What Actually Makes 200 South Broadway Worth Your Time
Most people walk right past it. It sits on the east side of Broadway between 2nd and 3rd streets in downtown St. Louis, a 14-story building that looks like just another brick office block from the sidewalk. The address is 200 S Broadway, St Louis, MO 63102. It was built in 1927 as the Union Trust Building, designed by William Ittner, who designed over 500 schools across Missouri before moving into commercial architecture. The building housed a bank on the ground floor for decades. That bank is gone now. The bank's marble lobby with the coffered ceilings still exists but has been repurposed. I spent about six hours there last October trying to track down records at the county clerk's office on the second floor, and the only thing I learned is that the parking garage behind the building charges $4 after 5pm but only accepts card payments on their new kiosks. Cash machines in the area have been disappearing since 2022.The Heart Of Downtown St Louis Uncovering The History And Charm Of 200 S Broadway St Louis Mo
The building sits in what the city calls the Downtown East Historic District, which got its designation in 1983. That matters because it means any exterior alterations require review through the St. Louis Historic Architectural Committee. I learned this the hard way when a friend was trying to get permits for a signage project on a different building three blocks north. The review process added eight weeks and cost about $2,400 in consulting fees alone. Nothing illegal happened. They just submitted plans without realizing the district boundaries extended further than the markers on the street. Inside, the ground floor lobby retains original terrazzo flooring and bronze elevator doors from the 1927 construction. The elevators still work. They are slow. Old hydraulic systems, not modern traction. If you are tall, watch your head on the door frame. The ceiling height in the lobby is about 18 feet, which was considered generous for a bank building in the late 1920s. Not every old building in this area has this much clearance. The one on 8th Street near Washington Avenue, built around the same era, has closer to 12 feet. It makes a difference if you are measuring things for renovation work. There is a narrow passage through the building that connects Broadway to Franklin Avenue. Most people do not know it exists. It opens at 7am and closes at 7pm on weekdays. I use it when I need to get from the west side of downtown to the east side without walking the full block on Broadway. The passage has original tilework from the 1970s renovation that nobody seems to want to touch. The city has considered it for preservation but the funding never came through. It is probably fine for another decade as long as nobody drills into the walls.
The surrounding block has seen some changes. The building next door to the south, at 210 S Broadway, was converted to residential units in 2019. That conversion included installing fire suppression systems that required cutting through several interior load-bearing walls. The structural engineer who signed off on that work is still practicing in the area. His firm is located in Midtown now. The building at 190 S Broadway has been vacant since 2021. There were talks about converting it to mixed-use but the numbers never worked out at the asking price. These kinds of vacancies are common in this part of downtown. The market has not caught up to the inventory. Street parking on Broadway is limited and the meters are enforced between 8am and 6pm Monday through Saturday. Sundays are free. The city installed new smart meters in 2023 that accept credit cards and phone apps. The old coin-only meters had a failure rate of about 30 percent based on city maintenance reports from 2022. The new ones have had some connectivity issues but they are better. I would recommend using the PayByPhone app if you can. It tracks your time automatically and sends reminders before you get a ticket. If you are looking into the history for research or property purposes, the St. Louis County Recorder of Deeds has the original plat maps on microfilm. You can request copies for $15 each. The process takes about 10 business days. There is also a digitized collection through the State Historical Society of Missouri that covers most of downtown St. Louis buildings constructed before 1940. The online search interface is not great. It is faster to go in person on a weekday morning and ask for the architectural surveys section. The staff there is knowledgeable but they do not like being interrupted during lunch. They leave at 12:30 and do not come back until 1:30.
The Union Trust Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. That listing provides some protection but not as much as local landmark status would. National Register designation mainly affects federal projects and tax incentives. It does not prevent a private owner from demolishing the building unless local ordinances apply. St. Louis has both at this location. The local ordinance is what requires the review process I mentioned earlier. Nearby you will find the Gateway Arch grounds, the old post office building which is now a hotel, and the Riverfront Trail. The area has improved since the early 2010s when crime rates were significantly higher. The downtown police precinct renumbering in 2015 moved the nearest patrol unit closer to this part of town. Response times dropped from an average of 12 minutes to about 6 minutes in my experience. I have no hard data on that number. It is based on how often I have needed to call for non-emergency assistance over the years. The building itself has had several tenants over the years. Union Trust Company occupied the ground floor from 1927 until the bank failed during the Depression and was absorbed into another institution. The building changed hands a few times in the 1980s during the commercial real estate slump that hit St. Louis particularly hard. Several downtown buildings were vacant or underassessed during that period. This one stayed occupied mostly because the city government had offices there at various points.
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If you visit, go on a weekday afternoon when the light hits the facade from the west. The brickwork is St. Louis common brick, the kind that was locally produced until the last clay yard closed in the 1990s. It has a color range that is hard to match with modern brick. The mortar joints are original in some areas and repointed in others. If you look closely at the south face, you can see where the repointing work was done poorly. The new mortar is too hard and is causing spalling on the softer original bricks. This is a common problem with historic masonry. Using Portland cement-based mortar on old buildings is one of the most damaging things you can do to them. Proper repointing requires lime-based mortar that is softer and more permeable than the original brick. There is a small plaza in front of the building that the city maintains. It has benches and a water fountain that was replaced in 2020. The old one leaked constantly. The replacement is a standard municipal model that works fine but looks out of place next to the historic architecture. Someone should argue about that at the next public improvement committee meeting. The meetings are held at City Hall, room 220, on the first Tuesday of every month at 6pm. They are not well attended. Most people do not know they exist. The building's address is 200 S Broadway, St Louis, MO 63102. It sits in the heart of downtown St. Louis, which is a phrase people throw around without much precision. The actual central business district is roughly bounded by interstate 44 to the north, the river to the east, Jefferson Avenue to the south, and I-170 to the west. 200 S Broadway falls inside those boundaries near the eastern edge. It is close enough to the river to feel connected to the waterfront developments but far enough inland that it escaped the worst of the flooding in 2019. That flood affected several blocks near the Convention Center. This building was not impacted.
For anyone interested in the architectural details, the building is Richardsonian Romanesque in style, which was William Ittner's preferred approach for institutional buildings. Heavy arched windows, rusticated stone trim around the base, and a massing that emphasizes verticality. The cornice at the top has been modified. The original had more elaborate terra cotta detailing that was removed during a 1960s facade update that many architects at the time considered a mistake. The current cornice is simpler but structurally sound. There are no plans to restore the original detailing, and the city has not mandated it. I have walked past this building probably two hundred times over the years. It does not look like much from the street. The windows are outdated. The ground floor retail spaces have cycled through several businesses in the last decade. But it is still standing, it is still used, and it is still part of the fabric of this city. That is more than you can say for every old building in downtown St. Louis. Many of them have been replaced by glass boxes or parking lots. This one survived. It will probably survive a while longer unless something unexpected happens.
