St. Louis Republic Building
(later the American Trust Building)
700 Olive Street
Built: 1899
Architect: Isaac Taylor
Reskinned: ca. 1960?
Demolished: 2002

A three-story Beaux Arts office building capped with two low domed towers, this handsome building was completed for one of the city's daily newspapers. The St. Louis Republic was published from 1888 until 1919.

Decades after the paper folded, its former office building underwent a complete Modernist reskinning, simplifying its facade well past the point of banality.

It housed a McDonald's on the first two floors until the late 1990s. Its other final tenants included the Downtown Chiropractic clinic and the Downtown Dental office (223 N. 7th), JR Cigars (710 Olive), and Manhattan Jewelry.

The Republic Building was demolished in September 2002 to make way for a parking garage, which also consumed parking lot where the Holland Building once stood.

Locator Map

The building's original appearance, in a presentation render from architect Issac Taylor's firm, presented at the Annual Exhhibition of the Saint Louis Architectural Club, 1899.

The building as reskinned, photographed in 2002 by Ralph Fuhrhop shortly before its demolition.

March 2001, standing vacant.

Ralph Fuhrhop, 2002

The remodel destroyed almost all the building's details, but the alley-facing arch-capped windows and brick wall survived - as did one random pier near the building's front corner. The same pier can be made out, just barely, in this 1904 photo from the Missouri History Museum collections.

Ralph Fuhrhop, 2002

Ralph Fuhrhop, 2002

Ralph Fuhrhop, 2002