The Times Building
Broadway and Chestnut Street
Built: 1906
Architect: Harry F. Roach
Demolished:1974

An Italianate newspaper publishing and office building, opened in 1907, sheathed in red brick and stone with terra cotta from the prolific Winkle Terra Cotta Company.

Architect H.F. Roach (1871-1929) was an M.I.T.-trained architect whose father was also a designer. His most significant works include the Syndicate Trust Building and A.D. Brown Building on Washington Avenue, as well as the DeSoto Hotel (now the Omni Majestic), the Pennsylvania Building, and a variety of warehouses and factories.

Initially marketed as the Blackstone Building (Oct. 13 1907 PD; ref), the Times Building was commissioned in late 1905 for the German-American Press Association, an organization formed in 1898 with several German-language newspapers under its umbrella. The primary one was the Westliche Post, a German-language paper published by Joseph Pulitzer, also owner of the Post-Dispatch. The Westliche Post was the city's dominant German newspaper. Other floors were available for lease and housed offices for architects and other concerns. Construction was planned for a rapid push, with three shifts of men working around the clock.

German speakers were a declining population by the turn of the century. Combined with the anti-German sentiment surrounding World War I after 1917, this would ultimately deal a fatal blow to most of the country's German papers - by 1921, the building's owner was The American Press.

The Times Building lost its cornice, presumably in 1947 during the city's cornice purge.

In 1974, the Times Building was torn down. Two years later the rest of the block was cleared for the new Boatmen's Bank Tower (later the Bank of America Tower); that building's low lobby stands on the site today.

Locator Map

Colorized postcard view circa 1906.

Colorized postcard view circa 1908. The original photograph may be seen here and reveals that the crowd is gathered to watch baseball scoreboards mounted outside the building. In the background, the New Bank of Commerce Building (later the VA Building) has risen to its full height but is still under construction.

A 1966 aerial view shows the Times Building as part of a cluster of aging towers, including the Cotton Belt Building, the Pierce Building, and the Veterans Administration Building. All but the Pierce would be gone by 1980. Image from a free lithograph distributed by Boatmen's Bank, provided by Bob Jerrels; photograph by Lloyd Spainhower.

Color view circa 1965. Published in This Is Our St. Louis, Harry M. Hagen, 1970.

Postcard view ca. 1970. The Times Building is at left.

The same view in 1977. The Times Building and its neighbors are gone, replaced by the Boatmen's Bank Tower. Image from Inland Architect, June 1977.