A seven-story commercial building on the north side of Washington Avenue, wearing a 1946 Moderne slipcover over an Eames & Young structure from the turn of the century. The refacing gives it clean horizontal banding, a smooth skin, and — reset in 2008 — the raised "DORSA" letters across the front. Behind the modern face is the older warehouse frame; inside, a sleek Moderne display space survives largely intact.
Eames & Young built the building around 1902 as an investment property for Washington University, one of the row of turn-of-the-century warehouses on this block of Washington Avenue. Its character changed in 1946, when the Dorsa Company — a St. Louis dressmaker — refronted it with a Moderne slipcover designed by Meyer Loomstein with Sascha Schnittman. The new skin turned the old warehouse into a showcase of mid-century "Mode Moderne," with a sleek display space inside and the DORSA name spelled across the façade. Late in the twentieth century the building was slated for conversion to lofts. Pyramid Construction began the work but collapsed in 2007, leaving it half-finished for a time; a new owner resumed, and the long-missing DORSA letters were reset on the front in 2008. Combined with the neighboring Lindell warehouse, it now forms part of the Dorsa Lofts.
