Polytechnic Building

A Second Empire office block raised for Washington University's O'Fallon Polytechnic Institute, then repurposed as the home of the St. Louis Board of Education and its Public School Library for a quarter century. Nothing survives above ground, but it's unusually well documented — an 1868 wood engraving, an 1876 street photograph, and a lantern slide all confirm the same building at the same corner.

Designed by architect Thomas W. Walsh and completed in 1867, the building was commissioned by Washington University for the O'Fallon Polytechnic Institute, a technical school named for university trustee Col. John O'Fallon and intended to teach mechanical, agricultural, and industrial subjects to St. Louis youth. The institute struggled, and within about a year the university sold the building to the St. Louis School Board (1868). Under the Board, the building — known variously as the Public School Polytechnic Building, the Public School Library Building, and the Wabash Building — housed the Board of Education's offices and the Public School Library, a 30,000-volume collection with free public reading rooms. It also leased space to civic and scientific organizations, including the St. Louis Academy of Science, the St. Louis Medical Society, the St. Louis Institute of Architects, and the Missouri Historical Society. The Board of Education and the Library moved to the newly built Board of Education Building in 1893. The Polytechnic Building stood vacant for about two years before being demolished in 1895 to clear the site for Eames & Young's Title Guaranty Building (also called the Lincoln Trust Building), completed in 1898 at 706 Chestnut Street. That building, too, was eventually lost — demolished in 1983 to make way for the Gateway Mall/Gateway One development, the same urban-renewal wave that also claimed the neighboring DeMenil, International, and Buder Buildings near the still-standing Wainwright Building.