A six-story parking garage of reinforced concrete faced in buff brick, at the southeast corner of 13th and St. Charles. The Hotel Jefferson rises behind it to the east, and the Shell Building stands against its south wall facing Christ Church Cathedral. The garage is dressed to look like one of the Washington Avenue lofts rather than a garage. The 13th Street front is the showpiece. Brick piers run the full height and break through the parapet as small pointed pinnacles. The center bays are crowned by a band of ornamental terra cotta with arched and medallion panels. At the second floor, tall narrow windows sit between slender posts that end in spikes. The St. Charles side is plainer, with long bands of windows in brick, but it keeps the pinnacled corner pier. The open garage driveways at street level have been glassed in as a storefront that wraps the corner. The upper floors are still a parking garage, with a 13th and Washington monthly parking sign at the corner.
The Associated Motor Terminals Company, operator of the Broad-Wal and Seven-Wal garages downtown, built the garage in 1928 to serve the Hotel Jefferson and the office and garment buildings around it. Gill and Jackson were the architects and W. J. Knight and Company the engineers. The ramp-type concrete structure was meant to hold about 650 cars at once and handle about 2000 a day, with passenger elevators, gasoline piped by water pressure to every floor, and waiting rooms for women shoppers. Two 20-foot entrances took up nearly the whole 13th Street front. The Globe-Democrat called it the new Jefferson Plaza Garage when it opened to the public on Monday, October 1, 1928. Built St. Louis singles it out as a small, decorative garage whose form and massing fit with the buildings on Washington Avenue. It remains attached to the old Hotel Jefferson on Tucker.
