Louis Sullivan and the St. Nicholas Hotel, St. Louis, MO

By Patty Ramey

“The first "skyscraper" in St. Louis was built in the early 1850's. The maximum height for downtown buildings in St. Louis was about eight stories until 1890, when a wave of tall building construction began, made possible by widespread use of elevators and development of steel construction. The first steel frame structure in St. Louis was the famous Wainwright building designed by Louis Sullivan in 1891.”

Architecture Early Skyscraper http://www.builtstlouis.net/opos/victoriabuilding.html

Several years later, another steel building (and the subject of this article) was conceived for St. Louis by Adler & Sullivan. The design phase for this newest Sullivan edifice began in 1893 and was completed in late 1894. The new building was to be a first class hotel named the St. Nicholas Hotel. It would survive in its original conception a scant seven years.

The 1890’s was a time when the more elite hotels provided Gentlemen and Ladies Restaurants, smoking and waiting rooms and elaborate parlor and ballrooms. The St. Nicholas Hotel had one of each. It boasted a telephone in every room with many rooms having adjoining private hot and cold water baths. The hotel was situated in the heart of St. Louis at 407 North Eighth Street and was considered quite glamorous when it opened its doors in early 1895. The top floor – underneath the sloped roof – was devoted to one long banquet hall.

During its short life, the St. Nicholas was host to the National American Institute of Architects convention in 1895 and was known for its excellent meals and accommodations. It became a rendezvous for actors and politicians and was also “the scene for many coming-out parties”.

The original structure was 8 stories tall with a central dramatic arched entrance, regularly spaced oriels (bay window areas), terra cotta faced balconies, a gabled roof and conspicuously designed chimneys. Sadly, the St. Nicholas was severely damaged by fire at the turn of the century (various dated from 1901 to 1903). The hotel was sold and the new owners began extensive remodeling (both internally and externally) to convert the hotel into an office building. The exterior changes included new floors at the top, and significant changes to both the entrance and the roofline. This rebuilding did not meet universal approval. The new owners approached one St. Louis architectural firm, which “refused the job because of [their] high regard for the original design.” Another firm, Eames and Young, was retained for the remodeling, which – in effect – involved sticking a square story addition on top in place of the sloped roof. The new structure was renamed the Victoria Building and it remained until the mid 1970’s.

To the architectural world, the renovations severely compromised the integrity of the Sullivan design and the building quickly lost status as a an important example of Sullivan architecture. Sullivan’s biographer, Hugh Morrison, commented in 1935 on the remodeling that “although ‘Sullivanesque’ ornament was employed, the present appearance with four severely plain stories above the oriels and a flat box-roof is curiously mixed, like a gentleman in full dress wearing a battered felt hat.” In the course of the remodeling, the hardware was apparently scrapped. Like so many other Sullivan creations, the building was eventually demolished and is now the site of a parking lot.

Records are sketchy and incomplete. A few floor plans, and sketches in Sullivan’s own hand, survive but there appear to be no records of the decorative hardware used in the hotel. The most significant clues discovered so far have been provided by Bruce Gerrie of the St Louis City Museum and Tim Samuelson, the Sullivan scholar (and Curator of Architecture at the Chicago Historical Society) who started saving and preserving Sullivan pieces under Richard Nickel.

“Historian Richard Nickel discovered a doorknob and plate with the initials StN, installed on the doors of Sullivan’s former office in the Auditorium Tower in Chicago. Not recognizing what the initials stood for, he sent it to former Sullivan employee William Gray Purcell for identification along with his own sketch of the design. Purcell speculated that it was from an unbuilt skyscraper with a name like “Northern Trust Savings”. I came to the realization that it was from the St. Nicholas after seeing a similar StN monogram on a Sullivan sketch for a stair baluster for the St. Nicholas.”

Bruce Gerrie of the City Museum in St. Louis was also part of the solution. Bruce was present in the former St. Nicholas shortly before demolition in 1974. While searching the basement for architectural salvage he came across five doors with monogrammed doorknobs and plates. The initials were “S t N”. Bruce concluded that the “StN” hardware was in fact the original St. Nicholas door hardware.

The plate and knob are pictured here. Although the hotel was touted for having an elaborate bell system (“call bells, return bells and annunciators”), no other examples of decorative hardware from the St. Nicholas Hotel have been found. This is similar to other Sullivan buildings, where the most that are found are knobs, plates and letter slots (except in the case of the Chicago Stock Exchange, where there are also kick plates and push plates).

Conceived during a transitional phase in Sullivan’s career, the exterior ornamentation of the St. Nicholas was executed in terra cotta and utilized both his original style, a repeating design characterized by two distinct elements, organic and geometric with emphasis on the organic, and also incorporated a theme from his second stylistic phase in which the geometric motif was emphasized (the spandrel snowflake). The knob has a very attractive geometric border, with an elaborate central monogram. A stylized version of the geometric pattern used on the border of the knob is utilized on the top and bottom of the doorplate. Only the doorknob indicates its origin; like the plate from the Union Trust building, the St. Nicholas plate bears no mark of connection with a particular building. (Unlike the Union Trust design, the St. Nicholas plate was not carried as a stock piece by Yale & Towne). Both bronze and nickel plated examples of the St. Nicholas hardware are found. The familiar Y&T logo is marked on the back of the doorplates.

Louis Sullivan was the main architect on many historical building projects, four of them in St. Louis - the Wainwright, the St. Nicholas Hotel, the Union Trust Building and the Wainwright tomb. He added a particularly elegant flair to the ornamentation on his buildings and luckily for doorknob collectors, he extended this ornamentation to the hardware on a few of them – three of which were in St. Louis.

A significant antique door hardware display, including hardware from the St. Nicholas and other Sullivan hardware, is currently housed on the 3rd Floor of the City Museum in St. Louis. Be sure to stop by if you plan to visit St. Louis, or even if you have to make a special trip.

Celuch, John J. The St. Nicholas Hotel, 1892-1903: Louis Sullivan Architect. (A thesis submitted as part of MFA degree – Department of Art and Design Southern Illinois University, 1976)

Morrison, Hugh, Louis Sullivan, Prophet of Modern Architecture (Introduction by Tim Samuelson)(W. W. Norton, 1998)

St. Louis Historical Society Bulletin, Design for St. Nicholas, XIV 2, p.184 (1958)

Number 131	May-June 2005
A Publication of The Antique Doorknob Collectors of America