Services Building, City Hospital Complex, St. Louis – MO

Description

The Public Works Administration completed this services building for the St. Louis City Hospital Complex in 1940. The red brick building is vacant at the present, but is currently for sale. Surrounding buildings have been successfully repurposed and this building has the same potential with solid construction and architecture consistent with the surrounding buildings.

“St. Louis City Hospital was the city’s primary public hospital. For most of the 20th Century, it operated out of this multi-level, multiple-building complex, whose earliest structures dated from 1906. By the time it reached its developmental apex in 1970, it included 12 buildings total (7 of which survive today.)

The imposing Georgian facade of the Administration Building has long welcomed travellers arriving from the south on Interstates 55 and 44. But the complex was abandoned in 1985, when the City Hospital was moved to a central location on Delmar Avenue. Over the next 15 years, the skeletal cupolas of the main building – stripped of their copper by metal-scrounging theives – become the building’s most eyecatching aspect.

In 2002, selective demolition began, in anticipation of the complex’s long-hoped for renovation. Work halted for a long period afterwards, and finally resumed in 2005.”

-https://www.builtstlouis.net/cityhospital-intro.html