Built St. Louis
Historic Downtown

Mercantile Library
Locust Street at Broadway
Built: 1889
Architect: ?
Status: reskinned in 1952-56. Occupied.

The Mercantile Library, the oldest library west of the Mississippi, was housed on this site since 1851. The current building dates from 1889, and some of the library's vintage decor survived as recently as 1995; the exterior sports a 1952-56 Modernist recladding.

The library left downtown in 1998 for a new location on UMSL's campus in west County.