National Bank of Commerce

The National Bank of Commerce Building was an eleven-story French Renaissance skyscraper at the southeast corner of Broadway and Olive Streets, designed by Isaac Taylor and completed in 1902. Its limestone and brick facade rose above a rusticated base with classical detailing, crowned by an elaborate domed cupola and projecting cornice that gave the tower a distinctly ornate silhouette on the St. Louis skyline.

The institution that built this tower had its roots in the Building and Savings Association, founded in 1857 at Second and Pine Streets. The bank moved to Fourth and Olive in 1875, adopting the name Bank of Commerce, before relocating to the Romanesque Jaccard Building at the northeast corner of Broadway and Olive in 1885. In 1889 the bank obtained a national charter and became the National Bank of Commerce. By the close of the nineteenth century it had grown into one of the twenty largest banks in the country, its role as a "correspondent bank" — supplying credit and liquidity to smaller regional institutions — making it a critical node in the national financial system in the decades before the Federal Reserve standardized that function in 1913. In 1901, the bank commissioned Isaac Taylor to design a new headquarters directly across Broadway from its old Jaccard Building home. The resulting eleven-story tower, completed in 1902 at a cost of $1.2 million, contained 198 offices and was among the tallest buildings in St. Louis at its opening. Taylor rendered it in a French Renaissance mode, with an elaborate domed cupola and projecting cornice that distinguished it on the downtown skyline. Sculptural lion heads from the building's interior survive and are now on display at The Wolfsonian–Florida International University in Miami Beach. The bank merged into Commerce Trust Company following its recapitalization after the Panic of 1907, eventually evolving into what is now Commerce Bank. The building itself, stripped of its cornice and cupola by mid-century, was rechristened the Chamber of Commerce Building in its later years. In 1977 it was demolished alongside the neighboring Lutheran Building and V.A. Building to make way for a surface parking lot. Preservation organizations were given almost no opportunity to review or contest the decision. The empty lot stood for five years before the St. Louis Place office building rose on the site in 1983.