The story
Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan designed this 135-foot terra cotta office building, built between 1890 and 1891 for brewer, contractor and financier Ellis Wainwright. It is considered one of the first early skyscrapers whose design fully expressed its height, and Sullivan held it up as an example in his 1896 essay "The tall office building artistically considered."
It was nearly lost. The National Trust for Historic Preservation took an option on the building to stop its demolition, and the State of Missouri later bought it for a state office complex, after a letter-writing campaign led by architect John D. Randall. The state used it for offices until 2024, when it sold the building at auction for about $8 million.
Everything that was here
- 1891–present · still open
Wainwright BuildingOffice Building
Frank Lloyd Wright called this 10-story 1891 office block "the very first human expression of a tall steel office-building as Architecture."
See the map in 1892 →
Did you know?
Connected places
Frank Lloyd Wright Bank & Museum
Klas Restaurant
Packard Motor Car Company
Joe Louis Arena
Olympia Stadium
The Heidelberg Project
Explore the full web of connections on the map.
Nearby history
Famous-Barr (Railway Exchange Building)
The Syndicate Condominiums
Miss Hulling's Cafeteria
F.W. Woolworth Company
Macy's
Gateway Arch National Park - Old Courthouse
Know something about Wainwright Building? An old photo, a date, a memory of what stood here before?
Add it on the map