The great/bad thing about St. Louis is that there are many beautiful buildings that sit abandoned. In the case of this one, it had been abandoned for awhile (early 80s?) and had a recent attempt at rehab which came to a screeching halt when the company (Pyramid) collapsed. Arcade has a new buyer and hopefully will get rehabbed to its former glory soon.
The thing about the Arcade in its current state is that it is beautiful in its decay, yet I can't wait to see it back to what it was. What we call the Arcade building is actually two buildings connected with each other. The Wright building was built in 1906, and the Arcade building was built in 1919 and wraps around the existing Wright building. Inside, there are several floors that are not exactly at the same height and have small sets of stairs inbetween. A lot of the floors have beautiful white marble walls. The Arcade building had ground level stores and shops with a Gothic vaulted ceiling as well as a variety of other offices upstairs. Ranging from jewelers to a radio station to a law-oriented printing office. There seemed to be small factories, a music store, several doctor's offices and that's all we could tell from the 9 stories that hadn't been internally demo'd and stripped down to its bare bones.
I recently got a chance to tour the building prior to the new rehab attempt and I jumped at it. It was worth totally worth it, as you can see from the pictures.
To see all 133 photos from the set, check it out
here. I really encourage you to do so, this is just a smattering of the gorgeous beauty within those walls.
Can you believe it? You can see the potential, right? I cannot wait to see the finished product.
