A twelve-story brick tower - the only high-rise ever built in East St. Louis - now a gutted shell, its window openings empty and its floors open to the sky. Brick piers run the full height between recessed bays of terra-cotta spandrel panels, each molded with a foliate cartouche, above a marble-faced ground floor whose asymmetrical entrance is carved "SPIVEY." The top two stories form a crown of a corbelled cornice band, a screen of paired windows, and a crenellated terra-cotta parapet stepped into pinnacled piers. Fire escapes climb the rear, and trees now grow at the roofline.
The Spivey Building was built in 1927 for Allen Spivey, a newspaper publisher, and designed by Albert B. Frankel. Twelve stories tall, it was the only high-rise ever built in East St. Louis, and through the city's prosperous decades it held the offices of leading local professionals. As East St. Louis lost its industry and population after mid-century, the building emptied; its last tenants left around 1980, and it has stood abandoned since. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 and named to Landmarks Illinois's Most Endangered Historic Places list in 2025.
