The Frisco Building is a historic office building in downtown

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

. The building was built in 1903-04 as the headquarters for the

St. Louis–San Francisco Railway The St. Louis–San Francisco Railway , commonly known as the "Frisco", was a railroad that operated in the Midwest and South Central United States from 1876 to April 17, 1980. At the end of 1970, it operated of road on of track, not includi ...

, which was also known as the Frisco. The architecture firm

Eames and Young Eames and Young was an American architecture firm based in St. Louis, Missouri, active nationally, and responsible for several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. History The principals were Thomas Crane Young, FAIA and Will ...

designed the building as well as its 1905-06 addition; the building's subtle ornamentation and its

pier image:Brighton Pier, Brighton, East Sussex, England-2Oct2011 (1).jpg, Seaside pleasure pier in Brighton, England. The first seaside piers were built in England in the early 19th century. A pier is a raised structure that rises above a body of ...

and

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame; between the tops of two adjacent arches or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fill ...

system were both important developments in skyscraper design. The Frisco occupied the building for almost eighty years after its opening, and in that time played an important role in Missouri's economic development through railroad construction. Its expansion forced the Kieselhorst Piano Co., a leading vendor of pianos in the city, to move one block east on Olive Street. The Frisco Building was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on March 29, 1983.

References

National Register of Historic Places in St. Louis Skyscraper office buildings in St. Louis {{StLouis-struct-stub Office buildings completed in 1903 Downtown St. Louis