The Frisco Building is a historic office building in downtown

St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') 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 border ...

. The building was built in 1903-04 as the headquarters for the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway, which was also known as the Frisco. The architecture firm Eames and Young designed the building as well as its 1905-06 addition; the building's subtle ornamentation and its

pier A pier is a raised structure that rises above a body of water and usually juts out from its shore, typically supported by piling, piles or column, pillars, and provides above-water access to offshore areas. Frequent pier uses include fishing, b ...

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 fil ...

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 Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on March 29, 1983.

References

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