Marquette Building (Boatmen's Bank)
The history
Eames & Young, 1913–14 — twenty storeys of light grey granite and off-white terra cotta on the northeast corner of Broadway and Olive, built for Boatmen's Bank, chartered in 1847 as the Boatmen's Saving Institution to hold the wages of Mississippi rivermen and the oldest bank west of the river. The firm cut a full Classical Revival programme into the terra cotta: fluted pilasters, egg-and-dart, lion masks and cartouches, all in one off-white key so the tower reads as a single block of stone. The 1913 vestibule and elevator lobby survive intact — relief plaster ceilings, white marble floors, walls and stairs, a bronze letterbox and bronze-framed doors. A 1915 annex by the same architects was demolished in 1998, the year the tower was listed on the National Register; it became condominiums in 2007. The corner clock still hangs over the Broadway sidewalk with MARQUETTE across its face.
In brief
The Marquette Building, also known as the Boatmen's Bank Building, is a twenty-storey Classical Revival tower at 300–314 North Broadway in downtown St. Louis, on the northeast corner of Broadway and Olive. It was designed by the St. Louis firm of Eames & Young and built in 1913–14 in light grey granite and brick with an extensive programme of off-white terra cotta ornament. The original 1913 vestibule and elevator lobby survive, with relief plaster ceilings, white marble floors, walls and stairways, a bronze letterbox and bronze-framed doors. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998 and converted to condominiums in 2007.
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