Former Phone Company Switchboard Exchange Building in Saint Louis MO

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Constructed between 1889 and 1891, the Bell Telephone Building is associated with the early development of the telephone industry in St. Louis. It served that industry as Bell Telephone's main exchange and largest center in the St. Louis area from 1891 until 1926. It is one of only a few remaining commercial examples of the Richardsonian Romanesque style in a city where examples of the style once flourished. It is one of only a few remaining Richardsonian Romanesque buildings designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, the firm that succeeded the style's originator, H. H. Richardson.

Before Alexander Graham Bell's patent of the telephone, the only means of instant communication available to the American public was the telegraph. This device could transmit electrical impulses but could not reproduce sound. Despite its inherent limitations, telegraph technology had local applications beyond the prototypical image of the Wild West operator receiving Morse code transmissions. In St. Louis in the 1870s, the American District Telegraph Company (ADT) local office provided a dispatcher service: by turning a dial on their home machine, customers selected the electrical impulse received at the central office. The dispatcher would be able to tell which of several prearranged messages the customer had chosen and would then send out a runner to call a carriage, summon the husband home, or complete another task.

The transmission of speech over electrical lines was a major leap forward in technology. Perfected by Bell and demonstrated at Philadelphia's Centennial Exposition in 1876, it would be another year before telephones were used commercially. American Telephone & Telegraph Company publications date this event to May 1877.

The few private telephone owners in St. Louis in 1877 were connected to each by private lines which usually connected only two locations. In November 1877, Bell's company granted a license to ADT to provide local telephone service in St. Louis. At first, general manager George Durant leased equipment for customers' private lines, then went into the business of constructing telephone lines for direct communication between two or more points. By the following February, after the visit of a Bell representative, Durant decided it would be more efficient and profitable to route all calls through a central switchboard. Opened in April 1878 with twelve subscribers, the exchange was the first in what would become the Southwestern Bell territory (including present-day Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas). Like all early exchanges, the St. Louis service used a modified telegraph board to connect calls. Switchboard and operators were located in the Third National Bank building at 417 Olive (demolished).

In late 1879, ADT became the Bell Telephone Company of Missouri. Growth was rapid, and by 1880 the company counted about 600 subscribers to the new technology. Service was limited to local calls; in 1883, lines existed to the suburb of Clayton just outside the city limits, but longer distances were not technologically feasible. Still, by 1890 Bell claimed some 2885 subscribers.

In 1885, the Exchange's downtown office was destroyed by fire. The company then moved into new quarters at the southeast corner of Fourth and Pine. Still occupying only one floor of space, the exchange's rapid growth led to the commission of a new signature building. According to a newspaper article, the company invited architects to submit plans. Of the ten submissions, fewer than half met the special needs of a telephone exchange.

According to the same article, building was delayed by attempts in the Municipal Assembly to regulate telephone rates. When the Supreme Court ruled in December 1888 that the city had no power to set telephone rates, the suppressed plans for construction were revisited. Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge's Richardsonian design was accepted, and ground was broken in 1889. The building permit estimated the cost at $126,000; Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge firm records show a final cost of $154,225. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat related that the program called for seven floors, with Bell occupying half of the sixth as offices and locating the telephone exchange on the seventh. The rest of the building was to be used for offices and commercial space. At completion in 1891, only six stories were built (the fifth and sixth stories on the perspective drawing were compressed into one). The heart of the Bell operation, the switchboard room (a great open space lined by machines), was located on the top floor as envisioned.

The last decade of the nineteenth century was a period of great activity in the telephone industry. St. Louis was connected with both New York and Chicago in 1896. In the same year, capitalizing on the expiration of Durant's original patents, a second phone company was formed in St. Louis. The Kinloch telephone company began subscribing in 1897, and for over two decades operated a separate and competing service. Both companies had their own exchanges and subscribers; the lines were not connected and customers of one company were unable to communicate with subscribers of the other. With over 30,000 customers by 1920, Kinloch still accounted for fewer than a third of the phones in St. Louis.

The St. Louis Bell company's reach expanded dramatically in 1913 when it allied with three other companies serving western Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Known as the Southwestern Bell Telephone System, the four companies formally merged between 1917 and 1920. The new Southwestern Bell Telephone Company soon purchased Kinloch, and work began in 1923 to combine the separate systems.

Even before the acquisition of Kinloch, Bell's expansion had pushed the capacity of its headquarters building to the limit. The company had already located offices in other buildings downtown; the problem was temporarily solved with the 1919 addition of a seventh floor to the existing building. Opened in 1920, the added story included a new kitchen, dining room, and rest room which featured a piano and two rugs. The previous kitchen and dining areas were given over to switchboard use.

With the addition of the Kinloch system, 88 new sections of switchboard were added.

Before 1915, many of the company's administrative functions had moved to rented space a few blocks away, leaving two exchanges and the maintenance, construction, and equipment departments at 920 Olive. By the mid-1920s, after absorbing Kinloch, Southwestern Bell operated 20 offices serving greater St. Louis. Construction of a modern operations center, which housed equipment for the new dial phones as well as administrative offices, began at about the same time the merger with Kinloch was finalized. At its completion in late 1926, the new tower just southwest of the old building was said to be the tallest in Missouri (31 stories). Its Gothic/Deco style was a harbinger of modernity. Still occupied, the Southwestern Bell Building was joined by a modern tower to the east in the 1980s. The three telephone buildings now stand within sight of each other as a testimony to the progression and importance of the telephone industry in St. Louis.

The Bell Telephone Building is believed to be the first building constructed for the telephone industry in St. Louis; it is almost certainly the oldest extant. The Kinloch Building, 1905, is the next oldest known telephone building. It still exists just a block northeast of the Bell Building, covered by a stone sheathing (installed by the Bank Building & Equipment Corp., 1961) which obscures all evidence that anything historic may be underneath.

In the 1890s St. Louis boasted a good collection of downtown commercial Romanesque Revival buildings that followed the manner of the style's greatest proponent, H. H. Richardson. Almost all of them have been demolished. The Bell Telephone Building exhibits the power and strength which is characteristic of the style, and is one of the only extant examples in downtown St. Louis. Its significance is enhanced by its position as the only extant commercial work of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge (Boston) in downtown St. Louis dating from the firm's short-lived Richardsonian phase.

One of the nation's most pervasive (if brief) architectural trends in the late 1880s was based on the highly personal style of prominent Boston architect H. H. Richardson. Although his early career was marked by the adaptation of various medieval styles for modern buildings, his later designs developed an approach to massing and silhouette that were all his own. Biographer James O'Gorman calls Richardson the "most colorful and influential member" of his profession by the mid-1880s. (Many critics actually place Richard Morris Hunt as the top architect of that period, but there is no doubt that Richardson carved himself a greater place in architectural history.) The style which came to be known as the Richardsonian Romanesque was widely imitated in the 1880s and into the 1890s. Characteristics include the use of heavy rugged masonry, particularly stone (sometimes polychrome); Romanesque arches or arcades; battered bases offering the appearance of greater mass; compact silhouettes (a feature of Richardson's later career which was not always appreciated by his imitators); and carved stone detail, particularly Romanesque or Byzantine foliated motifs. His best late work exhibits a power and simplicity of form which was rarely found in the work of his followers.

By the 1890s, examples of Richardson-inspired Romanesque Revival had flowered across America. Architects took from the style to fit their own programs: some borrowed decorative detail without regard for form, others offered almost exact replicas of Richardsonian masterpieces. In commercial buildings, followers frequently picked up the arcaded rhythms of two great commercial buildings from the end of Richardson's career, the Marshall Field Warehouse and the Ames Store (Boston, 1886). Interpretations varied in the extent of their fidelity and creativity.

When Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge (SRC) received the commission to design the Bell Telephone Building in 1888, St. Louis already had a significant body of downtown buildings in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. Foremost among these was SRC's Lionberger Building (1887-88, demolished), a seven-story stone warehouse that derived its battered first story, fenestration, and general massing from the much larger Marshall Field Warehouse. It has been celebrated as one of the country's best examples of Richardsonian design; purist biographer Henry-Russell Hitchcock singled it out among the firm's work for its "really Richardsonian quality as well as passable application of the familiar formulas."

Other Richardsonian buildings extant or underway in this period include SRC's Newcomb Building (1889, also known as the Shepley Building); Thomas Annan's Boatman's Bank Building (1890-1891, demolished 1914 after a disastrous fire); the Mercantile Library Building by Henry Isaacs (1890; extant but completely sheathed); the same architect's Odd Fellows Building (1888, demolished); Charles Ramsey's Hauser Building (1888, demolished), which has been compared to Burnham & Root's Rookery in Chicago; and Alfred Rosenheim's small, mid-block United Missouri Bank building (1888). Also in this period, Isaac Taylor's Merchandise Mart (1888) and the first buildings of the Cupples Station complex led the local version of the Romanesque away from Richardson's powerful rock-faced masses into a more refined expression of the style. While the Bell Building was being completed, ground was broken for the city's most prominent exposition of the style, Link & Cameron's Union Station just outside of the downtown core.

The Bell Telephone Building fit in well with the new Romanesque face of downtown. Although not as large as the Newcomb Building or as acclaimed as the Lionberger Warehouse, the Bell Building was a fairly straightforward exposition of the style. The use of stone added weight to the base of the building and definition to the arches and other details above. The first floor, although part of the four-story arcade which is the building's chief feature, was set apart by a wide course in the manner of the Lionberger and Marshall Field buildings; overall, the organization is similar to both.

The rough treatment of the stone base and detailing marks the building as a Richardsonian design. Its original wide bracketed cornice was not Richardsonian in derivation; interestingly, the corbeled arcade which was built as a cornice after the seventh story was added in 1919 is more consistent with the Richardsonian style than the original Renaissance cornice.

The Bell Telephone Building has added significance as the city's only commercial building dating from the short-lived Richardsonian design phase of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. After Richardson's death in April 1886, his employees George F. Shepley, Charles H. Rutan and Charles Coolidge formed a partnership to complete unfinished designs and to accept new commissions. Shepley had been Richardson's right-hand-man in the years preceding his death; his marriage to Richardson's daughter Julia further strengthened his firm's succession to the legacy of the master.

In St. Louis, writes one local scholar, "Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge provided as nowhere else in the nation a direct, if imperfect, living link with the achievements of Richardson … " The city had a ready connection to Richardson's office through native son George Shepley. After Shepley's sister Louise married, her father-in-law John R. Lionberger became a patron of the firm. Contracting with Richardson for three houses in 1886, he later commissioned a warehouse from the successor firm. The Bell Telephone commission, although chosen by the Board of Directors from a competition, was very likely influenced by two of George Shepley's relatives by marriage: Bell Treasurer John Lionberger, and President Ethan Allen Hitchcock, the father-in-law of George's brother John Shepley. With so many commissions in St. Louis, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge opened a branch office there which would remain affiliated until 1900.

By the early 1890s, the firm had designed four Richardsonian buildings downtown: the three mentioned above, and the Famous Building (1892). Of the four, all but the Famous Building were probably designed by the Boston office, and only the Bell Telephone Building still exists.

By the mid-1890s, the popularity of the Richardsonian style for commercial and civic buildings had run its course, largely supplanted by a search for appropriate Renaissance and classical forms. Increasingly hybridized in their approach to the Romanesque, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge had begun to produce pure Renaissance Revival designs by 1891. It is not, therefore, all that surprising that the same firm would be responsible for one of the first two Renaissance Revival buildings in St. Louis' burgeoning commercial and warehouse district (Mallinkrodt Building, 1892; Washington Avenue East of Tucker).

With commissions such as the Chicago Art Institute and the Chicago Public Library, the firm forged a new identity for itself in the 1890s as one of the leading exponents of the academic revivals that flourished in that decade. Although it continued to produce some designs in the Romanesque style through at least 1895, in St. Louis the firm offered no known commercial buildings in the style after the Bell and Famous Buildings.

Building Description

The Bell Telephone Building (1889) is a seven-story Richardsonian Romanesque commercial building constructed of red sandstone and brick located at the southeast corner of Olive Street and Tenth Street in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. Two bays wide at the north (Olive Street) elevation and four bays wide at the west (Tenth Street) side, the building's primary elevations are organized with three-story arcades springing from ground-level storefronts. The fifth and sixth floors use progressively smaller windows, grouped at each bay. Minor alterations include the blocking of fourth-story sidelights (expected to be reversed in rehabilitation) and the addition of exterior doors for fire escapes long since removed. In some areas, the sandstone trim is spalling or has been sheared (this is visible primarily as a change in the color of the sandstone). The addition of a seventh floor in 1919 was a major alteration. Constructed in a compatible style, the addition alters the building's appearance but does not obscure the original Richardsonian design. The other major alteration was the addition of limestone sheathing to the first floor in 1940, a fate typical for commercial storefronts in downtown St. Louis. Despite this modification, the first story still establishes the rhythm of bays, carried out in the intact arcades and fenestration of the upper stories.

Originally, battered sandstone piers established two bays on Olive Street and four bays on Tenth Street. Storefronts faced both streets; the original main entrance was located in the eastern bay of the north elevation. In 1920, still under Bell ownership, the ground floor was remodeled along more classical lines. The massive rock-faced blocks were smoothed and given foliated bands near the top of each pier.

At the northern pier of the western elevation, the width of the stone pier was reduced by at least half to provide more window space. Limestone sheathing was applied over the ground story in 1940 and storefront windows were replaced with plate glass. The division of bays remains the same, and recent tests have revealed that original material exists beneath the limestone facing. Entrances were moved to the west bay of the north elevation and the south bay of the west elevation.

The broad arcade rising above the ground floor through the fourth floor at both Tenth and Olive Streets is characteristic of later Richardsonian architecture.

Sandstone blocks outline the arcades as quoins and voussoirs, adding further definition as spandrels, mullions, belt courses between stories, and quoins at the building's corners. At the second story, small-paned leaded pastel glass is used at all of the windows except the two southern bays of the Tenth Street elevation (where it appears only at the transoms). A simple heraldic shield centers each transom.

The rhythm of openings quickens above the arcade. At the fifth story, large square-headed transomed windows, divided by sandstone stiles and accented with dentil moldings, are grouped by threes at each bay of the two primary elevations. On the sixth floor, quadruple arcades are carried on a continuous sandstone sill course. A seventh floor was added in 1919 by Bell Telephone to accommodate the expanding company's needs. Each bay hosts two pair of double-hung windows in dentiled brick frames; the building is capped by a corbel arcade at the roofline. The simplicity of the cornice design is a likely reason that it is has survived when so many other historic downtown buildings have lost their crowns.

The rear elevation (facing south) is less elaborated than the two primary elevations, but features the same organizational ideas. The brick ground story, two bays wide, has a loading bay at the east side and windows at the left. Above, the all-brick arcade rises three levels; rectangular sash windows with transoms (grouped two pairs in each bay) at the fifth story are surmounted by round-arched windows in the same arrangement at the sixth. At the seventh story, irregularly spaced openings include sash windows at either end, and a sash window and fire escape door in the center. Sandstone is only used on this elevation for window sills. Above the ground story in the western bay, there has been sporadic infill of the windows to accommodate the elevator and emergency stairs. Most floors also have been retrofitted with fire escape doors, leading to a fire escape that no longer exists.

The eastern wall of the building is a plain unarticulated brick surface as it rises above the four-story building it abuts. An 1888 newspaper article describing the Bell Telephone Building before its construction noted that the building to the east was designed to have additional stories added (although this never took place), perhaps explaining why the eastern wall was left blind.

The roof of the building is essentially flat, although a gentle slope from the center to the north and south walls allows drainage from the asphalt surface. A parapet wall, sandstone and brick, crowns the building on all four sides. Both elevator shafts terminate in a one-story tower on the roof, and an additional room is built along the east side of the roof for storage.

Throughout the exterior, the Bell Telephone Building's sandstone trim is weathered and in some areas deteriorated. Records indicate that in 1968, some sections of the sandstone were sheared off (up to 4 inches, according to the permit record) in the name of pedestrian safety. At the fourth story of the west and north elevation, the outer windows inside the round-arched top of the arcade have been filled in. The doors which appear rather incongruously at each of the top five stories of the Tenth Street elevation's northernmost bay were likely added in a mid-1920s alteration to the fire escape (since removed).

The Bell Telephone Building's interior, seven stories plus a basement, is largely open and unsubdivided. Flooring on the second through sixth floors is soft wood; the added seventh story has a concrete floor with some wood sections. The hollow clay tile and concrete floor structure is carried on steel beams (construction of the added seventh floor may be a different method; no record has been found and the structure is not currently exposed). Each floor is bisected by a north-south row of seven structural columns, plain on the lower floor, finished with foliated cushion capitals at the fifth and sixth floors, and square on the seventh.

A freight elevator at the rear of the building and a passenger elevator at the front are not original, although one or both may be in the location of an original elevator or stairs. The location of the original elevator is not known, although a newspaper account prior to the construction of the building called for an elevator at the "rear at the Tenth Street side." Next to the rear freight elevator in the southwest corner of the building, a stairway rises to the seventh floor. This stairway is not original although it may date from the time of the 1919 addition. Another stairway connects the basement, first floor, mezzanine, and second story at the front of the building next to the passenger elevator. A third stairway rises from the seventh floor to the roof midway along the eastern side of the building.

The first story is ringed by a windowless mezzanine level, possibly an addition by S. G. Adams in 1940. In the second story, interior partitions obscure the pastel-colored glass windows. On the fourth floor, a separate room for HVAC equipment is planned to be removed. There are few historic interior finishes in evidence, although some beaded tongue and groove wainscoting is used on the sixth floor. The interior is in generally good condition.

The current owner's plans for the Bell Telephone Building call for the creation of loft apartments (rentals) in the upper stories of the building, with retail or commercial uses on the first floor. The owner has expressed an interest in removing the limestone veneer from the first floor and using any salvageable original materials underneath to create a more compatible design. The HVAC room on the fourth floor, which has caused the blocking of some rear windows, will be removed. Windows currently blocked by plywood (including the arches of the sixth floor) will be re-opened.

Looking southeast (1999)

Looking northeast (1999)

Sixth floor interior 1999 (1999)