Built St. Louis
The Industrial City

In the 19th Century, St. Louis transitioned from a frontier outpost and trading center to an industrial powerhouse. That legacy survives today in the form of numerous factories, warehouses, breweries and power plants that punctuate the city's landscape. Some are boarded up; others are crumbling. A few remain in operation; some have been converted to new uses.

They are powerful forms, immense, monolithic, impressive, chaotic and functional. They often stand in blasted landscapes, decimated areas overrun with weeds and grafitti and crumbling concrete. Some are in the heart of the city; many are on the fringes, separated from the residential neighborhoods around them by land, highways, rivers, railroads.

They were the engines which drove the city to fortune and riches; in some cases they drove themselves into bankruptcy and abandonment. As America's economy has transitioned away from manufacturing in the last fifty years, so have most of these buildings fallen into obsolescence. Here, then, is a record of them -- whether in their final days or on the verge of new life.

Click on any photo to explore that building site.

See also:
- St. Louis Army Ammunition Plant (demolished)

Riverfront North
Multiple buildings north of Laclede's Landing, including the amazing Union Electric Light and Power Company plant, the Laclede Power Company, the Cotton Belt Railroad depot, and the demolished Belcher Sugar Refinery.

Riverfront Far North
The secret world opened up by the riverfront bike trail, including the Merchants' and McKinley Bridges.

North Broadway / Hall Street
A long stretch of North Broadway is given over primarily to industrial and warehousing uses, interspersed with scattered houses left from the area's time as a more mixed-use neighborhood.

Riverview
At the northern tip of the city, a long-abandoned cement factory and manufacturing company.

Cahokia Power Plant
Distant views of the enormous, long-dormnant generating station on the Illinois side of the river.

Venice Power Plant
Less known than its downstream sibling, it sits like a miniature city alongside the McKinley Bridge.

Granite City Steel
Still-active foundaries have long been the primary economic force in this Illinois town across the river.

Armour / Stockyards / Hunter
Three long-abandoned facilities north of downtown East St. Louis: the Armour meatpacking plant, the National Stockyards, and the Hunter meatpacking plant.

Crunden Martin Manufacturing Company
A complex of buildings on the riverfront south of downtown.

Carter Carburetor
A massive, long-abandoned factory on N. Grand Avenue.

Gasometers
Four enormous natural gas tanks at three sites scattered across the city.

Carondelet Coke
The city's largest vacant parcel -- a 40 acre abandoned industrial site at the city's southern edge.