I was heading up North Broadway when I spotted something out of the corner of my eye that made me make a U-turn and investigate.
Through the lush undergrowth that had sprung up from the heavy rains we’ve seen this spring, I spotted the ruins of an old building peeking out.
Through some research, I determined that this was the McCabe-Powers Auto Body Company, which, like many industries in St. Louis, started deep in the city but moved further out as they expanded.
In this instance, the plant at 5900 North Broadway was built in 1940. It’s sort of interesting, but at some point in the Twentieth Century, myself and other architectural historians sort of lose interest in industrial buildings in St. Louis! I don’t know why, but they just sort of get boring–nothing rises to the level of the amazing architecture of places like the Lemp or Anheuser-Busch breweries!
Industry begins to have simple, streamlined architecture, and it just doesn’t stir the imagination like the castles of the famous brewery families from the Nineteenth Century. Probably nobody noticed when this building collapsed, and there definitely weren’t any rallies.
But they’re still an important part of the story of our city, and their abandonment was a part of the story of the loss of industry and the jobs that came along with it in the decades after World War II. McCabe-Powers, like so many proud companies, becomes a footnote.
