I realized I had never photographed the TUMS factory in downtown St. Louis. It is noteworthy for many different reasons. Rob Power of Built St. Louis calls it the first major industrial building in the Modernist style in St. Louis, and I also feel like it has the stylistic underpinnings of the Art-Deco and Streamline Moderne predecessors.

The sign is distinctly modern, set out by itself with stridently minimalist type setting that must have seemed jarring in the early 1930s when the building opened.

Long banks of windows, uninterrupted by support columns, demonstrate that the building is held up by a steel skeleton and not by curtain walls.

Glazed terracotta provides visual relief to the passerby along the sidewalk with again new and modern typefont.

I suspect the portion below, with a more Art-Deco form, might be slightly older.

Widmer Engineering Company, which advertised itself as a one stop shop for industrial buildings, designed and constructed the TUMS factory. There was not much I could find on the company, but it was active in many projects before World War II.

I believe TUMS started in the small building below, and then expanded rapidly in just a few years after its founding. Apparently 99% of all TUMS are manufactured here, which makes me wonder where the other 1% is made.