Cape Town Lens: Union Trust Building (Hotel St. Louis), Olive Street and 7th Street, St. Louis, MO

A Cape Town Lion’s Head tagged image from photographer – w_lemay as published on Flickr.

Union Trust Building (Hotel St. Louis), Olive Street and 7th Street, St. Louis, MO

Image by w_lemay

Built in 1892-1893, this Chicago School-style skyscraper was designed by Adler and Sullivan for the Union Trust Company, a bank. The building, a follow-up to the more famous Wainwright Building one block to the south, is considered to be a more pure expression of Louis Sullivan’s design philosophy than the Wainwright Building, though the later Guaranty Building (Buffalo, New York, 1896) is perhaps the most pure expression of Sullivan’s ideas applied to a surviving skyscraper. The building bears some similarities to the nearby Wainwright Building, but features a tan exterior, light court that is open to the front facade, and has been more heavily modified.

The building originally featured an ornate first and second floor facade with an arched entryway, rich Sullivanesque ornament, and oxeye windows, which was unfortunately removed during a modernization in 1924, and was replaced with new terra cotta cladding, rectilinear bays, and a rectilinear entrance, which were given Sullivanesque trim surrounds, but bear little resemblance to the original exterior facade. The only unmodified section of the first and second floor facade is along the west elevation, where the original elliptical oxeye window bays are intact, but this facade is simpler, with buff brick cladding and no ornament. Around the same time as the renovation of the base of the facade, a four-bay addition was built on the north side of the building along 7th Street, which bears many of the same features as the original building. Above the second floor, the original exterior is intact, with buff brick cladding and piers, a bay window in the back of the central light well, arched windows on the twelfth floor, and ornament including lion’s head gargoyles, and motifs inspired by flora on the thirteenth and fourteenth floors, which feature window bays separated by engaged columns, terminating in a heavily decorated flared cornice. Inside, the building features a lobby with a restored ceiling and stained glass skylight, as well as the original elevator doors and elevator landings with marble wall cladding.

The building was designated a St. Louis Landmark in 1971, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The building served as offices until the early 21st Century, with multiple alterations prior to that. Between 2015 and 2018, the building was rehabilitated to house the Hotel St. Louis, which continues to operate inside the building. Regrettably, the renovation did not include a restoration of the first and second floors of the building’s facade, but it saved the rest of the building’s historic details, and gave it a new purpose.