Peters Shoe Company Building

An eight-story buff-brick warehouse of heavy-timber mill construction on the southeast corner of Washington Avenue and 13th Street, fronting 100 feet on Washington and 150 feet on 13th. The two principal elevations follow a classical tripartite division: a rusticated base with terra-cotta roundels and running-dog panels, a five-story shaft of brick piers rising to Corinthian capitals, and an attic above a stepped terra-cotta frieze. Buff terra cotta trims the piers and spandrels throughout, and an elaborate green copper cornice with acroteria crowns the building. The main entrance carries the street numbers 1230 and 1232 in gilt on its transoms. Transoms over the west-elevation loading dock retain glass etched with the "Weatherbird" figure, a Peters Shoe trademark. The red-brick rear elevation runs five bays along an alley.

Henry W. Peters incorporated the Peters Shoe Company in 1891, part of the rapid rise of St. Louis shoe manufacturing at the turn of the century. As the city's wholesale trade pushed west along Washington Avenue past 12th Street, the Thirteenth Street Realty Company — organized by officers of the Mercantile Trust Company — financed this building for lease to the growing firm. Designed in 1901 by St. Louis architect Isaac Taylor, who that same year produced the nearby Silk Exchange Building and Mercantile's own offices and would soon direct construction for the 1904 World's Fair, it opened as the Peters Shoe Company's corporate headquarters. In 1911 Peters Shoe merged with the Roberts, Johnson & Rand Company to form the International Shoe Company, each retaining its identity and brands; the building continued as offices and salesrooms of the Peters Branch through the 1920s, when Washington Avenue was known as "Shoe Street U.S.A." In 1930 the Peters operation moved to 15th and Washington, and the building afterward housed a succession of wholesale and light-manufacturing tenants. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 and later converted to residential and commercial use.