I thought the former Stix, Baer & Fuller department store at Crestwood Plaza deserved its own post, considering its shear size and accompanying enclosed mall which attached to the strip mall to the west of the original development from 1957.
Opening on January 23, 1967, the new department store represented a substantial addition to the shopping center universe in St. Louis, and made Crestwood Mall substantially larger, along with adding a third anchor.
Designed by John Graham and Co. of Seattle, Millstone & Associates were the general contractors for the project. The massive parking garage underneath the store and mall boasted 2,300 parking spots (and would ultimately help spell the demise of the building due to structural problems).
800 employees staffed the huge store when it opened. Robert Goetz of St. Louis designed the open court’s landscape out front of the pavilion facing Watson Road, which was still Route 66 at the time.
There were some beautiful decorative panels that were saved before demolition, as well. A newspaper article recounted this salvaging effort, recounted in this newspaper article.
Thank you for these Crestwood Plaza posts! Brings me back to childhood seeing the mall back in it’s glory days along with the Route 66 Drive-in across the street. I remember begging my parents to take me to that front window in Dillard’s to see the fountain outside that could be seen open to the parking level below. Sometime in the early 90s the fountain along with all of the natural landscape that surrounded it was removed and replaced with a blacktop parking lot. I never noticed anyone ever really utilizing the additional parking -it was probably all removed to eliminate maintaining the area. I guess they paved paradise to put up a parking lot 😁
Yes, they did.
These exuberant mid-century retail designs really exemplified the optimism of the 1960’s when we all thought anything was possible. A far cry from the gloom and doom of the 21st Century with it’s bunker-style mentality.