A slender Art Deco tower rising in stepped setbacks above Kingshighway, faced in light tan brick with cast-stone and terra-cotta trim. Continuous vertical piers run the height of the shaft, and recessed spandrels between the windows draw the eye upward as the mass steps back toward a narrow crowning tower. A stone base anchors the building at street level; the upper setbacks carry geometric Art Deco ornament and finish in a stepped parapet. The silhouette follows the New York setback skyscraper of its day, a vertical counterpoint to the lower Italian Renaissance Chase beside it.
Built in 1929 for the St. Louis theater owner Sam Koplar and his brothers, the Park Plaza rose across Kingshighway from the Chase Hotel as a deliberate rival. Koplar hired the architects Schopp & Baumann, who modeled the twenty-eight-story tower on New York's Savoy-Plaza and gave St. Louis one of its tallest Art Deco skyscrapers. It opened as a luxury apartment-hotel, with residences on the upper floors and public rooms — among them the Crystal Terrace dining room — that drew society events. The Depression pushed the building into foreclosure, and Koplar regained control in 1944. In 1947 he acquired the neighboring Chase, and the two operated together as the Chase Park Plaza, the name that has identified the pair ever since. The Park Plaza tower stayed in hotel use through mid-century. In the early 1980s new owners converted the tower to residential use, adding apartments after a multimillion-dollar renovation while the Chase wing declined and closed by the end of the decade. The Chase complex was revived around the turn of the century, and the Park Plaza tower remains in residential use today, its Art Deco profile still marking the Central West End skyline.
