Architecture of St. Louis, Missouri - Skyscrapers

Skyscrapers

Further information: List of tallest buildings in St. Louis

St. Louis was home to a cluster of early skyscrapers during the late 19th century. Two of Louis Sullivan's important early skyscrapers stand among a crop of similar office buildings and department stores built up between 1890 and 1915. His Wainwright Building (1891) features strong base-pediment-shaft massing and an insistently vertical pattern of ornament; his Union Trust Building of 1893 was stripped of its cave-like street-level ironwork in 1924.

Beyond Sullivan's work, other significant downtown skyscrapers of those years were Railway Exchange Building (1913) by John Mauran and the now-demolished Merchants Exchange Building. Some warehouse and factory buildings of the early 20th century have been transformed into local attractions, such as the International Shoe factory building and its renovation into the St. Louis City Museum. However, some buildings of significance have been demolished, such as the St. Louis Century Building.

In Midtown St. Louis, a group of theaters and skyscraper office buildings was constructed between the Central West End and downtown, such as the Gothic Revival Continental-Life Building (1929) and the Neo-Renaissance Fox Theatre (1929). The Fox, designed by C. Howard Crane, was an exuberant movie palace that once seated more than 5,000 and was the second-largest cinema in the United States. Since 1982, it has been used as a performance hall. Another venue in Midtown built in the 1920s is the Neo-classical Powell Symphony Hall (1925), formerly a cinema and vaudeville theater, now the home of the St. Louis Symphony.

Some notable post-modern commercial skyscrapers were built downtown in the 1970s and 1980s, including the One US Bank Plaza (1976), the AT&T Center (1986), and One Metropolitan Square (1989), which is the tallest building in St. Louis. One US Bank Plaza, the local headquarters for US Bancorp, was constructed for the Mercantile Bancorporation in the Structural expressionist style, emphasizing the steel structure of the building.

During the 1990s, St. Louis saw the construction of the largest United States courthouse by area, the Thomas F. Eagleton United States Courthouse (completed in 2000). The Eagleton Courthouse is home to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The most recent high-rise buildings in St. Louis include two residential towers: the Park East Tower in the Central West End and the Roberts Tower located in downtown.