baseball reference owing to its proximity to Busch Stadium.

When it was built, it was part of a suite of Modernist buildings, along with the demolished Stouffer’s Riverfront Inn and the now former home of KMOV, a sort of frame for the Gateway Arch which rose at the same time.

The building sits on a plinth, then rises up a uniform shaft where a crown of sorts swells out at the top of the sixteenth story. It reminds me Louis Sullivan’s description of designing his buildings to have a tripartite form of a flower: a base as the roots, a main trunk as the stem, and then a highly decorative top as the flower.

I actually like this building in that it is very unique; I would not want the entire downtown to look like this and it is also not too tall. Perhaps it is Brutalist, but some people do not agree that it is pure in its form to be labeled that style.

It suffers from being cut off by interstates, drag-race-designed South Fourth Street and vacant lots. Perhaps that is the way Modernist urban planning would like it to be. I doubt many current residents walk anywhere from the building.