Bringing the Arcade Building Back to Life

Award-winning preservationist and architect Paul Hohmann is far too polite to admit it, but he has to be feeling a little vindicated right now. Nine years ago, Hohmann was working for the Pyramid Companies, and engrossed with preparations to renovate the massive, and historic Arcade-Wright Building in downtown St. Louis at the height of the real estate boom. He had even put down a deposit on one of the new condominium units in the building. Then disaster struck: Pyramid Companies went bankrupt, Hohmann lost his job, and the Arcade Building went silent, plastic flapping in the windows as the upper floors were left open to the elements.

The Arcade Building didn’t always suffer from such beleaguered fortunes. When it opened in 1919, the Arcade was one of the most sought-after and prestigious office and retail buildings in downtown St. Louis. Its shopping arcade possessed some of the most important jewelers in the city, while five additional retail floors contained the headquarters of the city’s diamond companies. Doctors and dentists occupied floors 9 and 10 and the upper floors housed the offices of many prominent St. Louis corporations.

Designed by Tom P. Barnett, the Arcade Building joined together the earlier Eames and Young designed Wright Building, which had been completed in 1906. The Arcade wrapped around its earlier neighbor, and the two buildings were fused together on each floor. However, several steps are needed to connect the differing floor heights on several lower former retail floors, reminding the visitor that the one building originated as two.

Barnett bucked with the prevailing Chicago School popularized by Louis Sullivan, and chose the Gothic Revival style as the prevailing influence on the Arcade Building. In fact, the earlier Wright Building demonstrates the city’s new adherence to Sullivan’s style, with its strong vertical lines and limited historicist ornamentation. The Arcade features large Gothic pointed arch windows, quatrefoils in its external decorative scheme, and groin vaulting in its famous shopping arcade. But it is impossible not to notice the creeping influence of the Chicago School; even if the building is certainly Gothic Revival, the Arcade’s massing still alludes to Sullivan.

Fast forward to 2014, and Hohmann has received vindication; in his position at ebersoldt + associates architecture, he is again working to renovate the Arcade Building. On a recent fall day, Hohmann gave St. Louis Magazine a tour of the Arcade as interior demolition was commencing. Walking into the building through its eponymous shopping arcade, the inherent beauty of the building, even when illuminated only with construction lights, becomes immediate apparent. The two-story arcade still retains many of its original signs painted on the windows of the stores.

Walking around to the elevator lobby, delicate plasterwork creates the feeling of an English Gothic chapel. The elevators originally contained glass doors, which allowed one to see into the shafts. While detail is being paid to every detail of returning the Arcade to its original glory, modern building codes forbid the glass doors.

Heading to the upper floors via construction elevator on the exterior of the building, the scope of the demolition of interior walls becomes apparent. Demolishing an entire building is easy; controlled demolition of select elements in a rehabilitation of a building requires intelligence and careful attention to detail. Crews have revealed that the original builders of the Arcade engaged in some curious methods to attach marble panels to walls. Hohmann’s expertise is needed so that walls can be carefully de- and reconstructed, in order to return the beautiful panels to the finished building.

With the completion of the renovation of the Arcade Building, Hohmann will have had a hand in renovating the entire block of downtown just south of the Old Post Office (he was instrumental in the renovation of the Paul Brown Building in 2005, which occupies the rest of the block). The debate about preservation in St. Louis usually reaches the point when a proponent of demolition asks, “If you want to save it, why don’t you fix it up?” Hohmann answers that question every day working to provide cost-effective plans to preserve St. Louis’ most iconic and historic buildings such as the Arcade. One can only wonder which landmark he will save next.