September 1996

December 2002 - early demolition

January 2003 - demolition continues

March 2002 - demolition of the Malcolm Bliss building is underway

January 2003

March 2003

January 2003

March 2003

St. Louis City Hospital
The Tower Building
1942

The Tower was a 14-story structure erected to help modernize and expand the City Hospital complex. Its massive bulk visually dominated the site for six decades. It stood back-to-back with the Main building, its flat northern facade belying the complicated, multi-section, multi-roof design.

Long a point of controversy among preservationists and developers, the Tower Building was often seen as clashing in scale with most of the complex and - since the neighboring Darste-Webbe housing towers have been destroyed - the surrounding neighborhood as well. Most renovation plans dismissed it as unworkable outside of an institutional context. Demolition began on the building in December 2002 and was completed by spring of 2003.