Demolition has proceeded on the lower of the two cylindrical towers of the former Stouffer’s Riverfront Inn, or whatever name you best know it as, in downtown St. Louis.
Demolition began with the low-slung wing that connected the two towers, and some preliminary demolition has begun on the lower floors of the original tower.
So excited when my grandma took us there as kids, to eat at the turning restaurant!
When this was first constructed, I intensely disliked it; as it was the first identity of something foreign to St Louis. It is an outsider, not of our soul, so to speak. I ate at Stix Bair & Fuller. At Pope’s Cafeteria, The Forum Cafeteria, At Famous-Barr and Dunie’s in downtown. That constituted my sense of home, of being a St. Louisan. Something from Detroit had the aroma of an automobile rolling off a factory floor; not fine dining.
Stouffer’s is consonant with stuffy, anyway.
Since that time, St Louis has either lost, sold or traded it’s local identity for (like all the USA) for money. Anheuser Busch is InBev. Ralston Purina is Nestle. I’m sure I can’t recall all of it.
I’m proud to call St Louis my birthplace and my terroir.
So sad to see it getting removed.
It was a building of its time like a number of other round buildings in the era (Edward Durell Stone’s Busch Stadium leaps to mind).
Its time has past apparently. But what will replace it? Something ‘better’ or something vilified in our time?