Brick City - A Saint Louis City Blog

Meet Me At The Arcade 5.21.2007 | 4 Comment(s)

According to Carolyn Toft of the St. Louis Landmarks Association, when you told a cab driver to "take me to the Arcade" he knew exactly where you wanted to go.

This morning, I didn't have to tell a cab driver that the Arcade was my destination, but I was fortunate enough to be invited by Pyramid and its lead Architect on the Arcade project, and author of Vanishing STL, Paul Hohmann to tour the Arcade Building. I jumped at the offer to enter this building. For some reason the Arcade has always had this mythic kind of mystery surrounding it, as if it was the holy grail of vacant buildings to get in to.

Pyramid held the tour for a few bloggers it had contacted, and while I recognized Steve Patterson of Urban Review and Michael Allen from Ecology of Absence, I must admit and apologize to the other two young women who joined us for I can't remember which blogs they write. I get a little shy around people I don't know so I didn't think to ask for your names.

Pyramid had a nice presentation waiting for us at the Paul Brown Building (which is gorgeous inside). Carolyn Toft of the St. Louis Landmarks Association gave us a nice history of the building and various Pyramid staffers filled us in on the details about the Arcade development. I'm working from memory here, but from what I remember, the Arcade will be a mix of high-end residential, focusing on baby boomers, hotel and banquet space with office space taking up some of the lower floors. The plans sounded very ambitious and, even though the building had been scavenged by looters in its years of vacancy, much of the Arcade's original details remained since it had never been significantly remodeled...something all in the room where very grateful for. Pyramid hopes to have the Arcade project finished in 2009 or early 2010.

Then came the part I was itching for, the tour. Probably due to liability issues we were only allowed to tour the main lobby or "arcade." The lobby was filled with so much eye-candy that I didn't really mind that we weren't going to see the rest of the building. The words "amazing" and "wow" were pretty much the only things that I could get out of my mouth. The possibilities for this building are endless.

Steve Patterson said that the Arcade was St. Louis' first "indoor mall", and he's right. The 2 story arcade is nothing more than 2 floors of indoor storefronts. The difference between a mall and the Arcade is the proportions. Everything felt grand inside the arcade space, but it didn't feel out of scale...its proportions felt human...if that makes any sense. The space reminded me a lot of the "Arcade" building at Grand and Gravois, it features many of the same architectural details that the Arcade building downtown does.

After the tour, the group went to the coffee shop in the Paul Brown Building, unfortunately I couldn't stay and chat, I had to get back to work. I wish I could have stayed because I'm sure there was some wonderfully interesting conversation that took place among the group.

I'm not going to try and describe what I saw, I'll let the photos below speak for themselves. A big thank you to Pyramid and Paul Hohmann for the amazing opportunity. From what I saw and heard the Arcade Building is again going to be "the" place to be.