Monday, February 05, 2007

The Fagin Building

Before there was the Arcade Building, there was the obscure, bizarre, short-lived Fagin Building:

A. W. Fagin Building

This page, by a distant relative of the building's architect, offers some detailed views and interesting commentary. The Fagin Building showed a use of bold forms similar to those of Frank Furness (and similarly reviled in the architectural press of the time); its facade contained vast areas of glass to allow natural light to flood the interior -- a Modernist tenet decades ahead of its time. It was remodeled into the far less interesting Burlington Building after only a few years, but for that short time St. Louis had a truly remarkable gem of architecture.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Robert -- thanks so much for posting the link to the Fagin building page... it's been one of my favorites for quite a while, but up to now my love of it has been based on only a small image... it's wonderful to finally see more of what must have been a quite shocking building in its day (or any day!).