The Merchants-Laclede Building rises eight stories at Fourth and Olive streets, its lower two floors faced in beige granite and the upper floors in soft red sandstone and brick. The design mixed Romanesque and Queen Anne influences: a rusticated stone base, generous window openings, and a corner tower that originally carried a pediment and conical roof, since removed. Terra cotta relief panels with varied, sometimes whimsical, designs decorate the facade above Olive Street. Inside, the lobby retains its original white marble floors and a pair of matching bank vault doors.
Stephen D. Hatch designed the building from his New York office, with L. Cass Miller serving as supervising architect on site; construction ran from 1886 to 1888. Built as the Laclede Building, it was among downtown St. Louis's early tall, fireproof office buildings, and Laclede National Bank became a principal tenant. Miller stayed on in St. Louis after the project was finished and continued practicing architecture in the city. In 1895, a merger of the Laclede National Bank with another bank tenant led to the building's renaming as the Merchants-Laclede Building. Eames and Young remodeled the building in 1906, smoothing the rusticated stonework and modernizing the ground floor. The Merchants bank failed in 1929. The building later held offices for a bank and a law firm, standing vacant through much of the 1990s. Drury Development renovated the property between 2001 and 2005, and it reopened as a hotel under the Hilton brand around 2005. It operates today as The Pennywell St. Louis Downtown, a Hilton hotel.
