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Shell Building (St. Louis)

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St. Louis Shell Oil Building
St. Louis Shell Oil Building

The Shell Building is an office building in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. Located at the corner of Locust Street and 13th Street, known as Shell Corner, the 13-story, 48.16 m (158.0 ft), building was the original home of the Shell Oil Company in the United States. The building has a rounded footprint, following the curve of Locust onto North 13th Street. It is currently a Hilton Home2/Tru hotel.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Shell Building (St. Louis) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Shell Building (St. Louis)
Locust Street, St. Louis

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Latitude Longitude
N 38.630494 ° E -90.196063 °
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Building at 1121-23 Locust St. (Alexander Lofts)

Locust Street 1123
63101 St. Louis
Missouri, United States
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St. Louis Shell Oil Building
St. Louis Shell Oil Building
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Globe Building (St. Louis)
Globe Building (St. Louis)

The Globe Building is an Art Deco style office and data center building in Downtown St. Louis, Missouri. Before that it housed the St. Louis Globe-Democrat newspaper and was originally built for the Illinois Terminal Railroad. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Globe Building was originally designed as a freight and passenger terminal for the Illinois Terminal Railroad. The railroad commissioned the firm Moran, Russell, and Crowell, which designed many large buildings and landmarks in St. Louis. During World War II the building housed offices of the predecessor to the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA), which referenced it as their US Aeronautical Chart Plant, St. Louis. The building would later go on to house geographic data and information firms, including geospatial intelligence offices, which complement the nearby National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Campus West (NCW). The construction of a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility), which was novel for a private facility not already under federal contract, was publicly announced in May 2022 at which time it was also claimed that a waiting list of companies seeking placement in the Globe Building exceeds fifty. With the decline of railroads in the United States, in the 1950s the building was transitioned to hosting the fledgling daily newspaper, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. As newspapers also declined and St. Louis became a single major daily newspaper town in the 1980s, the structure was eventually turned into an office and data center building. The modern day Globe Building is adjacent to what became the Washington Avenue Historic District and is near the complex housing America's Center and The Dome at America's Center. Some elements from the building from the railroad and newspaper eras were salvaged for preservation by the National Building Arts Center.

Hotel Jefferson (St. Louis, Missouri)
Hotel Jefferson (St. Louis, Missouri)

The Jefferson Arms Building is a historic hotel in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. It opened as the Hotel Jefferson in 1904 to serve visitors to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and was named in honor of Thomas Jefferson. The original east half of the building was designed by Barnett, Haynes & Barnett; the Classical Revival structure features terra cotta decorations. The hotel was opened to the public for the first time on April 2, 1904, for a charity ball sponsored by the St. Louis chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy and the Confederate Memorial Society. The hotel opened to overnight guests on April 29, 1904, the day before the World's Fair. The Democratic National Convention was held at the hotel in 1904 and 1916.The hotel was sold in 1927 and in 1928 the new owners constructed a huge addition on the west side of the hotel designed by the firm Teich & Sullivan, doubling its capacity and adding two banquet rooms. The Jefferson Plaza Garage was added to the hotel in the same year; the garage includes elements of the Art Deco and Tudor Revival styles. The garage helped to alleviate St. Louis' downtown traffic congestion and serve visitors with cars; the Hotel Jefferson is the only historic downtown hotel with its own original parking garage. During the late 1930s, Max Theodore Safron (d. 1980) operated his art gallery from the Jefferson Hotel's mezzanine, where he primarily sold American, British, and French paintings to the city's wealthy clientele. The Jefferson hosted conventions and celebrities in the city for the next two decades and was recognized by Gourmet magazine as "one of the best hotels in St. Louis". The Jefferson was sold to Hilton Hotels in 1950, retaining its original name. In 1954, Hilton purchased the nationwide Statler Hotels chain. As a result, they owned multiple large hotels in many major cities. In St Louis, for example, they owned both the Jefferson and the Statler Hotel St. Louis. This was found by the government to be an anti-trust violation and Hilton was required to sell The Jefferson to The Sheraton Corporation in 1955. The hotel was renamed The Sheraton-Jefferson. It was again renamed The Jefferson Hotel in 1973, though still operating within Sheraton. The hotel finally closed on July 23, 1975. It reopened in 1977 as a residence for the elderly called the Jefferson Arms Apartments. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 24, 2003.In 2006, developers cleared the building of residents, planning to convert it to condominiums; however, the project collapsed. The building was tied up in litigation for many years until it was finally sold to Alterra Worldwide in 2017 for $7 million. The new owners announced plans to convert the enormous building to a combination of 239 apartments, a 198-room AC by Marriott hotel, and 20,000 sq ft of retail. In February 2021, Alterra paid over $100,000 in back taxes owed on the property, clearing the way for $17.3 million in financing from the city of St. Louis. It was reported at that time that the renovation work would cost $104 million, and would begin in June 2022, with completion estimated for 2025.

Century Building (St. Louis)
Century Building (St. Louis)

The Century Building, designed by Raeder, Coffin, and Crocker and completed in 1896, was a 10-story Classical Revival historic building in downtown St. Louis, Missouri that was used for offices, retail, and a 1600-seat theatre. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 16, 2002. In 1999, St. Louis planners and historic preservationists working as an advisory committee released their Downtown Plan, which called for the preservation and adaptive reuse of the Century Building. The Slay administration rejected the recommendations of the committee, and announced that a development team had been chosen (DESCO and DFC, Inc) to renovate the nearby historic Old Post Office (OPO) and to demolish the Century Building in order to build a parking deck to service the OPO. City officials made the argument that tenants for the renovated OPO building demanded parking within view of their new offices. St. Louis' preservationists' next line of defense was the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP). Contacted in 2001, NTHP was initially supportive of preservation efforts for the building. Midwest Trust Director Royce Yeater recommended that an alternative site be chosen for the proposed parking deck, noting that there were "10 underused parking facilities in the 10 blocks surrounding the OPO."In 2004, the NTHP changed its stance concerning the project. The NTHP would now provide $6.9 million in gap financing in the form of tax credits for the OPO renovations and parking deck. NTHP refused to stop the demolition of the Century Building, and was now supporting the very project that preservationists were desperately trying to stop. Preservationists around the country signed an on-line petition in a concerted effort to save the Century Building. Richard Moe, president of the NTHP, defended his organization's actions by stating that the demolition of the Century Building was key to revitalizing the area around the OPO.The Landmarks Association filed a final lawsuit on October 19, 2004 requesting a temporary restraining order to halt demolition. Their request was ultimately denied, and demolition of the building commenced shortly thereafter. Many historic preservationists call the loss of the Century Building a major sacrifice for Downtown St. Louis. Some have also said the NTHP drifted from its primary mission of historic preservation by supporting the developers of the OPO project. Other professionals take the side that certain sacrifices need to be made in order to improve neighborhoods as whole, and the Century Building was one of these sacrifices. It is generally agreed, however, that the Century Building was an important part of St. Louis' architectural history, and could have been transformed into an asset for Downtown St. Louis had the building been saved. Beams and parts of its facade were recovered by the National Building Arts Center. They're currently stored at the foundation's Sauget foundry.

St. Louis Exposition and Music Hall
St. Louis Exposition and Music Hall

St. Louis Exposition and Music Hall was an indoor exposition hall, Music Hall and arena in St. Louis, Missouri from 1883 to 1907. Three national presidential nominating conventions were held in three separate buildings in or near the complex between 1888 and 1904 including the 1888 Democratic National Convention, 1896 Republican National Convention, and 1904 Democratic National Convention. In addition to the 1904 Democratic convention, it was used as a large venue for other conventions and congresses during the 1904 World's Fair.The 502 by 332 ft (153 by 101 m) exposition hall was built initially at a cost of $750,000. It was designed by Jerome Bibb Legg and completed in 1884. Legg's most prominent extant building is Academic Hall at Southeast Missouri State University.Originally built to house the St. Louis Exposition, an annual fair, it covered 6 acres (2.4 ha) at Olive and 13th Streets and was one of the first buildings in the country to have electric lights. The Music Hall, which was a home for the St. Louis Symphony, had a stage which could accommodate 1,500 people and claimed to be one of the world's largest. Its seating capacity was 3,500.In the winter of 1896 the Republican National Convention planned to be in a rebuilt permanent building in the center. However, it was determined that it would not be ready in time for the convention so a temporary wooden convention was erected on the lawn south of City Hall (three blocks south of the Exposition Hall). The temporary structure was erected within sixty days at cost of $60,000 including decorations. Following the 1896 Convention, the temporary structure as well as the Exposition building were torn down and a new Coliseum was built on the site of the Exposition Building. The new Coliseum had an arena of 112 by 222 ft (68 m) with an 84 ft (26 m) ceiling. It had a single span trussed roof, with no columns or obstructions. The seating capacity was 7,000 but could be expanded to 12,000. It was rated at 10,500 for its 1904 convention.The whole structure including the new Coliseum and Music Hall were torn down in 1907 when the St. Louis Central Library was built at its location and the new St. Louis Coliseum was constructed.