The Landreth Building, sitting at the southeast corner of 4th and Locust streets, was a historic skyscraper that had missed my attention before and I only discovered it by accident recently. At eighteen stories, it may be the tallest building demolished in downtown St. Louis, beating out the lost Third National Bank Building, which was only seventeen stories. Designed by famed architect Preston J. Bradshaw, it was erected in 1926, constructed of reinforced concrete with Laclede Rail Steel by McCormack-Combs Construction Company. Tenants started moving in May of the year of completion. The exterior was described as “Renaissance Revival” with warm gray brick and terracotta and the lobby was faced with pink granite. Developed by a certain Mr. Landreth of Joplin, it was unceremoniously demolished for the tepid Mansion House development in the 1960s.
Another lost pre 1930s Depression era old skyscraper that was destroyed within the domains of cosmetically “modernizing” a certain downtown. Thanks for making this simple description web page in honor of a certain long gone building. 🙂 Plus I also do know of another long gone skyscraper called the Rialto Building (it had a few top administrative offices for some certain Desloge family’s more raw material lead related business operations from many generations ago). Which was also torn down to give space for some Le Corbusier architectural principles Mansion House development as well. Even so, it’s nice to see that the Landreth Building will get some greater recognition beyond cyberspace since it wasn’t listed within some AngelFire vintage Built St Louis web domain 🙂
Yeah, I know I was surprised Rob missed it! But I should feature the Rialto Building now, too.