Starting at Broadway Street and heading east or more southeast on High Street, we first see the Roman Catholic Proto Cathedral of St. Peter, just across the street from the Missouri Capitol. A proto cathedral is a former cathedral; the present church dates from 1883, and it was the seat, or cathedra of the diocese…
Tag: Office Buildings
Municipal Services Building
Opened in 1927-8 to designed by the firm Study & Farrar, the Municipal Services Building is diagonally across Clark Street and Tucker Boulevard from City Hall. It is perhaps a building that is missed by many people, but is still used in part by the City of St. Louis. It is actually a collection of…
Rung For Women, Expansion
It’s hard to believe that just six years ago I was documenting the old warehouses and buildings of the Fox Brothers Company, some of which were too far gone to be preserved (last three photos). Fox Brothers was a huge company that produced millwork for the area; the park that bears its name nearby was…
The Never Built Central Tower
St. Louis had a couple of skyscrapers planned in downtown St. Louis, but thanks to Andrew Raimist, to whom full credit is given for this post, I learned that there was a forty story tower planned on Broadway, that would have slid right in between the two large buildings above where the small building on…
Kansas City, Baltimore, Dayton, Louisville and Indianapolis Skyscrapers
Rounding out our survey of early Twentieth Century centerpiece skyscrapers, we look at a couple more, starting first on the other side of Missouri in Kansas City. The Kansas City Power and Light Building, built in 1931, was the tallest building in Missouri until 1976. Designed by the Kansas City firm of Hoit, Price &…
Smith Tower, Seattle
The skyline of Seattle is interesting; today most of the tall buildings are from the last fifty years and can be seen in one long line from Puget Sound. But to the south, sitting off by itself is the Smith Tower, built in 1914, in the Pioneer Square neighborhood. Designed by the firm of T….
Carew Tower, Cincinnati
The Carew Tower cuts a thin profile in the skyline of Cincinnati, not far from the Union Central Tower. It was named after the department store that was demolished to build the Art-Deco building in 1931. Designed by Walter William Ahlschlager, a Chicago architect, and William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich of New York,…
Union Central Tower, Cincinnati
Standing out to the west of Cincinnati’s downtown skyline, the Union Central Tower is our next notable skyscraper built in an American city in the second decade of the Twentieth Century. In this case, the architect is Cass Gilbert, in his one skyscraper design outside of New York. Of course, Gilbert designed the Art Museum…
Leveque Tower, Former American Insurance Union Citadel, Columbus, Ohio
Clocking in at 47 stories, the Leveque Tower in downtown Columbus, Ohio, is a standout example of an Art-Deco skyscraper that opened in 1927 as the American Insurance Union Citadel. It was built as a 600 room hotel with an attached theater. The architect was Charles Howard Crane, who was actually active mainly in Detroit….
Spires, Skyscrapers and American Skylines
I was thinking recently about how Western Civilization cities are defined by their skylines. In Europe, major cities were dominated by the spires of their churches and in their cathedrals. Take the city of Cologne; if you look above there is sort of a gentle pyramid shape formed if you follow the lines over the…