I think many of us have fond memories of Christmas at Famous Barr downtown in the Railway Exchange Building, so there’s something deeply sad to see it clad in massive metal sheathing now, a necessary step the City of St. Louis has taken to secure the structure from further intrusions after a fire earlier this…
Tag: Railway Exchange Building
Other Fall Updates, Fires, Demolitions, Etc.
It finally happened, the Mullanphy Emigrant Home, which I last looked at back in June of this year, caught on fire and burned to the ground on the night of September 14th. There is certainly no grand conspiracy, but simply the fact that overnight lows reached 50 degrees, and a squatter’s fire probably spread out…
End of the Skybridge
This might be considered sappy, but in all seriousness one of my first memories of downtown St. Louis is walking across the skybridge from the parking garage into the old Famous Barr in the Railway Exchange Building during our first visit to St. Louis Centre. Fast forward almost forty years and St. Louis Centre has…
Reflections
The Railway Exchange in October 2015 is largely vacant.
Carson Pirie Scott: A Solution for the Railway Exchange Building
What will we do with the giant empty hulk of the Railway Exchange Building? It seems that the age of the august department store in downtown is over, because, despite angry nostalgia when they close, nobody shops at them. My heart sunk when I walked in to buy a wedding gift at the downtown Macy’s…
Railway Exchange Building, Sunset
What an amazing building, and hopefully its future will be brighter after the darkness after the sunset of the Macy’s closure.
Union Trust, Downtown
Update: The Union Trust Building was renovated in 2018. The lesser known of the two remaining Louis Sullivan buildings in St. Louis is a gem, even if it’s hard to photograph it in its entirety. I guess it’s a good thing there are other building blocking the view, in the overall scheme of things.
Railway Exchange Building
I have always had a soft spot for the Railway Exchange Building, that hulking, terracotta covered edifice rising right in the heart of downtown. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I learned through satellite images that the top floors of the office building portion of the structure has a large donut light…
Old Blog Post
Update: This view of St. Louis is extremely out of date, written from the standpoint of still living on the East Coast. My attitudes have changed dramatically. Downtown St. Louis: Where No St. Louisan Has Gone Before I took the opportunity the Friday before I headed back to DC to do an architectural survey of…