Missouri Pacific Building

A twenty-two-story Art Deco skyscraper faced in cream terra cotta, its bulk rising through setbacks to a stepped, castellated crown hung with scrolled finials and Gothic pinnacles. Continuous piers run up between the windows to stress the height, and the terra-cotta blocks are worked with chevrons and foliate Deco-Gothic ornament, densest around the base. Over the entrance the name MISSOURI PACIFIC BUILDING is carved in Gothic letters above a richly patterned lintel. A dark granite base grounds the pale shaft, and the tower's terraced, fortress-like silhouette rises beside Christ Church Cathedral.

The Missouri Pacific Railroad built this tower at 200 North 13th Street as its headquarters, begun in 1926 and occupied in 1928. It was designed by the St. Louis firm Mauran, Russell & Crowell with the railroad's engineer E. M. Tucker, as the first phase of a far larger complex: the tower was meant to reach about thirty-five stories, but the Great Depression halted it near the twenty-third floor. The Missouri Pacific and its successor, the Union Pacific, kept offices here for decades. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002; after Union Pacific moved the jobs to a new center in Omaha in 2004, it was converted to housing as the Park Pacific apartments, with restaurants at street level.