Buder Building

A thirteen-story Beaux Arts office block at the northwest corner of Seventh and Market Streets, faced in light buff brick and elaborately dressed in white terra cotta. A two-story base of arched openings and a matching two-story crown framed a tall shaft whose windows were set off by terra-cotta spandrels and slender pilaster strips. The crown carried arched windows wreathed in garlands and cartouches beneath a deep bracketed cornice, and the terra-cotta ornament — an unusually rich program — ran across both street fronts and turned the corner. Storefronts filled the ground floor.

The building opened in 1902 at the northwest corner of Seventh and Market Streets as the Missouri Pacific Building, the railroad's downtown headquarters, designed by the architect William A. Swasey at a cost of about $600,000. It later became the Buder Building and was also known as the Pontiac Building. In 1984 it was demolished by implosion — while occupied, and over local objection — to clear ground for the Gateway Mall, the open corridor cut through downtown; the architectural historian Vincent Scully had praised the Buder and its neighbors, among them the Title Guaranty Building, as an ensemble of real merit. The site is now open plaza in front of the Gateway One tower.