Mermod-Jaccard Building (Fifth and Olive)

The Mermod-Jaccard Building at the northeast corner of Fifth and Olive Streets was the longtime downtown home of one of St. Louis's most celebrated jewelers. A richly ornamented Second Empire commercial block, it rose five stories with a distinctive corner clock tower and globe finial, and an elaborately arcaded ground floor bearing the "JACCARD'S" name across its facade.

Mermod & Jaccard Jewelry Company traced its St. Louis roots to the 1840s, when Louis and Eugene Jaccard established the city's first significant jewelry house. After several name changes and partnerships, the firm settled at the northeast corner of Fifth and Olive Streets — a location it occupied for decades as Mermod, Jaccard & Co. and later Mermod & Jaccard Jewelry Company. By 1880, when Emil Boehl photographed the building, it was among the most recognized storefronts in downtown St. Louis, attracting a clientele that spanned the city's merchant class and its wealthiest families. On a December night in 1897, fire destroyed the building and its contents, claiming an estimated $350,000 in merchandise and displacing more than forty other tenants in the block. Within three days the jewelers had relocated to temporary quarters across the street, and within two years they had opened a new, larger building at the northwest corner of Broadway and Locust.