A riverfront commercial building at 523–25 N. Main Street that served as the factory and headquarters of the F.D. Seward Confectionary Company, one of St. Louis's most prominent candy manufacturers. Seward advertised the business as the "largest line of fine candies" in the city, operating from both this Main Street address and 112 Washington Avenue.
Francis Dwight Seward (1859–unknown) moved to St. Louis in 1882 and entered the confectionary trade as a partner in Dodge & Seward. He took sole control in 1889 and renamed the firm F.D. Seward Confectionary Company in 1892. In 1902, Seward merged with three other major St. Louis candy manufacturers — O.H. Peckham, A.J. Walter, and Vincent L. Price (father of the actor) — to form the National Candy Company, incorporated in New Jersey and headquartered at the Granite Building on Market Street. Despite the consolidation, Seward continued to operate his Main Street factory under the National Candy umbrella until 1928, when the company built a new consolidated plant at 4230 Gravois Avenue designed by architects Klipstein and Rathman. The Main Street building then stood vacant until it was cleared in the 1939–1942 demolition campaign that razed 37 blocks of the original St. Louis riverfront to create the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, now the Gateway Arch National Park.
