Built St. Louis: Vanished Buildings

FAMOUS BARR
Stainless steel panelled columns set the tone for the complex's centerpiece, the clean, crisp, automobile-age design of the Famous-Barr building. The porte-cochere continues the motif of simple forms in a stark contrast of horizontals and verticals. Matching angled flag poles above once served to draw attention to the entryway. This is an architecture of mass -- Famous-Barr is a brick box, looming, heavy and featureless, punctuated only by its sign and accompanying starburst accents in shining stainless steel.

Famous-Barr looms like a high plateau over the vast fields of parking on the back side of the center.