The Midwest Terminal Building in St. Louis, better known as the Globe-Democrat Building or the Globe Building, was added to the National Register of Historic Places, according to an email Friday from the National Park Service.
The National Register listing was effective Jan. 23, according to the email. The building sits at 700-720 N. Tucker Blvd. (aka Route 66) in downtown St. Louis.
The building was built in 1932. The Preservation Research Office reported the building originally planned to house a rail freight terminal for the Illinois Terminal System underneath a 19-story building. The actual structure was scaled down to seven stories.
According to the National Register nominating petition:
Constructed with a steel frame, concrete cladding and floors, concrete paneled ceilings, and a buff brick veneer, the entire first floor and two-story central entry bay are dressed in smooth limestone blocks. […]. A style generally rare in St. Louis commercial construction between the 1920s and 1940s, the nominated building embodies the Modern Movement in architecture with elemental verticality, building setbacks at the upper stories, and intact geometric ornamentation— typical of the Art Deco subtype.
The petition also notes that most of the building’s original features are intact. Mauran, Russell and Crowell, a prominent architectural firm, designed the building. John Mauran, a principal with the company, designed many buildings in downtown St. Louis, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch printing plant.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat moved into the building in 1959 and remained there until the newspaper folded in 1986.
It’s simply called the Globe Building, touting itself as a data center and office space featuring fiber-optic internet.
The building’s owner produced this video about its history:
Ironically, the building’s stout, old-school construction and its scaled-down final design proved ideal for converting it into a data center.
(Image of the front entrance of the Globe-Democrat Building in 2011 by Paul Sableman via Flickr)
Good news! My first real job was as s reporter for the Globe which was an amazing place to work. Re the railroad tracks in the lower part of the biilding– when they printed the paper there rail cars brought huge rolls of newsprint to the site on those tracks.