Lambert Building

Four stories of red pressed brick trimmed with rose sandstone, built in two sections whose Richardsonian Romanesque detailing matches closely enough to read as one. The 1891 corner section runs in vertical bays that join at the third story in an arcade of gauged brick arches, with small rectangular windows above beneath a corbelled, paneled brick cornice. Rock-faced rose sandstone rustication frames the corner entrance, rising from a pink granite water table. The 1902 addition to the west groups its second and third stories under round arches springing from two-story piers, carries an arcade of smaller arches at the fourth story, and ends in a bracketed sandstone cornice. Over the entry a carved panel reads T.M. Sayman Products Company 2101 Locust, below a datestone cut MDCCCXCI.

The Lambert Building was constructed in 1891 and extended in 1902 as offices and factory for the Lambert Pharmacal Company, founded in St. Louis in 1880 by Jordan W. Lambert and known worldwide for Listerine. The National Register nomination attributes the 1891 building to Thomas B. Annan on circumstantial evidence: the building permit records only the contractor, Matthew Kirkwood, whose business address matched Annan's and who built at least two other Annan designs around 1891. Samuel L. Sherer designed the 1902 addition, one of two commissions that came to him through friendships with Lambert officers Arthur Deacon and Arthur Lambert — the other was the printing company building across the street. Lambert outgrew the plant by 1938 and sold it to the T.M. Sayman Products Company, a St. Louis drug firm making soaps and toiletries, which cut its name into the sandstone above the entrance. Sayman owned the building until 1975, and the Singer Fixture Company followed. A 1976 fire in the block east of 21st Street destroyed window framing on the east elevation and parts of the cornice. The ground-level arches appear in the 1981 film Escape from New York, standing in for a ruined New York City. The building was listed on the National Register in 1983 and later renovated as office space.