Arcade Building
812 Olive Street
Architect: Tom P. Barnett Co.
Built: 1919
Developed by Edward Mallinckrodt as downtown’s first office building with an enclosed shopping arcade, the Arcade Building (also known as the Arcade-Wright Building) envelops the earlier Wright Building (1906) at the northwest corner of Eighth and Pine streets, designed by Eames & Young. Master of the picturesque and eclectic Tom P. Barnett designed the new building in the Gothic Revival style, a stylistic idiom well-suited to the two-story vaulted arcade inside. Construction began in 1917 while World War I claimed America’s steel supply, so the Arcade was built in reinforced concrete. Briefly, the building was the world’s largest reinforced concrete building. The exterior today retains the building’s characteristic lancet arched retail and entrance openings, with ornate bosses, terra cotta tracery at the top of the northern section, and dramatic bay windows facing Eighth and Olive streets. Gone is the original terra cotta cladding on the piers that terminated in projecting gargoyles above; the piers were reclad in brick during the 1930s after failure on the terra cotta anchoring.
Ambassador Building
Northwest corner of 7th and Locust streets
Architects: C.W. & George L. Rapp
Built: 1926
Demolished: 1996
The Ambassador Building was a seventeen-story building in the heart of Downtown St. Louis that housed one of the city’s most elaborate theaters beneath eleven stories of offices. The building was developed by theater magnate Spyros Skouras’s Skouras Brothers Company. Designed by noted theater architects Rapp & Rapp, who had also designed the St. Louis Theater (1925, now Powell Hall), the building balanced baroque terra cotta ornamentation at the base and griffin-adorned cornice with a powerful, plain brick shaft. Inside, the lavishly detailed 3,000-seat theater employed a French Renaissaince Revival style associated with the “Sun King” Louis XIV. After several years as a music venue, the theater closed down in 1976. The fixtures of the theater went to public auction in 1989; the chandeliers are still found in the Des Peres Cinema in West County. Mercantile Bank demolished the Ambassador in 1996 and 1997 to create space for a driveway to the Mercantile Tower (now the US Bank Tower). The St. Louis Building Arts Foundation recovered the terra cotta ornamental systems.
Preservation Research Office in partnership with Modern STL presents:
A Preservation Ellipsis: The AAA Building and Our Recent Architectural History
Saturday, September 29 at 1:00 p.m.
FORM Contemporary Design Show, 1521 Washington Avenue
Michael R. Allen will give a talk tracing the idea of preserving the AAA Building around to the fire that destroyed the AAA’s previous building on that site in 1975. Theme will run through various episodes in recent architectural history including preservation of the Old Courthouse and the riverfront clearance of the early 1940s, the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe in the 1970s and the relocation of the statue of Friedrich Schiller from St. Louis Place Park to across the street from Kiel Opera House in 1975. Weaving through the connections of several moments, the talk shows how we shape and reshape our sense of place through continual reinvention of the built environment.
The Alligator Oil Clothing Company Building at 4171 Bingham Avenue.
I just submitted a National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Alligator Oil Clothing Company Buildings, early reinforced concrete industrial buildings designed by Leonhard Haeger (architect of the possibly-lost Pevely Dairy Plant office building). Some readers may recognize the mighty factory building on the northern edge of the Bevo neighborhood, which stands on Bingham Avenue between Gravois and Morganford. Built in 1918 and 1919, the two contributing buildings use the Turner “mushroom cap” structural system, and the main building is a very unusual early example of a fully-exposed exterior concrete structure. More on the Alligator plant later — now I want to show a neat discovery.
Looking west down Meramec Avenue toward Gravois Road, 1918. Photograph from the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation.
In researching the building, we needed photographs showing that the Alligator buildings retained what the National Register defines as “integrity” — essentially, whether the buildings still convey the attributes that they displayed in their historic period. Tracking down historic photographs was difficult, but we managed to fine one view showing the main Alligator building in 1918, thanks to the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation. The date is clear because the smaller eastern building completed in 1919 is not evident in the photograph.
The view looks west down Meramec Avenue. The diagonal road running across the photograph is Gravois. Chippewa Avenue is seen at right, running diagonally toward the top of the frame. An intersecting diagonal running toward the right top of the frame is the former St. Louis, Oak Hill and Carondelet Railroad line. The Alligator plant is marked with a dark circle. Contrasting with the one-story flat-roofed houses sprouting on subdivisions lots is the dominant feature of the images: the contours of row cropped farm fields. Less that 100 years ago, the area around Chippewa and Gravois was nearly rural.
Wright's dog house photograph courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park.
Date: Sunday, September 9, 2012 — 2:00 p.m.
Location: Missouri History Museum – Lee Auditorium
Tickets: $8 or $6 for members of The Missouri History Museum and/or The Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park.
Tickets now available by calling (314) 361-9017 or at the Missouri History Museum ticket desk.
ROMANZA: THE CALIFORNIA STRUCTURES DESIGNED BY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT explores Frank Lloyd Wright’s 50-year relationship with the Golden State. Wright designed more than 80 projects for California and saw more than 25 built. The buildings were grand and modest, public and private, and came from each major era of Wright’s seven-decade career.
With unprecedented access to every California building designed by Wright, Romanza journeys all over the state, from the Los Angeles textile block houses, famous for appearances in dozens of Hollywood films, to Wright’s only San Francisco commission which he designed as a “glass of champagneâ€, from the cinder block homes of the San Joaquin valley, to the “Ship’s prow” home on the beach of Carmel bay, from Wright’s contentious relationship with oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, to perhaps the most charming of all Frank Lloyd Wright stories, the design for a doghouse in response to the letter of a 12-year-old boy.
Also included is substantial material on Wright’s unbuilt California work, some of the most fantastically imaginative structures he ever designed.
The documentary is filmmaker Michael Miner’s third about Wright’s architecture. 87 minutes. Q & A with the filmmaker will follow the screening.
A reconstruction of the doghouse will be on display.
Co-sponsored by The Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park
 and Missouri History Museum.
Many may know the Mission Revival style building at 3207 Washington Avenue by one of its string of tenants over the past forty years, from the St. Louis Conservatory and School for the Arts (1970s-1990), to the Midtown Arts Center (1991-2000), to a series of nightclubs including the Kastle, Dreams, and Club TV (2002-2008). But whether you attended a poetry reading in its atrium, got down to hip hop on its balconies, or just drove by wondering what this whimsical, seemingly out-of-place building was doing there, you will be pleased to know that it is entering into its next phase of life with a dedicated new owner and a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Central States Life Insurance Company Building at 3207 Washington (1921; Tom P. Barnett Co, architects).
The Preservation Research Office prepared the building’s nomination to the National Register for Chameleon Integrated Services, a Saint Louis-based IT firm established in 2002 and currently located in Lafayette Square. The company purchased the building earlier this year for its new headquarters, and is pursuing a $2 million rehabilitation of the property using state and federal historic tax credits. After many decades the project will return the building to its somewhat surprising use: offices.
Detail hot of the Bedford limestone surrounds of the entrance and magnificante quatrefoil window.
Designed by St. Louis’ own Tom P. Barnett, the building was completed in 1921 as the $140,000 headquarters of the Central States Life Insurance Company. Established in 1909, Central States was a small local firm with big aspirations, aggressively expanding its policy coverage throughout the West and Southwest in under a decade. The company’s decision to build on Washington Avenue just west of Compton was unusual at a time when virtually all of the city’s insurance firms were located downtown, yet this stretch of the recently-widened thoroughfare was then projected to become the “Fifth Avenue of St. Louis,” a modern, upscale commercial district to match those in Chicago and New York. The building’s Mission Revival design, with its bell tower, heavy trussed roof, Conquistador stained glass window, and Spanish Baroque terra cotta detailing, embodied Central States’ ambitions and stylistically identified the company with the region it sought to dominate.
The stained glass window depicting a conquistador.
Central States was the first major enterprise to invest on Washington Avenue between Jefferson and Grand, but unfortunately the promise and hope of Washington Avenue as a future “World Famous Street” quickly fizzled. Its impressive new headquarters was soon surrounded by boarding houses and automobile-related industries, and Central States abandoned the building in 1928. From then on it housed dozens of tenants over the ensuing decades, bringing us back to the present.
The vaulted atrium anchors the building's interior.
PRO couldn’t be happier to have a been a part of this project; not only will Chameleon rehab the Central States Building for its new headquarters, but the company has leased its parking lot to its western neighbor, the Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, for the brewery’s new biergarten. This project illustrates the best in what historic tax credits can do for local communities by facilitating development in long-dormant neighborhoods, stimulating small-business growth in the city, and, of course, bringing new life to our long-vacant architectural gems.
For more on the Central States Life Insurance Building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 25, 2012, read on.
When development firm Sangita proposed demolition of the three Midtown buildings at 3834-38 Laclede Avenue last May, this writer offered no protest. Later last year the two two-story buildings, built as stores and flats, and the one-story storefront fell to the blows of wreckers, and soon spring up a double-pen drive-though building housing not just Jimmy but also Papa John.
The Robert Elkington House. Photograph by Ted Wight.
Since the summer, the mid-century modern residence designed and occupied by architect Robert Elkington has sat on the market for sale. But now, the house is under contract — and its future is as uncertain as it was before, at least to anyone who is not the buyer-to-be. Located at 1520 Carmen Road in Manchester, the house was completed in 1948. As Ted Wight notes on his blog, the well-kept and dramatic design, the 3.56-acre site and the $250,000 price made the house both a bargain and a worry. The realtor who listed the house included the dreaded phrase “tear down” in the marketing, and with a large site and a low price there is a real possibility that the sale will bring the end of the home.
The Graham Paper Company Building (now known as Cupples Station Building 7) shown in a photograph in the Station Masters files in the collection of the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation.
After the Circuit Court upheld the Planning Commission’s vote to block demolition of Cupples 7 in late June, there was little to report on the ailing historic warehouse building. Yesterday St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Tim Bryant provided good news: Montgomery Bank foreclosed on owner Ballpark Lofts, which owed $1.4 million to the bank (along with some $250,000 owed to the city unpaid property taxes). Yesterday the city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority voted unanimously to issue a formal Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking a redevelopment plan for the building.
In the last few months, two project proposals — one for an apartment complex at Taylor and Chouteau and another for a vague commercial development along Kingshighway — in Forest Park Southeast have emerged which are both grossly out of scale and character with the historic architectural character of the neighborhood. These projects exhibit deficiencies in consideration of scale, ratio of surface parking to building footprints, form and materiality. Together, these projects would overwhelm the accumulated urbanity of Forest Park Southeast with the fly-by-night aesthetics of American suburbia. After all, good urbanism needs more than development and density to thrive — it requires beauty and the human scale.
Not right for a dense historic neighborhood. Tate Homes' Hanley Station.
This talk is part of the 
