A nineteenth-century public market house of red brick in an Italianate manner. A long, low market shed ran the length of the block behind a taller corner headhouse, its ground floor opening in a row of round-arched arcades and its upper stories carrying arched windows grouped under moulded brick hoods and belt courses. A square corner tower, quoined at its angles and capped by a bracketed cornice, anchored the composition. Sheet-metal awnings on iron posts wrapped the sidewalks, sheltering the open stalls of the curb market below.
The first Union Market was built in 1866 on the north half of the block bounded by Broadway, Sixth, Lucas, and Morgan streets (Morgan is now Convention Plaza). It became one of St. Louis's principal public markets, drawing produce dealers and shoppers to its indoor stalls and to the curb market that spread along the surrounding sidewalks. The market operated on this block for more than half a century. Around 1923 the old market house was cleared for a new municipal market on the same site — the reinforced-concrete Union Market of 1924-25 that later became the Pear Tree Inn.
