Built St. Louis
Historic Downtown

The Old Courthouse
Broadway and Market Street
Original building, 1820s;
Henry Singleton, 1839-1845;
Robert S. Mitchell, 1852-1862;
William Rumbold, 1860-1864
Status: Restored and in use as a National Park Service museum.

A singular and defining monument for downtown St. Louis, the Court House is most famous as the site of the Dred Scott decision, one of the precipitating events of the Civil War. Unfortunately, it stands alone, visually isolated from the city and cut off from nearly all its historical context.

Locator Map


A tinted photo postcard view of the Courthouse, probably from the 1920s. The large red building is the Times Building; to its right are the Planter's Hotel and the Pierce Building (behind the dome.) Click the image for a larger and better scan.

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1 - View from across part of the Gateway Mall. The roofline of the Wainwright can be seen at center, as can the Paul Brown, Arcade, and Wright just to the right. At right edge is the Adam's Mark Hotel, which contains the remains of the old Pierce Building.

2 - Postcard view circa 1960, looking east, from a similar vantage point as the previous image. Of the nine buildings visible in this image, only the Old Court House survives today.

3 - The Court House stands today in splendid and awful isolation, surrounded almost entirely by buildings of post-World War II vintage.

4 - Compare this view with a similar angle on the demolished Planter's Hotel.