Throwback Thursday – Executive Office Building

This week's Epstein Throwback Thursday takes us back to May, 1963 for the opening of the $9M ($71M in 2016), 20-story Executive Office Building located at 515-517 Olive Street in St. Louis, Missouri. When completed, this Epstein designed high-rise was the first major office building completed in downtown St. Louis in more than thirty years and the first building to feature a 'international style' glass curtainwall. In fact, Epstein's design proceeded after St. Louis leaders changed the city's building code to allow exterior walls made of materials other than masonry.

The Executive Office Building, which was developed by the New York-based Collins, Tuttle & Company, featured a modernist design and was constructed of structural steel piers & columns along with fully-tinted glass curtainwall. The columns were clad in polished black marble and anodized metal panels and the window bases featured the same marble with aluminum sills.

The interior public spaces of the Executive Office Building featured space for two retail outlets, a first floor lobby, an elevator hall with a terrazzo floor, marble walls and ornamental metal elevator doors and framing.

Today, the Executive Office Building still stands and was nominated in September, 2012 for the National Register of Historic Places. Although there have been some significant changes since 1963, including that the Executive Office Building is now known as the Millennium Center and it's also no longer strictly an office building, as the building's top 9 floors were converted to residences in 2014.