Statler Hotel

The Statler occupies a downtown corner at Washington Avenue and Ninth Street, a broad brick tower rising from a rusticated stone base in the Renaissance Revival style. The lower floors open in tall round-arched windows with carved keystones, flanked by ornamental cast-iron balconettes and low-relief garland and carved-head panels at the corner. The brick shaft above is patterned with recessed spandrels between its ranks of windows. At the crown, a two-story Ionic colonnade stands behind a stone balustrade, screening the top floor and carrying a deep bracketed and dentiled cornice beneath a green, gilt-edged roofline.

The Hotel Statler opened in 1917 as the St. Louis property in Ellsworth M. Statler's national hotel chain, designed by George B. Post & Sons, the firm that had designed the earlier Statler hotels in Cleveland and Detroit. It is frequently cited as the first fully air-conditioned hotel in the United States. Hilton acquired the Statler chain in the 1950s, and the hotel operated as the Statler Hilton before being renamed the St. Louis Gateway Hotel in 1966. It closed for renovation in 1986 and was damaged by fire in February 1987, then stood vacant for more than a decade. Cleanup began in 1999, and a $265 million restoration carried out between 2000 and 2002 rehabilitated the original tower and added a matching wing to the east, reopening the property as the Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel. A further renovation in 2014–2015 preceded its rebranding as the Marriott St. Louis Grand. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 19, 1982.