Butler Brothers Building (1221 Washington)

A seven-story wholesale loft that fills half the block on the north side of Washington Avenue at 13th Street. A tall two-story base of rough-textured pink granite is set off from the upper floors, which are dark brown-gray brick trimmed in terra cotta. A leaf-pattern terra-cotta surround frames the windows of the third through sixth floors, terra-cotta insets mark the seventh, and a terra-cotta cornice caps the building.

The Lindell Real Estate Company built this loft in 1899 to designs by the Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, one of the first big wholesale houses on the stretch of Washington Avenue west of 12th Street. Built St. Louis also credits John L. Mauran, who ran the firm's St. Louis work and soon formed his own practice, Mauran, Russell and Garden. The first tenant was Butler Brothers, the national wholesaler of general merchandise to small-town stores, which stayed until it moved into its own giant warehouse at 1717 Olive Street in 1906. The building then served a long line of wholesale and garment firms. From 1930 the Mark Lemp Footwear Company and its predecessors made it their home, and the building was known for the shoe company until it moved out in 2006. It was afterward sold for conversion to condominiums as the Avenida, and Rosalita's Cantina occupies part of the ground floor.