Sunday 11 April 2021

FADED GLORY

A few days ago I posted a picture of an old downtown building. A poster covered one of the vacant ground floor windows that said "Where Will St. Louis Take You Next?" I said I would come back to the building itself and then got distracted by the opening of the baseball season.

The place is called the Railway Exchange Building. It makes me think of a bunch of rich guys in top hats like in the Monopoly game literally exchanging railroads. It occupies an entire block and is vacant. Our biggest department store, Famous Barr, was there, along with the headquarters of The May Company, a major national retailer. Big downtown stores withered, Macy's sucked up everything and then closed the place. It's been empty for some time.

But the terra cotta facade is a wonder. If there is no use for the building itself the decoration should go in a museum. It is fairly well preserved and I don't want us to lose it.                

No comments:

Post a Comment